The Real Truth About Search Engine Rankings!
I have been reading a lot of articles and blog posts about how “Google is God who will punish you if you try to manipulate the search engine results!”
Some people have gone so far as to create posts such as “10 reasons why Google is God”.
I always smile when I read such posts because such posts always scream the fact that the person writing the post knows nothing about how search engines work.
Let’s face it, Google is an algorithm, which is unable to have any “human or god-like qualities”. If the Google search engineers program the algorithm in order to fill in the loopholes, the search engine will be more efficient. If they suck at their programming job, Google will have many loopholes and newbies to the field of internet marketing will make thousands of dollars a month by putting up 1000s of junky links to their website.
The real truth is, every single search engine out there can be manipulated! Even Google.
Seriously. Although Google is much more sophisticated than Yahoo! or MSN, it is still just that: a search engine.
If you are an experienced SEO and provide good quality SEO services, you will know that if you tread the fine line between manipulation and ROI, you will be safe.
I have seen so many trashy, junky websites landing a number 1 search result on Google for really competitive terms. When you visit the website, you are shown fonts in 7 different colors, and the website margins are filled with AdSense ads.
It is then that you wonder what is really going on. You think “This website must be hosting some really interesting content, which is why it is ranking that high!”. But when you check the content pages, you are absolutely certain that the post is created by a person who used an article submitter on an already plagiarized post.
I would totally believe that search engines cannot be gamed if trashy websites like the one above do not end up at the top. But the honest truth is: This will keep on happening!
If you look up the statistics of websites which wrongfully appear at the top, you will see a few things:
1. The website is very actively manipulating the rankings using targeted links
2. The domain is fairly old
3. The website has many pages
4. If Google were a God, there is no way in hell that website would appear in the top 10 pages for its results.
If anyone tells you that you should try to rank higher by only getting natural, organic links, chances are the person is really naive. You can either spend 10 years trying to get people to “naturally” link to you, or you can set up a sophisticated link building campaign which will do the trick.
There is not a single successful webmaster out there who is ranking #1 without trying to build links or somehow manipulate the rankings.
Even Google itself is fairly easy to “game” if you know what you are doing. The bad part is, when people try to game Google, they go overboard with it.
In conclusion, do not believe people who say that “Google will be on to you if you try to manipulate it a little bit!”. The truth is, “people who are making money online are manipulating the results to some extent”.
This is some fresh perspective on SEO at least on my part. I was always wondering why websites that have hardly any content in them are in the top ten pages of the search engine result. It does not seem fair when you work so hard on your site to deliver good information but I guess that is the way of life in the internet world. And if I cannot take the heat, I have to stay out of the kitchen.
Evelyn Guzman
http://www.homebusinesssteps.com (If you want to visit, just click but if it doesn’t work, copy and paste it onto your browser.)
True talk..If you have an interesting content or feature, link baiting will be a very good method of getting an organic link.
I totally agree with the premise that Google can be manipulated – that it is not infalliable. I do think that is largely by design. If it worked perfectly and a science of Google (googlology) could be established, the large corporations would dominate the majority of great keywords. As it is, we all see flukes and it creates doubt… It stays more mystical. That means people/companies have to spend cash for a sure thing like AdWords! So, it gives the small guy a fighting chance while creating a healthy revenue stream for GOdOGLE! This is my opinion just before bed!
What I have learned through my years of internet marketing that if you proactively brand your business online using all the various tools available you will over time increase rankings and SEO naturally just through building your business.
Yes, Google is just an algorithm and we want to guess that algorithm to bring our site in top results.
I liked the post and your writing style. I’m adding you to my RSS reader.
Greetings from Tim. 🙂
Great Post, worth reading. Provides good insight of SEO at least for beginners like me.
The thing to remember though folks is that yes, of course Google can be manipulated. Anything made by humans can be beaten by other humans. However, they are constantly adapting to change their algorithms so that they can stay ahead of the spammers.