SEO - useful or obsession?

Google uses over 200 different criteria in assessing how pages are ranked, so there is no simple solution.

The basic theory of search engines is that a person searches the web using text likely to be used on pages of interest. That requires well-behaved page writers to provide content that supposedly included those words in ways that provided interesting information when people clicked on the links in the top search engine results. That did not last long! For us to see why, we will look at some criteria and how they were subverted to game the system.

Early attempts, and a lot of current ones, stuff these full of the most popular keywords likely to be used by those wanting what the site offers. Unfortunately, many did not make their content as enticing as the keywords, while some fallaciously used the words to lure unsuspecting searchers to content that had nothing to do with the searches, and so tarnished the search engines reputations. For this reason, the hidden keywords meta-tag has not been used by Google for a decade, just because people used to stuff it with every keyword they could.

Some use multiple URLs, each with a popular search phrase and redirecting to a common home page. Google now considers such gateway pages disfavourably, and while some popular older sites still use them, along with pages stuffed with keywords, new pages will be downranked.

Of course, as each new criteria is identified by SEO opportunity hunters, they get exploited, often touted as some new magic bullet to SEO paradise. While they may work for a little while, the search engine business is spending billions on research to find new ways to thwart such hijacking. This is why there are the 200+ criteria that Google uses, and to which they will add many more, so making it very difficult for SEO bounty hunters to rort their algorithms.

Generally, search engines, at least in the organic results, are trying to connect searchers to content that will prove of value to them.

With Google et al spending billions on researching how to do that, rather than spending most of your time battling uphill to keep ahead of them, it is better to cooperate and just concentrate on producing the good content that your site visitors actually want.

Good content will generally have a broad range of words related to the popular keywords people really interested in your site may use, just because you cannot describe what you do or offer without the coverage that requires them. Your site will also have many inter-related, but not duplicated, pages, and that will indicate depth and breadth of your site's content to search engines. You may have other sites, and relevant cross-links between them will enhance your site's search reputation.

Just be aware that a search engine may not index all pages on a site. This may be because there is something on a page that may run afoul of their rules. It may be because they are not being linked to enough by the rest of your site, so it pays to cross-link between related pages as much as possible, though external links to pages are still better. Sometimes it just might be that there is too much duplicate content. Google acknowledges that they do not index all pages, so you may never get full indexing, despite what you do. Just do what you can to get get links to all pages, within the rules.

Search results are a popularity contest at the instant of the search, but there are efforts other than content optimisation that can improve that popularity.

While you may get to be on the first page of search results with a suitably crafted, but unlikely, search phrase, if you are competing in a popular search, you will not be anywhere near the top if the search contains only a word or two of those used in your test phrases. Some in your industry will top all searches related to your industry, even if they have not optimised for SEO. This is because they have a history of being clicked on a lot in search results. That is, they have a high reputation for being clicked to, and so search engines rate them up.

However, it is not only that they were clicked on a lot, but that those who have clicked on them have not resumed searching soon after. This highlights why content is important because good content keeps people on your site, whereas poor or misleading content will soon send visitors back to search for something more suitable.

So search engines are not just making direct judgements about the relevance to the search terms from their page analysis, but they are also accounting for visitors voting with their fingers as to what is most relevant to them. So, trying to game the search engines will ultimately fail if your content does not keep visitors reading long enough.

It used to be that a site could gain a good reputation by getting sites with good reputations to link to them, and so when search engines noted those links, they would assume that the target site was worthwhile. However, many of such reputable sites noted that their writers seemed to be linking to unworthy sites, and so took measures to limit the benefits flowing to target sites. In addition to telling search engines to ignore such outgoing links, they also stopped including referrer site information with the link, so that the target site could not ascertain from where their visitors came.

The search for reputation is not lost though, because a site can link out to reputable sites. This relies upon the search engines, knowing the content on the target sites as reputable, enhancing the sending site's reputation. That will only work if there is a high degree of synergy between the page with the link and the target page's content.

Such sites have what I call enduring reputations, as opposed to the instantaneous popularity contest of a search, just because such sites have proved to reliably provide a consistent quality of information and so are enduring in the search engines eyes. Once your site has established its own search engine reputation, by people clicking on search page links enough, then you do not need to target reputable sites, though it can still help maintain yours.

Some have tried to get instant reputations by subscribing to link farms, which are a whole bunch of such backlinks on a myriad sites. Google et al track these farms, and penalise or even ban those who use them. You do not want to get banned by Google!

Search engines have put up their real estate for renting in the forms of ads, but how useful are they?

People have spent money very quickly on these ads, but without the conversion to sales that they expected. That is because they pay each time a person clicks through to their site, even if they do not buy. Myriads of visitors to your site does not mean much if the vast majority do not buy what you offer. Therefore, a lot will depend upon what you offer that is of relevance to your target market.

If your services or goods typically require their purchasers to understand them in some depth, you will find instant buyers are like annoying blowflies. Conversely, researchers will seem like tyre-kickers to an instant food place.

Google has now understood this, and is placing typically quick sale ads above and below organic content, which is what researchers are typically interested in. Therefore, you are probably a good candidate for search engine ads if you sell instant gratification goods or foods, especially if you have a physical location, as that will favour you to those buyers in your area.

This all means that you will need to construct your website to favour the type of buyer you want. If you look at your site visiting stats, researchers will tend to be those hanging around for up to 15 minutes as they consume all the words. Unfortunately, because of the shorter time instant buyers spend on sites, the stats may not show up the difference between them and those who abandoned your site.

Remember though, a researcher who has done all their needed research can then be ready for instant gratification, so make sure you have left instant gratification links in judicious places -- though not too overtly -- among your wordiness for when they are ready to convert!

Most website owners probably expect search engines to index all their pages, but they do not!

SEO experts extol the virtues of signing up for Google's Search Console to get all its analytical functionality to make your site appeal to Google more. What they totally neglect to mention is that Google will ignore most of your site, and almost all of it if it is small. Bing used to be somewhat better, but as of August 2023, lists 100% of pages.

While the home page and some listings pages will be indexed, most of the pages that you have spent time trying to perfect will never be found in search results. All the fancy analytical and optimisation tools in the world are useless if there are few pages that they can actually be applied to. This is how Google et al are failing search users and website owners, and should be brought to heal by consumer groups and protection agencies.

Even SEO experts' sites do not get half of their pages indexed, and they are Google's greatest promoters. The problem is that SEO experts accept that all pages will not be indexed, yet still push their services as if there was not a problem with all of this. Basically, SEO experts will take your money but will be fairly powerless to actually improve your site's search rankings. After all, if Google is only making 4% of your site's pages available for listing, that puts a severe upper limit on its SEO potential.

In finding sites that allow back links, avoid link farms as they are not providing any authoritative value for your site, and search sites will be likely to ban your site because you were trying to game them. Avoid social media sites as their users do not like to leave them to go read elsewhere, and expect you to pander to them where they are.

Sites like Medium encourage back links as they expect many writers will have their own sites. They have that business model as it can be of mutual benefit to them as well as writers. They are not trying to trap users on their site like social media sites do. Such well known sites may get more love from search engines and so links in them may provide an impetus for the search engines to rank the link target pages on your site higher.

We have looked at search engine dynamics and what it takes to make it to the top.

Anything else is a distraction of your's and your readers/customers' time.