It’s become clear that many people’s understanding of SEO is skewed, and they don’t see it from Google’s perspective.
In the simplest view, Google sees 3 main aspects to SEO:
- Crawling,
- Indexing,
- Ranking.
Google would prefer if people only focused on the first 2, as they see Ranking as their job.
The more you do around Ranking, the more you can be seen as manipulating or getting spammy.
SEO should focus on ensuring content can be accessed by bots, parsed, rendered, and indexed properly.
For ranking, SEO should prioritize UX: load speed, reducing friction, providing a good experience through design, layout, and quality content.
Ranking more content or higher goes against what Google wants.
Even keyword research (KWR) often focuses on finding things to rank for, not producing content based on user needs.
Google cannot quantitatively gauge “content quality” as it is subjective, but they can qualitatively by watching how Users respond in the SERP.
Ranking is more “variable” and less consistent because it is relative.
Doing X or Y may give points, but you have to account for competitors.
Google looks and decides what should rank, and where, based on initial and performance scores over time.
It’s not perfect, but that may be due to time and effort tackling spam and exploits.
Google wants us to focus on technical and quality aspects, leaving relevancy and ranking to them.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do KWR or optimize titles, but these should be done after other things!
By focusing on aiding users (navigation, satisfaction, quality), you can earn ranking rewards.
That is the ranking aspect Google wants you to focus on.
I’m not advocating “build it and they will come” or “just create great content”.
But you may need to shift your perspective and prioritize earlier aspects.
Sort out technical issues to broaden your site.
Improve quality to lighten your load.
Nearly all of us dislike poor search results and content.
But some produce that exact experience, prioritizing ranking and pennies over providing for users.
If you are serious about your business, change your view of SEO.
Get ship-shape, focus on what users are after and why, provide it with the least friction and most satisfaction.
Starting with keywords is not the right way!
Most sites should have the same content types, order, and basic coverage.
This is about user expectations, not SEO.
Cover the full funnel journey and beyond.
Think of Google as a performance observer.
Think of competitors as other stores of your company.
Is your store, staff, layout better?
Are you pleasing shoppers?
That perspective shift should help you see your site, content, revenue efforts differently.
It should help you see things more like Google does and avoid being hit by updates.
I know you want to rank.
But don’t prioritize ranking above all else.
SEO is not a goal, ranking is not a KPI.
