This article was first published on the 16th of June, 2020 by Patrick Carpen.
Last updated: July 17, 2020 at 15:59 pm
As I mentioned in my previous article, “Ranking Guyana, South America in Google,” ranking a website in the Google Search Engine for a particular keyword isn’t an ordinary task. For one, Google keeps changing its rules and algorithms. So if you think you’re going to pick up a good SEO book and study it to become an SEO master, by the time you’re finished studying, that book may very well have become outdated. And by the time you have learned all the tricks to ranking a website in Google, Google may have learned all your tricks and how to trick you.
So why is Google doing this? To prevent spamming. If people know all of the rules and algorithms that Google uses to rank search engine for keywords, they can use that knowledge to manipulate all kinds of irrelevant websites to the top of the search engines. And this would lead to a poor user experience as well as spam. Google intends to keep its worth in gold and that means staying ahead of the game while not frustrating users. And that spells high quality. And no, I don’t think Google is the perfect search engine.
Let me give you an example of how Google changes SEO rules. About ten years ago, Google had prioritized keyword rich domain names. That is, if you throw up a website with domain name: housesinnewyork.com and you post a short paragraph on it, within days, that website showed up for keyword term “houses in new york.” This led to another domain name gold rush where people rushed to acquire as many keyword rich domain names as they could. Fast forward ten years down the road and these domains aren’t really worth much anymore because they just don’t rank like before. Now, everyone is looking for do away with their keyword rich domain names – sell it out for a cheap price.
Some rules Google will never do away with are relevance, originally and quality.
Relevance – If I’m building a website about “Guyana, South America,” then articles I post there must be related to that theme.
Originality – If the search engine sees that the articles are original and were not previously published elsewhere, they rank the articles and the website higher.
Quality (Backlinks) – if other sites are linking back to you, then you are seen as an authority on the subject and therefore quality.
Size – the more of those articles you have with those three qualities listed above, the faster your website rises in the search engines.
Internal linking – The more articles link to other relevant articles within your site, the faster up they go in the search engines. That’s because it follows the concept of the “web” which is what the internet is all about.
As I mentioned before, I started building guyanasouthamerica.gy around March 2019. For over one year, it wasn’t showing up in the search engines for keyword “guyana south america.” However, today, 16th of July, 2020, something magical happened. Guyanasouthamerica.gy now ranks number 170 on Google for keyword term “guyana south america.” What do I do and where do I go from here? There’s no need to speed anything up. I’ll keep building my site in the same natural, high quality way as always and watch it crawl its way up. That’s a solid 170: a highly relevant site. It might fluctuate from time to time, but guyanasouthamerica.gy will not fall in the search engines. I will continue to build it with the same quality and continue to watch it rise.
