What Is SEO – Search Engine Optimization?

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Search engine optimization or SEO are a series of techniques and tactics for ranking websites on search engines such as Google, Bing, and MSN. With billions of web pages on the Internet, website owners need to use SEO methods to gain visibility and to improve traffic to their websites.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines use complex computer programs to crawl or scan websites in order to collect data about them. Once indexed, the pages are ranked and appear in the SERPs or search engine results pages. These are the hundreds of pages of website listings that appear when a search engine user types in a keyword or keyword phrase.

The job of the search engines is to provide the most relevant list of websites for a particular search term. Search engines want to ensure that the user gets the best information he or she is looking for.

 

SEO Techniques

The SEO methods you use will help you to get a website to rank higher on the SERPs. The higher a website ranks, the more traffic it gets, so it is then able to sell more products or services.  Many SEO “gurus” say the only way to rank is by using whitehat techniques. Whitehat methods are considered ethical and approved by search engines, whereas blackhat techniques are the opposite.  These  so called “Gurus” are only partially correct, there is a time and pace to use both techniques.

 

Blackhat SEO

Blackhat SEO techniques trick search engine programs into ranking a website higher due to unethical SEO methods. These blackhat techniques are usually considered spam, and often lead to a website being ranked lower or even removed from the search engine index when/if caught.  Examples of blackhat are word stuffing, which is unnaturally stuffing your main keyword into your website.  Your content should sound natural and only use your keyword 1-3% of the time along with semantic or synonyms of your main keyword.

Another common blackhat technique is by sending hundreds or thousands of low quality, often unnatural backlinks to your website.  It is common knowledge that you want relevant, industry related backlinks from reputable sources to increase rankings.  However, there is a time and place to use these “spammy” backlinking methods in an ethical manner that will NOT get a site penalized.  Only the good SEO companies understand how and when to use these tactics.

 

Whitehat SEO

Whitehat techniques are useful in getting search engines to quickly learn what a web page is about. Search engines look at the domain name, the title of the page, the subheadings on the page, and the page description, both through meta-tags and actual content. For ranking, these are the main on-page SEO areas to focus on when developing your website.

However, search engines look at other information as well. It’s important to be a popular website. This is often measured by the number of websites that link to one specific website, called backlinks. Although buying links or using link farms are considered blackhat techniques and should only be used by an SEO expert and almost never directly to your main website.

If other websites genuinely like your website and link to content on the site, this helps you to rank even higher. This is especially true if authoritative websites or sites with a good pagerank and Domain Authority link to your website. This elevates the status of your website and helps it to rank higher. The best way to get other websites to link to you is by providing quality content that really helps or benefits the reader.  Another excellent way to gain quality, relevant backlinks with high domain authority is by properly linking all social accounts to include citations, such as Google+, Facebook, Yelp, etc., and building a private blog network.  WARNING: Private blog networks should only be built and used by a professional, doing this wrong or hiring someone that does not know the proper way to build a PBN can cause serious harm to a website.

Search engine optimization is a very effective marketing strategy for getting to the top of search engines, but only when a professional uses the correct tactics in the correct way.  According to an experiment done by Groupon, about 60% of all traffic to any given website is through Organic Search/receiving results by directly typing in a specific keyword into the search box.   Additionally, 70% of people searching any particular phrase now skips the “paid search” section, known as Adwords within Google, because natural rankings provide better results.

Get actual results in Google safely by contacting Tactical SEO Today.