What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?
What is SEO? SEO, or search engine optimization, is simply a practice of optimizing your content so that search engines can find it. There are a number of ways to strategize your SEO approach, and some of them are in good practice, while some are not.
According to wiki, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users, and these visitors can be converted into customers. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers on how search engines work, what people search for and the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines that are preferred by their targeted audience. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
Black Hat SEO Techniques:
Black hat SEO is an aggressive technique that focuses on search engines rather than the users doing the searching. Black hat SEO tactics do not follow most rules set by search engines. Disreputable companies uses black hat SEO for quick financial gain. Rather than catering to users themselve for long-term investment in their content. Below are the list of tactics in black hat SEO:
- Cloaking. This is code created so the content seen by the search engine will be different than the content seen by the user.
- Hidden text. Hidden text is exactly that, a text that the reader cannot see on the page, but that search engines will definitely pick up. Within the site’s code, the hidden content will be full of keywords.
- Keyword stuffing. This means a long list of keywords and key phrases is packed together without any formatting, simply to grab the attention of search engines.
- Doorway pages. A doorway page is a fake web page that users will not see as they click on content. These pages exist solely to spam search engines with keyword phrases.
White Hat SEO Techniques:
Unlike the black hat, search engines do not frown upon the more ethical white hat SEO tactics. It is a fact that search engines supports these techniques.
- High quality content. This is one of the best SEO techniques out there. The better your content is, the more valuable it will be to search engines. Individual users may return to your site again and again for more information. As a matter of fact, sites that regularly post new quality content are more likely to gain regular readers.
- Site optimization. You can’t just post disorganized content. Optimization involves strategizing the structure and wording of your content for better positioning in search engines. This includes using meta tags and attention catching titles.
Although there are some legitimate companies or sites that help Websites improve their rankings, according to Google’s page about SEO, most of them offer that arrives in e-mail messages that are of little-to-no value The search engine’s own Webmaster often gets SEO marketing offers, suggesting that Google doesn’t show up well in results, which is highly unlikely.
Deciding to hire an SEO can be a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time but you will also risk damage to your site and reputation. Be sure to research potential advantages as well as the cons that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Before starting an SEO project, site owners should carefully read through the webmaster guidelines that each search engines provides and follow recommended best practices. Not only will doing so help pages rank better, but failure to follow recommendation could result in the site being improperly indexed.