This is a solid question and honestly, it’s one most people wrestle with, even those who’ve been doing SEO for years.

From my experience, ranking a site at the top of Google comes down to three pillars: technical foundation, content that matches search intent, and authority. Most people focus heavily on one or two of these but ignore the rest, and that’s where rankings hit a ceiling.

Here’s what’s worked for me:

1. Nail the technical stuff first. If Google can’t crawl or index your pages properly, nothing else matters. Basic things like clean URL structures, internal linking, fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and avoiding duplicate content go a long way. I once worked on a site that had great content but was stuck on page 3—turned out half the important pages were blocked by robots.txt. Fixed that, resubmitted the sitemap, and rankings started moving within weeks.

2. Search intent is everything. Google has gotten really good at figuring out what users actually want when they search. So before creating content, I always study the top 3–5 results for a target keyword. If they’re mostly list posts, I’m not going to rank with a service page. Matching format and depth is key. It’s not about copying it’s about aligning with user expectations.

3. Build authority slowly and steadily. Backlinks still matter. But I’ve found that links from smaller niche blogs often outperform “big name” links if they’re highly relevant. I’ve had content shoot to the top after just a few contextual mentions from trusted sites in the same space. Guest posts, helpful forum replies (like this one), and creating stuff people genuinely want to link to—that’s what moves the needle.

As for common mistakes:

Over-optimizing anchor text

Ignoring internal linking

Publishing a ton of mediocre content instead of a few excellent pages

Thinking SEO is one-size-fits-all. What works for a SaaS site won't necessarily work for a local service business.

And yeah, Google can hold sites back especially new ones or those without much authority. But penalties aren’t as common as people think. It’s usually more about trust signals (or lack thereof).

Happy to dive deeper if you have a specific type of site or niche in mind.