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Now, I know what you’re thinking – “Oh boy, this is going to be a boring technical post about data and keywords.” But fear not, my friend, because we’re going to approach this from a slightly different angle.

These days, the term SEO gets thrown around as often as blog posts assure you that quick and easy shortcuts are all you need for SEO to be effective. Everyone knows they need SEO, but not everyone knows exactly what it is or how it works. And that’s where the misconceptions start to creep in.

First off, there’s the idea that SEO is some kind of magic bullet that will automatically boost your website to the top of Google’s rankings. People seem to think that if they just cram enough keywords onto their pages, or stuff enough backlinks into their content, that they’ll magically start getting more traffic and sales.

I’m not saying that the blogs and articles are lying, but most likely, the info is incomplete, inaccurate or outdated thanks to the wizards at Google and their seemingly infinite algorithm changes. Let’s face it, algorithms are complicated. The blogs have been simplified to make it not complicated; but science is science. A real SEO primer (and they do exist) would take you much more than a few minutes to read. The algorithm is so complex that technically no one thing you read will change your SEO fortune most of the time. And to blow your mind even further, there are plenty of “one things” that you can do that might rocket your search engine rankings towards the top …but I can explain. There is a logic.

SEO is complex.

Let’s say you just read a blog that says web page speed is a definite factor in rankings. Let’s also say the blog post is by someone who looks respectable and calls themselves an SEO analyst. The analyst even has a website that looks professional. They may even work for Google.

Do you immediately take this advice so you can move up in the rankings?

The answer is yes, because it is a factor that makes sense. However don’t expect much in the way of changed rankings, but you may shoot way up as well. The expert was not lying, but they left off the thousands of other factors that work together to find the most relevant sites and create change. Depending on how your website scores on these factors in comparison to your search term competition, this speed issue could make a difference. It may also seemingly do nothing, even though it did help you.

Confusing huh?

Quite simply, what good would a search engine be if you could do one thing to move up. Wouldn’t everyone do it? Think of all of the SEO advice you read as gears on a huge machine. Each gear makes other gears, that you can’t see, move in various ways. As a non pro, you have no idea which gears move the engine more. Also, every website has different shapes and sizes gears. Now does it make sense as to why the one change you got from a blog post didn’t make a difference?

But here’s the thing: SEO isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s a complex process that involves a lot of different factors, and it takes time and effort to get it right. Sure, keywords and backlinks are important, but so are things like site speed, mobile responsiveness, and user experience. And even if you do everything right, there’s still no guarantee that you’ll rank at the top of the search results.

In fact, the best way to do SEO is often to forget about the search engines altogether and just focus on creating great content that people will want to read and share. Because at the end of the day, that’s what search engines are really looking for – sites that provide value to their users.