The prevalent advice on how to achieve higher ranking on Google’s result pages is to use the keywords as often as you can as the author of the article. However, to create this impression on the readers as well as the algorithm evaluating your text that you have not tried to overwhelm the text with keywords without assigning any importance to the flow of writing, the usual SEO experts also advise the newcomers to lengthen the article and create some flow by introducing multiple paragraphs in your article regardless of their irrelevance to the subject at hand. The most commonly furnished advice is to start by touching upon the basics of the subjects or relying on the historical context to unnecessarily lengthen the article just to use those keywords as often as you can to satisfy the needs of the algorithms currently in use.
These wars to rank well using the aforementioned steps have culminated in a situation where the readers of the articles have to deal with 4 to 7 initial paragraphs which have zero relevance to their query and have been added to the article merely to acquire a higher ranking. I have termed this phenomenon “The Curse Of Google.” As most of my queries as a user of GIMP and Visual Studio code tend to focus on these two subjects, hence the following examples, which have been taken from articles currently enjoying top 3 ranking on both Google and Bing, should illustrate the problem quite clearly.
Most of the articles related to GIMP and VS Code occupying the top 3 spots on both Google and Bing these days start by telling even an intermediate-level, experienced GIMP and VS Code user how to first open a file. These authors include this utterly useless text merely to inflate the word count to rank well, and their way of starting the articles infuriates me and other experienced users who are just looking for a small piece of information to tweak or further refine their images.
If a person has written the following query, “How to draw a long, straight line in GIMP easily,” then that person most definitely knows what GIMP is and how to open a file in GIMP. For such a user, the first couple of paragraphs describing how to open and name a new file, or even worse, how to first launch GIMP, are utterly useless. Similarly, if a person has entered the following query, “How to draw curved lines in GIMP,” then again, the paragraphs detailing all of the aforementioned steps remain categorically useless. Likewise, people writing for Visual Studio Code users who start by writing about how to open a new file, and then how to save that file in a directory exasperate experienced readers. The repetition of this utterly useless text for knowledgeable users eventually becomes infuriating and greatly inflammatory, and experienced users start to shun such websites and authors.
Hence, never write for the algorithms. If a user has entered the name of an application, for example, GIMP or VS Code, and not inquired about how to open a file, then that person definitely knows how to open, save, delete, and modify a file in that application. One such user is certainly inquiring about some more advanced feature or features, hence, do not irritate, or even worse, incense, the user with downright unneeded text. The next step discusses how to properly find an audience.
To corroborate the point that how much filler material is being added just to get a higher ranking, let me provide you with an example of filler material that I had to deal with recently. Just a few days ago, I needed to find some information on approximately what percentage of the reviews left on websites like Amazon, TrustPilot, etc. are fake. One of the top 4 ranked pages firstly had no relevance to the query as it discussed ways to pinpoint or filter out fake reviews. That article was, at least apparently, focused on revealing the common flaws or similarities that exist in fake reviews. Irrelevance of the resulting article’s contents to the query aside, the first six paragraphs of the article had nothing to do with how to spot those similarities or what sort of similarities set those fake reviews apart from genuine reviews. The article was published by a well-known American publisher, Wired Magazine, and the following 6–8 paragraphs have been taken from an article that was supposed to apprise its readers of how to identify fake reviews. When it comes to the start of the article, the cardinal sin, the most grievous of crimes, committed by the author and author’s team is to introduce its readers to Amazon.com and its dominance in the market. Which online user in our modern world does not know about Amazon that they decided to devote a complete paragraph to Amazon.com.
All of the text captured in the photograph qualifies as filler material added merely to get a better ranking. It lacks any pertinence to the title of the article, “How To Spot Fake Reviews On Amazon.” If the person has entered “prevalence of fake reviews on websites” or “fake reviews on Amazon,” then it reveals unambiguously that the person knows what fake reviews are.
All of the information in the above image has been used completely in accordance with the “Fair Use” doctrine that permits the use of a portion of a published work for non-commercial and educational purposes. As the article does not use the limited information in any manner other than to present it as an example to illustrate a wider problem, hence, it should fall within the remit of “Fair Use” doctrine. Consult Fair Use to read more about the doctrine, freedoms afforded to researchers and authors, and its limitations.
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