SEO (search engine optimization), reciprocal links, keywords, and high quality content – those are the key ingredients to achieve a high ranking in the search engines. And when we say “search engines”, we mean Google. However, professionals like Abhishek Gattani warn us of two key mistakes on that belief. Firstly, we forget that there are no guarantees in rankings, and that there is more to the world than website.

Getting to That Number One Spot

There is no single way that guarantees your site will be found on the first place of search results. However, there are plenty of things, like those previously mentioned, that will increase your chances greatly. Exactly how successful you will be depends on your particular niche as well. For instance, getting to the first place if you are a finance or insurance company will be all but impossible.

This is why you should try to find what makes you special, and build your niche market around this. That doesn’t mean you have to leave finance or insurance, for instance, but rather that you have to find something within that, that other people don’t offer yet. It is about thinking outside of the box and determining what makes you unique.

Thinking SEO

SEO is basically the strategic process of having your website found. This strategic process has evolved from the early days of the internet, where you simply had to enter a business name into a URL, or where dedicated search directories exist. Today, there are billions of websites and even finding a directory can be difficult. This is why search engines are so popular, and why getting to the first place of the search engine is now the be all and end all of online marketing.

Research has shown that around 99% of people never look past the first page of search results. Hence, unless you rank in the top 10, you might as well not rank at all. This may sound soul-destroying, but remember that millions of others didn’t get into that top 10 either.

How to Set Yourself Apart

All search engines work according to set algorithms that crawl websites to determine how much they meet their criteria. Google is the biggest search engine out there, and therefore also the most important. However, what Gattani recommends is that people look beyond that as well. By disregarding the list of rules set by Google, and focusing instead on the rules set by the many other search engines, you are killing several birds with one stone, including:

  1. You are still optimizing your website, because the majority of criteria are similar across the board.
  2. You make sure that you get find by those people who principally don’t use Google (there are millions of them).
  3. You develop a bit of a niche for yourself as an expert in off-the-beaten-track search engines.

No matter which search engine you focus on, however, content is of critical importance. Not only does it have to be of high quality, written in proper English and following the relevant grammatical rules, it also has to be written in a language that is understandable to your audience. Gattani spends countless hours ensuring his content is relevant, and his number one recommendation is to focus on that.