When a search engine serves up irrelevant search results they themselves become irrelevant.
Search traffic and search volume is the lifeblood of any search engine and when a user searching for information, goods, services, and products is consistently being served irrelevant search results they will stop using that search engine. That search engine will become obsolete, wither and die.
It’s happened in the past and it will happen again in the future.
The granddaddy of them all, Google, is locked in a constant battle between serving its users with relevant search results, and preventing those webpages who have artificially inflated their importance from appearing in a more prominent search result position.
The search engine algorithm that Google has developed and constantly updates, is the backbone to their search business. It is what allows the most relevant search results to be delivered to the search user. It also allows for the search engines to “catch” those webpages that are engaging in surreptitious SEO activities in an attempt to “game the system.”
Remember that Google’s resources are astonishing. This includes the mind-boggling computational power they have on tap, the unfathomable amount of historical and current data they can analyse, the highly complex and constantly evolving search algorithm they utilize, and the cream-of-the-crop employees and graduates they have available to their web spam team.
Pit this against a black-hat SEO’er, or an over-promising and unscrupulous SEO agency and I’ll tell you who the winner will be every day of the week.
So what happens to those websites and webpages that aren’t playing by the rules?
At best, their activities and efforts have no result on their SERP positioning, or they suffer a penalty, or the worst-case scenario is that they are de-indexed (removed completely) from the search index.
So what to do?
Regardless of what some (most?) SEO practitioners might tell you, it is impossible to reverse engineer the Google algorithm which is why working within the published SEO guidelines will always be the best long-term strategy.
Having rich, relevant, and useful content is a start.
▪Content that is focused and easily categorized.
▪Utilizing properly tagged images and videos.
▪Following proper and thorough on-site SEO practices.
▪Establishing a network of naturally grown backlinks.
▪Being responsive to all display types and sizes.
▪Having fast loading webpages.
▪Having a strong social media footprint.
This is all stuff that takes a time to build. It is not an overnight or a short-term process. Depending on the level of keyword competition, the fruits of these SEO labours might be seen in months, or years, or never.
Search engine results can never be promised (and if someone offers this promise for a fee… Run…) and can never be guaranteed, but with the right strategies in place, with the right motivation, and the right expectation, you will have every chance of SEO success.