SEO is not snake oil. But, you should still stay away from snake oil salesmen.

More than 90% of online experiences begin with a search.

I read that somewhere. In this day and age, I am not sure that number could be that high, but it would still be pretty high for search to be pivotal to the growth strategy of any business.

And yet, if you look around for SEO service providers, you will come across several that charge peanuts while claiming to deliver phenomenal results. How is that possible? Any channel that’s so critical to the sustainable growth of a business, how can tapping into that channel be so cheap?

Because behind these fat claims lies the ugly truth. Optimising for keywords, which is what most of these service providers would do for you, rarely brings in inspiring results. Sure, your page may rise up in rankings for a select few keywords by gaming the search algorithms, but that dominance will shrivel up and die just as fast.

What are users(searchers) looking for? And how?

“Ask Google”

That’s the campaign Google ran with, and that is what the behavior of the users has been as well. From staying updated on game scores to figuring out how to clean a grill, searchers are pouring out almost the exact question in their head in the search box. Most of the time, in its entirety, or failing that, a long phrase that makes the search intent quite clear.

Browsing on the internet starts with questions, and that is what users have been throwing at search engines.

What is Google looking for?

Answers.

More and more of us rely on Google to find answers to our simplest and the most complex queries alike. The reason we continue doing that is simple. Google is good at addressing our queries. And it does so fast, without wasting our time.

So that is what Google looks for as well, from the pages and websites it indexes. It is looking for that one page on the internet that can answer the exact query a searcher just made. It is looking for that page where the searcher will go and be satisfied with the information he is presented with. And then Google will show that highly…