Back-to-Basics: The most overlooked principles of SEO
- Kevin Davidson
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
When I first started out with SEO, I was armed with newly acquired knowledge and skills and felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice who’d been given a magic book of spells. The trouble was that, like in the story, I was over-excited and not entirely sure of which skill or theory to apply where appropriate.
I started researching SEO strategies and, before long, I found myself buried under a pile of keyword tools and ranking hacks. I thought tweaking metadata, chasing backlinks, and analysing competitors’ pages line by line would reveal Google’s secret formula to number one SERP rankings and high website traffic.
But in truth, I found myself lost and further away from the most basic principle that SEO is based upon: SEO is about creating high-quality, valuable content that directly answers the users’ search queries.
Plain and Simple.
Sure, Google and other search engines have rules, guidelines and best practices. However, all SEO needs to be founded on this basic principle.
The Human Behind Every Search
Every keyword that you use represents a person.
That person has a question, a problem, or a goal that they type into Google. They are seeking help, not seeking a perfectly optimised blog post or a keyword-filled landing page!
The real purpose of a search using a search engine is to connect people with the most relevant and useful answers.
When you start seeing SEO through that lens, you will stop writing for the algorithm and instead for the searcher. Because here’s the kicker, when you focus on helping people, the algorithm ends up working for you and not against you.
High Quality and Valuable Content
Google’s algorithm rewards this kind of content as it satisfies user intent.
Here’s how High Quality can be defined:
1. It directly answers the question. When someone, for instance, searches “How to build a personal brand on LinkedIn,” they do not want a long introduction about why personal branding matters. They want steps, clarity, and examples. High Quality gives them this.
2. It respects your reader’s time. Make every sentence earn your audience’s attention. Avoid in-fills, repetition, and fluff. If your content cannot be scanned and understood in seconds, it loses readers.
3. It builds trust through real expertise. Google’s (E E A T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) are guidelines that police illicit activities that include 100% AI content. Share your genuine experience, not recycled ideas and use real stories or examples to show you have done the work.
4. It is written for humans, optimised for search. It’s important to use natural language. If your keyword placement makes a sentence sound robotic, then remove it. Read your content out loud, and if it does not sound human, it will not perform well. Google knows the difference!
5. It leaves the reader better than you found them. Good content can both answer a question and solve a problem. That is the main aim for you to bear in mind when creating it.
The Temptation to Play the Algorithm
This is where many brands and creators go wrong when they treat SEO like a game to beat instead of a system to serve.
Don’t be tempted to:
Keyword stuff (ruins readability)
Auto-generate articles (no real insight)
Create multiple near-identical posts (for quantity)
These tactics can give you a temporary ranking boost, but they will not last.
Google’s updates, like Helpful Content and Core Web Vitals (recommended reading), all relate to rewarding quality, relevance, and usefulness. As this is helpful content rather than optimised content.
Playing the algorithm creates wins that can evaporate after a short time, whereas playing for the user builds lasting visibility and trust.
User Intent is the Real Key to SEO Principles
User Intent is a SEO concept worth mastering as it represents the real reason behind a search.
Most searches fall into four main categories:
Informational intent – “What is content strategy?”
Navigational intent – “Canva login”
Commercial intent – “Canva or Adobe Express”
Transactional intent – “Buy email marketing software”
When your content matches the intent behind the search, Google sees it as relevant and valuable. That is when higher rankings, better engagement, and organic growth start happening naturally.
Replace: “How do I rank for this keyword?”
with: “What does someone searching this actually want, and how can I deliver it better than anyone else?”
That question is the foundation of every strong SEO strategy.
A Simple SEO Strategy
Forget everything else and focus on these three principles, and you will already be ahead of most competitors:
1. Understand your audience deeply. Talk to your customers. Read their comments. Study their questions. SEO starts with empathy, not analytics.
2. Create content that genuinely helps. Build resources, not just blog posts. Write guides, tutorials, checklists, or explainers that make your readers’ lives easier.
3. Stay consistent. SEO rewards commitment, not quick fixes. Publish regularly. Update your top-performing content. Keep improving based on real user feedback and search data.
If you do this consistently for six months, you will create a foundation that no algorithm update can disrupt.
Modern SEO
As Google evolves, SEO actually becomes simpler as every major update reinforces helping the user and stopping the algorithm from being tricked.
When your content genuinely helps, people stay longer, share more, and link back naturally. These are the signals that Google uses in deciding which pages deserve visibility.
Start thinking to align with the algorithm and not toy with it.
Keeping It Simple
SEO can feel complex, but it does not need to be.
As explained before, the core of SEO is about providing value. If you can consistently create the best possible answer to your audience’s questions, you will never need to chase the algorithm again.
The curiosity of your potential clients will not evolve in the same way as algorithms. They will always search for clarity, solutions, and understanding.
Giving them that is your primary focus, which the search engine will duly deliver as the response to their searches.
Recap
SEO is about creating high-quality, valuable content that directly answers the users’ search queries.
Every keyword that you use represents a person.
The real purpose of a search using a search engine is to connect people with the most relevant and useful answers
Google’s algorithm rewards this kind of content as it satisfies user intent.
Playing the algorithm creates wins that can evaporate after a short time, whereas playing for the user builds lasting visibility and trust.
“What does someone searching this actually want, and how can I deliver it better than anyone else?” is the question for the foundation of every strong SEO strategy.
Simple SEO Strategy: a. Understand your audience deeply. b. Create content that genuinely helps. c. Stay consistent.
Start thinking to align with the algorithm and not toy with it.
The core of SEO is about providing value
Want to kick off your SEO on the right foot?
Get a free copy of my SEO Checklist, a simple, actionable guide to verify key aspects of your website to align with Google algorithm and SEO best practices.
👉 Download it now at kevinadavidson.com/seo-checklist.
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