White-hat SEO VS Teenage Tantrum Syndrome

Most switched-on entrepreneurs are already aware of this guest-blogging saga.

However, very few of them are aware that Google has also very quietly started degrading other white-hat tactics.

Google may not necessarily be penalizing these tactics (yet), but it looks like the algorithm has severely limited their effectiveness.

Here’s the deal…

Google believes its AI is now smart enough to decide which bits of content are best for the users without any help from SEO.

Think of Google as a teenager who believes she is old enough to make decisions for herself, and doesn’t want to be told what to do.

This is why teenage tantrums are very common, and Google is no different.

Remember AI algorithms (e.g. Google’s AI) try to think and behave like human beings.

So, every now and then Google throws a teenage tantrum.

For instance, lots of content ranking on Page 1 of Google do not even have any on-page SEO for the competitive, high value keywords they are ranking for.

Difficult to believe, I know.

So, I’ll show you proof in a minute or two.

Basically, what Google’s AI really wants is for people to just write content and not perform any SEO at all (even white-hat SEO) on the content.

Google’s AI literally wants to figure everything out on its own.

However, Google can’t come out and tell people to remove all the white-hat SEO on their websites.

This will cause a massive uproar, because…

Google was responsible for encouraging webmasters to perform white-hat SEO, in the first place.

This is why very few people know about Google’s teenage tantrums.

Mario certainly didn’t know about it!

And this is the stumbling block that he encountered, without even realising it.

He was still trying to use white-hat SEO tactics as well as some grey-hat tactics to rank his websites.

Many other people hit this same stumbling block as well.

Knowing about Google’s Teenage Tantrum Syndrome is only half of the solution.

The other half of the solution is finding a way to insulate yourself from ALL future tantrums.

The White-Cat Is Out Of The Bag!

The safest approach is to simply let Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) decide what your website is about, and where it needs to rank without any help from you (in the form of SEO).

The only problem with this approach is that your content will probably NEVER rank on Page 1 of Google for money-spinning keywords.

My friend from Google told me that the way round this particular problem is to do things which will help your content rank higher and faster, without Google recognising what you do as SEO.

(For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal my friend’s name. So, I’ll just refer to him as Goof i.e. GOOgle Friend.)

Goof reminded me that Google’s AI tries to think like a human being, and a human being is much harder to fool than a computer.

So, the solution is to write awesome content that readers love, and for the content not to have any SEO.

The first part of the underlined statement above sounded very obvious to me.

However, the second part really confused me.

I just couldn’t figure out how it is possible to make content rank on Page 1 of Google without performing any SEO on the content.

To be honest with you, I did not believe Goof when he told me this.

I thought he was teasing me.

So, Goof showed me example after example after example of content on Page 1 of Google. I’ll share some of the stats with you in the next section.

I couldn’t detect the typical SEO I expected.

I was speechless.

Then Goof said something which made me stare at him as if I had seen a ghost.

As soon as Goof saw the look on my face, he realised he’d made a mistake.

So, he asked me to promise NEVER to share what he had just told me with anyone else.

I refused.

As I told you earlier, the compromise we finally agreed on was that: I’ll be free to share what he revealed to me AFTER he stopped working for Google.