October 5, 2012 | Author: Thom Disch
The answer to this question is relatively simple. While Google has a very complex algorithm it can be simplified into three critical components. Google wants:
1) Unique content that searches and visitors find useful.
2) Content that is considered by other webmasters in your community to be credible/valuable (back-links are one of the tools for achieving this).
3) A website infrastructure must be user friendly so that Google can find and understand the content.
However, anyone who has ever done any SEO work knows that it is not that simple. The devil is in the details. The complexity of working with Google comes not from understanding what Google wants but rather from defining what you want from Google.
For example, it is easy to get front page search results from Google, even in the very competitive real estate market when the search term is complex and not very competitive. As long as your content is relatively unique you can accomplish with minimal effort. We tested this on a property address: we created a page for 1095 Pine Meadow ct. and within a couple of weeks we were on the front page of Google with our page: http://1095pinemeadowct.agents123.com/. Interestingly enough, we were able to do this entirely based upon the content of the web page. We used no inbound links at all for improving the search results for this page. (During the past week this result comes up between number one and number four, of the organic results on the first page of a Google search. Of course this will all be changed as soon as this blog post hits because the links from here will give that page a boost. But I digress from my original point . . .) When optimizing a more competitive search phrase it becomes more difficult to achieve front page search success. No surprise there.
So how do you achieve success in a very competitive market for a very popular search term? This is a two part answer: 1) YOU DON’T and 2) YOU DON’T WANT TO.
I will explain “Why” in my next blog.