A Webmaster’s Guide to Google

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Many times, we that work as SEOs and webmasters forget one very important point. Google is not designed or operated to make us money, get us more clients, or to rank us higher. Google is search. As an end-user, if I am searching for the topic "creative web design" using Google (or any other search engine), then my hope is that the #1 position belongs to the most creative web design information on the web. Since I am a busy person, maybe I don’t have time to click through several pages of websites that used black-hat techniques, link-baiting, paid links, or a very high marketing budget to put them on top. I, as an end-user of Google, want the #1 result to be the absolutely most relevant information available on the internet. Maybe that is why Wikipedia has nearly dominated the first page of the results for many keywords. They often have the most relevant, informative content. As an SEO, web designer, and webmaster, I have to think like an end-user. Back to my keyphrase "creative web design". What do I hope to find? Am I correctly targeting my market with my content. What is my content all about? Am I paying someone money to place my link on their website? If so, would they have placed my link there for free? Does my content merit such a link? Yet, we must provide a value to our clients. They are paying us to position them competitively in the SERPs. How can we best provide that value? In my opinion, it is our duty to instruct the client that they must HAVE the most relevant information for that topic. If they only appear (by artificially manupulating the results) as the most relevant, but that relevance is only smoke and mirrors, then what? Who loses? The end-user and, eventually Google also loses it’s market share. Google does not work for us nor for our clients. They work for the end-user of their services. Plain, simple fact. The sooner we SEOs realize that fact, they better job we perform for our client. I always hear webmasters complaining about the SERPs, being penalized for spamming, etc. They are appalled that Google is doing such a thing to their businesses. Google doesn’t care about your business. Google cares about Google and it’s customers. We that believe that have a reponsibility to work for our clients as well. It’s all about  the content.

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