The Secret To SEO
The secret to SEO (a.k.a. “Search Engine Optimization”) that no one will tell you is that Google invented it to keep people using Google. And for Google to benefit and retain its user base, it needs to provide the “best” and “most relevant” search results for people who are looking for information.
The definition of “relevance” has changed over the years, which is why SEO has changed, too. Initially Google used keywords, thinking that if someone was searching for “the best ice cream in Denver”, then they would display the webpage that had those words on it at the top of the search results.
But when people learned this, they started keyword stuffing — that is, flooding their page’s content (and the meta data) with the phrase “best ice cream in Denver” and other related phrases. As a result of this, poorer results began to surface, and Google changed its algorithm.
This happened over and over and over again until we landed where we are today — where Google now rewards websites that produce valuable content that users enjoy. Google measures this with the amount of time users spend on a webpage (or whether those users “bounce”), how many times they click through your site, and a million other factors.
Some of these factors are technical, like making sure you’re titling your website pages and podcast posts relevantly, properly nesting your header tags, and using Alt-text for your images.
But keyword stuffing died with the advent of semantic search. All you need to worry about right now is creating good, fresh content consistently.
Words & warmth,
Sarah
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