Ever wonder why so many websites, particularly educational or informational sites, get such high rankings in Google, even though they know nothing about SEO?
The reason is very simple – content is still a top rank factor above all else.
Resource based websites are just doing their thing, without thinking, they disseminate valuable information. Some of those websites are not even great looking, extreme example: Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is the highest ranked website in the world for the largest amount of keywords. Sure, they dabble in a little bit of on-page SEO with clean URLs, relevant metadata, and frequent internal links, but Wikipedia is a non-profit organization that benefits from the kind donations of strangers. They don’t exactly have an SEO budget and arsenal proportional to the other big players.
Wikipedia’s greatest SEO benefit comes from the natural network effect of trillions of natural backlinks! People value their content, so they link to it. When someone likes the content on your website, they will naturally want to share it and link to it. In other words, you’re getting ‘free’ SEO, from complete strangers.
You don’t have to become the next Wikipedia, but definitely think about becoming the “Wikipedia” of your industry. Show your website visitors you’re an expert in your field, answer all their questions before they ask, and focus on consistently building high quality content over time.