It’s easier for an untested tennis player to zoom up the rankings to qualify for a grand slam tournament than it is for a new website to get any kind of ranking on Google.
It’s a given that both the tennis player and the website owner must have something to offer and be willing to apply themselves to the goal of competing at a top level.
But at least the tennis player knows exactly what’s expected of him by the ATP Tour: In short, play lots of tournaments and win as many matches as you can.
What Google expects of a website owner is not something that can be expressed so succinctly. It’s not that simple. And there are forces at play besides mano-a-mano contests on the tennis court.
Short of paying to be placed at the top of the page when someone types in one of your top keywords, there are algorithmic hoops you’ve got to jump through and other tricks of the search-engine-optimization trade to learn before you can get your eye back on the ball of your business goals—for which your website is supposed to be a tool, not an end in itself.
Would that it were as straightforward as tennis. I know I could never begin to compete with the likes of Novak Djokovic or Rafael Nadal But at least I know why. I’m flat out not in the same league.
In the Internet league however, I have yet to figure out how the Google ranking system works. And how I can aspire to be more than just a club player.
I understand the need for some screening process to sort through the countless websites offering similar goods and services. And I marvel at the proprietary algorithms Google has developed for prioritizing in which order they should appear on a search results page.
I just wish they were a little less proprietary and a little more accessible to Internet novices like me.
There is certainly no shortage of those who claim to have cracked the SEO code and will share their strategies with you for a price— techno-savants who pursue advances in messaging without regard to the content of the message.
But someone with a message of substance shouldn’t have to engage in trickery—or hire someone to do it for him or her—to get noticed. Google should make it easier for both generators and consumers of ideas to share the most enlightened expression of fresh thought that are too often buried beneath the rubble of stale drivel posted by self-serving marketers more adept at practicing the dark art of SEO.
I don’t know enough to judge whether Google is complicit in creating the SEO cottage industry it has spawned. But it could certainly remedy some of its excesses and abuses by writing a new set of rules that is transparent, easy to follow and fair to all users of the Internet. Rules that would elevate the ranking of a site based on the character of its content and not the color of money used to pay someone to manipulate the ranking system.
I look forward to that happening . . . right after I win the US Open.
