Google doesn’t care where your site ranks.
It’s not in their interest to help you game their algorithm.
Google just wants you to create great content so they can index it, make it searchable, and ultimately keep raking in billions in ad revenue from their search engine.
Unfortunately for them, there’s great reward for gaming the algorithm.
So pesky website owners will always try.
The problem for you, dear pesky website owner, is that the Google algorithm is insanely complex.
And you can’t trust Google to tell you how it works.
Their advice boils down to “just create great content” with a side of “if you game the algo we’ll fuck your shit up”.
So what’s a pesky website owner to do?
What’s worked for me is to focus on the exceptional execution of the big factors:
- Content
- Links
- Topical authority
- EEAT
It’s incredibly simple to lay out a handful of best practices for each of these.
The difficult part is running operations which consistently output those best practices.
And then do it all at a decent scale.
You could spend a whole career chasing this level of operational excellence, and still fall short.
Don’t over-complicate your SEO.
You win SEO through exceptional execution, not fancy strategies.
Use 1% of your time defining a simple strategy, and the other 99% on exceptional execution.
