If nowadays you still find a search engine optimization guide that claims to know the secret formula to the 1st position (or page, whatever) then run, don’t walk in the opposite direction. There is no secret code that guarantees you to higher position in search results.

Jennifer Laycock has written an article titled Search Engine Algorithms - Understanding the Pinocchio Effect in which she explains why it is now becoming more important than ever for marketers to understand concepts like usability, accessibility and even user intent when developing pages.

People would ask what keyword density they needed to focus on, or how many words they should use in their Title tag. Well-meaning attendees would ask for the magic number of links to get per week or how to know exactly when to request an incoming link instead of a reciprocal link. In other words, everyone wanted to know the magic formula that would guarantee them great results.

The problem with this line of questioning is that there is no magic formula. Each and every time these questions were asked, the panelists would carefully try to explain that while there may have been magic numbers in the past, those days are behind us now. That’s not really the answer that attendees want to hear, but the reality is that search marketers need to find a new way to explain the concepts of algorithms to their customers, one that takes the focus away from math.

Search engines used to have “the” secret formula. But that no longer held true long ago. Now there is linking, with many other advanced algorithms in development and implementation like natural language style, copywriting, latent semantic indexing (LSI) and others.

Keywords are important building blocks for your blog or site, but content is increasingly becoming more important than ever.

Source: Search Engine Guide.