Getting to poll position on Google search results is the Holy Grail for many firms. It’s what they want more than practically anything else on their digital marketing wishlist. Being at the top of search results means that you can get almost unlimited organic traffic to your site, helping cement it at the number one spot. It’s a coveted place to be.
Of course, all of this makes getting to the top of . Everyone wants to be top dog and reap the rewards that come with it. Getting to the top of Google search results is, therefore, a challenge.
Or is it?
Why SEO Perfectionism Is Killing Your Campaign
Many people are of the impression that they have to “optimize” everything to put themselves in first place in Google search results. Every word on their blog and metatag on their web pages has to be perfect to communicate the meaning of their pages to Google’s algorithms in a way that is “just right.” But there’s a problem with this approach: it doesn’t necessarily align with what Google is trying to achieve as a firm.
At root, Google wants to direct customers to the answers to their questions. It intends to provide them with the most valuable information that it can so that people will keep coming back to the platform and generate advertising revenue. Google has a vested interest in serving up exactly what people want to see.
The way businesses , therefore, is to find ways to deliver an experience that customers actually want. Sure, it’s great to have a few SEO pillars in place before you start posting mountains of content, but the real thing that’s going to get you to the top of Google is providing your customers with the information that they want.
Firms, however, can get into trouble when they take SEO practices too far. It’s not that these practices are bad in themselves, it’s just that they can get in the way of the user experience, putting people off and, ultimately, wrecking your chances of ranking higher in search results.
Don’t Use Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It’s where you place as many keywords throughout your content as you possibly can. The problem is that it’s a pretty basic technique and something that Google has been on top of for many years now. It’s obvious to search engines which pages are stuffed with keywords and which aren’t. Far from helping your cause, keyword stuffing can hurt it by decreasing the quality of the experience for end-users and reducing dwell time on your pages.
Do Disavow Problem Backlinks
Another arsenal is the creation of backlinks. In the past, Google relied heavily on links from one page to another to determine the value of a particular page. The more links to a page, the more valuable it is to users – or so the thinking goes. However, over time, webmasters came to realize that they could manipulate the system and generate backlinks from random sites to boost the rank of their own pages.
For Google, this was a problem. It wanted to show its users pages that added genuine value, not those which simply had a lot of unnatural links from a bunch of random sites set up expressly to provide those links. The company, therefore, began cracking down on the practice, blacklisting links from particular sites and punishing pages that linked to them. Having a dodgy link to your site can now hurt your search results position, so it’s vital to disavow these links. The good news is that Google provides a tool which allows you to do this, just in case you have any links to your site which come from sources that are not reputable.
Do Automate Your Campaign
is becoming increasingly popular. The reason for this is that SEOs are increasingly realizing that they don’t need to sweat the small stuff. It’s much better to get a machine to do it all, thanks to the ability of software to crunch a vast amount of information and optimize.
Perfectionism isn’t worth it when it comes to SEO. It’s much better to focus all your efforts on doing things that are valuable to your target audience. Spend your energy this way, instead of focusing on the latest news in SEO and the techniques that people are using to fool the search engines. It’s not worth your effort.