SEO - Looking At The End Goal

As bloggers and content marketers, we can definitely get bogged down in the weeds when it comes to content creation and more specifically, trying to optimize our websites for SEO.  It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to figure out every little rule, every little "hack" that will help our "search results" when it comes to Google searches.  

But great content marketers don't focus on ways of gaming the system. They focus on how to generate relevant content to specific targeted community members and find ways of helping connect them to that content.  Google probably wouldn't have to switch their algorithms so often if marketers and individuals would just focus on their targeted community members and less on trying to "game" the system.   

As Neil Patel wrote in a great write up on his blog on Google's Knowledge Graph:

"As a content marketer and blogger, you have a responsibility to make the web as useful as possible. How? By figuring out exactly what your topic is, who your target audience is, and how to connect their searches with the right information.

As long as you can do that consistently, Google will send you more traffic. When your site gets more search users, Google will be better able to extract powerful and accurate data about the users."

Remember, everything that deals with Google's algorithm and consequent changes to that algorithm be it Panda, Penguin, Pigeon, and Hummingbird etc., boils down to this one primary objective that Google has...which is to build the largest warehouse of knowledge in human history and provide a way for us to easily access that database.

You want to rank in Google?  Focus on your audience.  How is it that so many people back door their way into SEO success while other supposed "SEO Experts" struggle to get any traction at all? It's because the former is keenly focused on their audience while the latter is focus on unsolving a puzzle.  

Clearly there are SEO rules and guidelines that you need to follow and implement in your websites.  Clearly you need to find ways of driving traffic other than just praying to the "Google gods" to look kindly down upon you.  But so many individuals, especially those who might find some early success, end up chasing this never ending rabbit hole of the perfect optimized site for search just to have it all blow up in their faces when Google updates their algorithm.  

Focus on people, not algorithms.