Back in 2009, I wrote that there were really only two things you needed to know about ranking in Google. Looking at that advice more than 15 years later, I am struck by how much of it still holds up, even as Google's algorithm has become dramatically more sophisticated.
The Two Things That Still Matter
Thing 1: Put your target keyword in your title tag. This was true in 2009, and it remains true in 2026. Your page title is still one of the strongest on-page SEO signals. Google uses it to understand what your content is about, and searchers use it to decide whether to click your result. Write clear, descriptive titles that include your target keyword naturally.
Of course, on-page SEO has expanded far beyond the title tag. Today you also want to optimize your meta description, use proper heading structure, write comprehensive content that covers the topic thoroughly, and ensure your site loads quickly on mobile devices. But if you had to pick just one on-page element to get right, the title tag is still the one.
Thing 2: Earn more quality backlinks than your competition. Links from other websites remain one of Google's most important ranking signals. The fundamental concept has not changed: when other credible sites link to your content, Google interprets that as a vote of confidence in your authority.
What has changed is how Google evaluates those links. In 2009, you could rank by getting links from almost anywhere, including article directories, blog comment spam, and link exchange schemes. In 2026, link quality matters far more than link quantity. A single link from a respected industry publication is worth more than hundreds of links from low-quality sources.
Modern Link Building Strategies
The link building tactics that work in 2026 are based on creating genuine value:
- Create linkable content. Original research, comprehensive guides, useful tools, and unique data attract links naturally because other content creators want to reference them.
- Guest posting. Writing quality articles for respected sites in your niche earns both referral traffic and authoritative backlinks.
- Digital PR. Getting mentioned in industry publications, podcasts, and news sites builds your backlink profile while also expanding your audience.
- Build relationships. The best links come from genuine relationships with other creators in your space. Collaborate on content, share each other's work, and participate in your community.
What Has Changed Since 2009
Google now considers hundreds of ranking factors beyond title tags and backlinks. User experience signals, content depth, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), site speed, mobile usability, and Core Web Vitals all influence rankings.
AI-generated search results and featured snippets have also changed the game. Simply ranking on page one is no longer enough. You need to create content that earns featured positions and provides value that AI summaries cannot fully replicate.
The Simple Version
Despite all the complexity, the fundamental advice has not changed: write great content with clear title tags, and earn links from credible sources. Layer modern best practices on top of those foundations, and you have an SEO strategy that works.
The bloggers who obsess over algorithmic tricks come and go. The ones who consistently create valuable content and build genuine authority are the ones who maintain their rankings year after year.
Mark,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I have for too long felt that I was at the mercy of the guru’s. And for a time I was (and they’ve got more of my money than I like to think about to prove it). I appreciate what people like yourself, Josh, Lynn, and others are doing to just cut to the chase and tell it straight.
I want to learn what I need to learn, and not a bunch of unnecessary stuff.
Thanks again for this post.
David
David — I hear you loud and clear. Guru’s are great if they have your best interest in mind. That is the problem.
Confusing people about the fine esoteric details of SEO is exactly like teaching a crawling baby strategies for shaving 3 seconds off of the baby’s Boston Marathon time. If you cannot qualify for the Boston Marathon yet, you just need to know how to walk first.
Thanks Mark. Very well put. Even many of the SEO plugins for wordpress are really not needed. “Platinum SEO” and “All in One SEO Pack” provides a lot of nice features however they really just over complicate things – and if you don’t know what these plug-ins do, they can hurt your ranking rather than help.
If you need any seo plug-in for your website the “SEO Title Tag” plugin does a fine job. Then again, just using what wordpress has as is for ensuring your title tag and other meta data for each post/page works pretty darn good too!
Thanks again!
Joe
Mark, that is such great information. We started doing just this about six months ago and really see the difference with front page ranking of dozens of sites now.
Still, we are always trying something new from time to time, but keywords in the title and proper amount in the article are very good, and if you can match that up with the domain name you are golden.
Thanks.
Rich Hill
Bravo Mark!
At last, someone has blown away the fog! And what we finally see is what a lot of us suspected we’d see all along.
Thank You!
Dave Tishendorf
I love this post, because it’s so true. Trying to listen to the big guru folks will get you frustrated and confused. This year when I started focusing on the simple down to earth real strategies like this one, money started appearing in my Paypal account…. I’d say the result speaks for itself there.
Great information Mark. As usual, you seem to help clear the fog, cut the fluff, and get to the meat!
Enjoy learning from you…
Thanks Allen — appreciate the feedback. I really have guys (and gals) like Leger, Terry and Spaulding to thank. They keep me on the right track most days.
Thanks Loretta. Keeping things simple is almost always the right answer in business (and in life). 🙂
The KISS philosophy always works. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt:
“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”
I have to agree with Loretta here.
I don’t know how much time I wasted on meta tags and such when one title tie-in and some solid backlinks are much more efficient and logical.
Great post Mark!
Its easy for people to get confused and ineffective when it comes to SEO. There is a lot of SEO guru noise out there that is 99% garbage.
Thanks for the reminder that good content and a few SEO techniques is really all you need.
Jeff 🙂
Mark…
What a breadth of fresh air to hear somebody nail it and cut out the fat. You’re dead on. I’ve noticed for months now that several of my sites that seem to only make a feeble attempt at ranking (on SEO) seem to do better that the older ones where I was trying to pour everything possible in to the site.
The ones that are performing best are using the same simple technique(s) you’ve touche on here.
Thanks for being real.
jerry
It seems to me that keyword in title tag is about 90% of what Bing is looking for as well.
🙂
Once I made that tweek, my brick n mortar business site went to #2 in Bing.
Thanks Mark for keeping us grounded with your info.
I agree with that Mark, but then I keep a close eye on Jon Leger anyhow. For me SEO has been getting simpler this year and on site SEO seems to be gaining in importance.
I think as Google gets smarter they will look at content more and links less, so the link spammers will not get so much out of automation.
And matching your domain name to your principal keyword is a neglected gem!
🙂
Shhhhhhh!!! If some of my clients see how simple it really is, I’ll be out of work! 😀
I have been using the All in one SEO plugin from day one. Recently I shifted to thesis and it has
inbuilt capabilities, but again some how my instincts dont allow me to remove all in one seo
or migrate all in one seo settings to thesis. Kinda scared to do so…
Spot on as usual. Just remember, though it take time. You can’t give up too soon. Matter of fact, the longer you hang in there, you will see the domain age effect, too. Domain Age, Long-tail phrases, and proper links can be magic.
Just don’t give up.
BTW, I have purchased some tools to make life easier, such as Mark’s themes, Micro Niche Finder, and Market Samarui. As you earn income don’t be afraid to pick up some tools, just be careful which ones. If you are unsure, send people around here a message.
Hey Mark your article is loaded with some amazing facts. Everyone tries to good rank in Google. But, most of them don’t know how to get that rank. The concluding lines “Write great content, put your keyword in your title tag, and get backlinks to that content.” is the most important strategy to be followed by every SEO expert. I am aware of this long back. But, it helps a lot for SEO aspirants. Anyway thanks for sharing this nice information.
No way can it be that simple Mark, you must be mistaken.
There are tons and tons of ebooks on the subject, some half a forest thick (or the equivelant in pixels).
Surely all of the gurus can’t have got this so wrong, or can they 😉
Steve.
Mark could you be absolutely precise for me here.
The title tag is that referring to for example – Building Links And Ranking In Google – the title of this post, and or Mason world.com the title of your blog.
I guess i know the answer but i am fed up with second guessing.
Oh by the way i love your podcasts, i listen when i go for a ten mile walk every other day.
Hey Mark,
That just seems way too easy, that’s why what you say makes perfect sense. Everyone tries to make things so complicated so they can sell you the next best SEO piece of crap for $97.
Thanks for keeping it simple.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
@Tom — the HTML Title tag is a part of the HTML language (the code that web pages use so that the browser knows what to show). You can set the value of the title tag to anything you want. The value that you set usually appears in the top bar of the browser. The title tag of this post is set to “Buliding Links And Ranking In Google | MasonWorld….blah blah”.
You can set the title tag in a web page with a simple one line statement. In wordpress, the theme usually sets the title tag — and you can use something like the All-In-One_SEO plugin for WP to override that setting.
Does that help?
Here is a definition for the title tag
The title tag defines the title of the document.
The title element is required in all HTML/XHTML documents.
The title element:
* defines a title in the browser toolbar
* provides a title for the page when it is added to favorites
* displays a title for the page in search-engine results
Browser Support
Internet Explorer Firefox Opera Google Chrome Safari
The title tag is supported in all major browsers.
From here:
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_title.asp
Hey Jeff — to be completely fair — there are some great SEO guides out there. The google ranking algo is really complicated (it is said that they consider 200 items like the title tag in their algorithm). What I am saying is that in most cases, most people need to focus on the simple fundamentals.
Said another way, 80% (or more) of what you need to know about SEO is in this post. The other 20% costs you $97. LOL.
Um, only one of the most helpful posts I’ve read in a while. Thanks Mark for keeping it simple for us. Keep up the good work!
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you and Josh for really keeping things SIMPLE. To be honest with you Mark, at 45 years of age, I feel I am too old to start learning about complicated SEO strategies that I get to read about. In fact, I only learned what SEO is just very recently. You and Josh made learning SEO much, much simpler.
And thanks to you guys, I actually am starting to find several of my blog posts and articles appearing on page 1 of Google results. I must be doing something right. Thanks so much!
Jaime Lim
@Jamie — that old man excuse only works with Josh. You and I are about the same age. LOL
GREAT post Mark. You, and the rest of the anti-guru-crew, always tell it like it is/should be – simplify, simplify, simplify.
However, as Alex stated above, a keyword-rich domain name can be absolutely explosive (used properly in conjunction with a matched title tag, of course :)). In fact, I would trade many backlinks for a keyword-rich domain name any day. I’ve seen a couple of my keywordy domain names skyrocket to Google page 1 in no time at all with just a handful of well-placed backlinks – far less than was required with some of my much older, established, keyword-poor-domain-name sites.
Mark,
Thanks for the Google ranking tips. I’ve been focusing on relevant, actionable content and letting the settings in WordPress/Thesis handle the SEO. I haven’t gotten as much search engine traffic as I would like, but I need to just stick to the plan. I have been setting the title tag for each podcast or blog post, but I clearly need to focus more on link building.
This is one of the great post which uncovers many of the myths of building links for popular search engines like Google.
Thanks for all the great comments everyone. I really appreciate the support.
Thanks for simplifying things Mark. I’ve proven to myself that thing one and thing two matter the most but I always have that nagging feeling that I should have bolded certain text, added more meta tags and all those hundreds of other things that are continually talked about that ultimately aren’t going to make that big a difference if any! I know my link building efforts have been too tightly focused so thanks for the reminder to go for links from lots of sources.
You’ve boiled it down to its essence. This is not rocket science. But it does need to be worked on. Thanks for the link to Lynn Terry’s list of link builders. Everyone loves a good list!
This is so true. It’s kind of crazy how easy ranking can be when you know the right tasks to take. You just gave away the best advice and for free. Some gurus are still selling outdated SEO methods that just don’t work.
Isn’t it funny how we expect this to be harder than it really is? I think on some level people feel like if the the harder they work the better the results will be. That’s only true when your efforts are directed in the right place. Finding out what that is is the difficult part and you just gave it to us.
Mark
I recently received an email which said that – “apparently Mr Google, Matt Cutts, mentioned at PubCon recently that there are over 200 variables in the Google algorithm”.
I have been getting a fair degree of success with keyword optimisation but like all new skills it takes time to perfect.
Enjoyed the post
Regards
Sean
Wow…so simple. Your post is straight to the point, and most newbies are doing their darndest to make it complicated. I believe organic SEO will be here today, tomorrow and into the future.
Paul
Thanks Paul — appreciate the comment.