What is Search Engine Optimization?
The Classic Definition
Search Engine Optimization, known with the acronym SEO, is the process of improving traffic and exposure to a website via search engines to get the website ranked highly in the resulting search results pages. It helps to build an online presence that is bigger and better than just slapping a static website up on the Internet and hoping that some people drop by the site. It is a strategy whereby how you create the site, what you do to promote it, and how you analyze the results of those actions that help the website owner to develop bigger and better online exposure.
Google Started It All
Google is the main search engine that started it all. It was through their AdWords campaigns that Internet marketers became more savvy about using the power of the advertising model to help shoot certain pages to the top of the search results pages. They noticed that the same keywords that online businesses were buying because their research showed many people were searching for them could be used to attract those same people to other sites. Soon, it became a standard SEO strategy to include keywords in content that was used to get pages ranked highly in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
It’s Developed Over The Years To Include More
Since then, a variety of services have popped up to help the online business owner compete against others for maximum website exposure. Some of these techniques deal with how the search engine classifies a page topic and what types of elements in a Web page create or obstruct high page ranking.
It wouldn’t be fair to neglect mentioning that some SEO tricks are called “black hat” because they tend to exploit weaknesses in the search engine model and can lead to a site using “black hat” techniques to be sandboxed (dropped to the bottom of the SERPs). Marketers trying to game the system may get away with it for a while, but Google has been known to severely punish those that are caught, making it unwise to implement black hat techniques.
Other techniques, known as “white hat” or organic strategies don’t carry the risk of being sandboxed. They use the guidelines that carry a sense of integrity and authenticity while gaining wide exposure through providing value and understanding SEO. These are the techniques that we are going to discuss in this report. To caution further, always avoid techniques like keyword stuffing, spamming people by sending unsolicited emails, and generating false websites with commercial links only and no content (link farms). These activities are considered black hat techniques.
