Japan Top 10

You do not have to read much about SEO until you realize that the hardest part is ranking high (which means your page floating towards the top of the search engine result page, resulting in more clicks and more advertising revenue).

Search engine algorithms have become too smart to just read the list of search terms and create a page with close enough results from the database of the search engine provider. They take the context of the search and page into account (that is one of the things AI is good for), but they can not change the number of links pointing to the page.

That someone else wants to point to your page from their own website is quite a qualification, and not something done lightly. Paradoxically, it has become even more difficult to get people to link to your pages as search has become easier.

When the web was new, it overflowed with directory pages where people would list resources they liked, and often would get complimented by the other party linking back.

That was 30 years ago (I found to my surprise the other day). No wonder the idea feels so tired. But there is still no other way to measure if someone likes your work.

So if you want to rank high, you have to get others to link to you. That is not so easy nowadays. But if I want to get lots of visitors, I have to figure out how.