Funny Engines! Isn’t it? Someone from a corner of India writing this blog from the very guts within himself and think he can compete with “Top Dogs” in ranking!
There are almost less to very less chance for a new-comer blogger in this decade to at least showcase their article on Top 3.
Though, there are some hidden-gem keywords someone got and post something heroic on X after ranking on that keyword. Pretty sure that ranking goes down within 8-10 months. But there are something for them to prove they’re hero.
In the organic search field there are “Top Dogs” almost everywhere.
What’s that? Seems to be something new? Okay, the term might be new to you, but believe me, the experience isn’t.
If you’re here for a while now, this particular problem seems to be the biggest fork in the road of SEO and organic ranking.
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What is Top-Dog SEO and why it is named so?
Multiple SEO Authors called in their own language. This term is also known as ‘Goliath SEO’ or ‘Gorilla SEO‘ strategy.
I call it ‘Top-Dog SEO’ because I could not find any better name explaining this.
In this, big publishers & news media squashing the SERP in almost every niche, every keywords, everywhere. It also makes sure that no one else, no matter how authoritative they are, can come closer to them?
Why this is a serious issue to consider?
No one have problems with ranking those websites at #1. But, if you look closely to the search terms they are ranking and the content within their ranked pages, there are multiple other websites who wrote it more better than those sites.
Still, why they’re ranking at #1?
Well, they’re only ranking because of their domain trust and overall backlinks profile. They are using, rather ‘manipulating’ the SERP through targeting top searched keywords from every industries.
Not only publisher and news media websites. Some parasite SEO sites are also there ‘Only’ for their domain trust and backlinks.
What is the problem here?
According to Blogging statistics data, there were 31.2 Million bloggers in the year of 2019 with an incremental value of 1M every year. Recently, the incremental value has been reduced to 5 Lac per year.
That means, the introduction of new minds into the space has been blocked by a huge number! And that is a big problem both for Google and for the Industry.
Some .edu, .gov domains along with LinkedIn and some others are providing access to the user to create content on their websites. Parasite SEO overtaking niche sites is irritating and exhausting at the same time.
Often Google talks about ‘Content’, ‘Intent’ and the newly introduced ‘EEAT’. Search Liaison’s video might contain the terms like these, but obviously you can not expect these from the real visualization of the SERP.
On my own case study in the Indian region SERP, these ‘Top-Dogs’ appearing in top #3 once in every 7 searches and that is embarrassing to every other blogger.
Example of Top-Dog SEO
Here is what I searched on the web today:
Here is the result it showed me:
And not only in Indian region, there are plenty of examples from the United States and United Kingdom region too, where Forbes ranking better than a 7-years old niche website with great content.
According to EEAT, it should show the result from the websites that particularly provide genuine information on Home Improvements or, more precisely, Air conditioning. These websites are writing these article without any proven expertise, and only ranking on the basis of Backlinks and overall trust-flow.
And again, the new update shows ‘Discussion and Forums’ section just after the first two organic result. That is containing some space out there. It is vertically less, but taking at least 2 organic positions there.
What left for the SEOs and new bloggers then?
Well, there are some keywords that have low search volumes and nobody is talking about. You can get those by a looking up for a big website in Semrush. To build and prove the authority to Google, new blogs should target only those.
Google Discover is also a better option for new blogs where you do not need SEO Strategies. Writing on topics that are on trends can take you up there.
What is the Top-Dog SEO Strategy that they are following
Honestly, they’re clever at what they’re doing. They know they’ve domain authority of 90+ and inbound links from almost every authority sites in every industries.
This is kind of a manipulation of the algorithm and Google is silent here as to Google, these are “Trusted” websites with full of links.
Whenever Search Liaison publish any article on X, We all know he’ll be talking about content quality which is ‘1% or lesser’ matter to the Algos.
Most of the signals only dependent on Backlinks. And to beat them in backlinks we’ll need $1000k of budget approximately. LOL!
“Top-Dogs” using their overall authority to pass the link juice to the page that is not their expertise. And new people will work all their life building overall authority, still, can not beat these “Gorillas”.
I think so. Should the rest of the site also receive some kind of penalty for trying such a tactic in the first place? I don’t know, what do you think?
But a large volume of new content on a DR40 site should not be nearly as suspicious as potential 3rd party content as the same content if it appeared on a DR80 site.
For a keyword “Free Fire Redeem Code”, a ‘.edu’ site is ranking and people still believes in EEAT.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how much of a difficult spot Google are in with regard to how they algorithmically surface the best results in the SERPs.
— SEO Arbitrageur | Portfolio Operator (@SEOarbitrageur) December 18, 2023
Lots have been said about how they either need to let content win or let domain authority win, and both seem to…
Disclaimer: This article is written solely from the opinion of me. I do not intend to harm or hurt any brand’s sentiment by any means. The data shown here are snapshots from Google SERP and publicly available. Citations are given to the proper sites. Thank you.
