If you want to do well in Google’s rankings (and who doesn’t?) it helps to understand the thinking behind their approach. In the end, it all comes down to money …
Google makes a fortune from advertising revenue, and it attracts advertisers because it is by far the most popular search engine. If Google were to lose this popularity to one of its competitors, it would also lose all that income, so it is absolutely vital for it to maintain its dominance.
So how did Google get to be the world’s favourite search engine? The answer is very simple: by delivering the most accurate and useful search results. If you found that you were getting bad or irrelevant websites turning up in your searches, you would quickly abandon Google in favour of one of its rivals, and so would most other people, which, as we’ve seen, would have massive financial consequences.
Hopefully, you can now understand why Google must ruthlessly guard the integrity of its search results, and allow only the best, most well-constructed, fastest-loading, content-rich and relevant websites to get to the top of its rankings, and why they cannot allow lesser sites to shortcut or cheat their way to the top.
So don’t bother trying to find those shortcuts – they don’t exist. If you want to get to page one (without paying to be there), concentrate on improving the quality of your website. We’ll have lots of advice on how to do this in future weeks …
