Introduction:
All the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have primary search results, where web pages, images, videos or local listings are ranked and shown based on what the search engine considers most relevant to its users.
SEO(Search engine optimization ) is the process of affecting the visibility of a web page or a website in search engine’s unpaid results, it is often referred to as “organic”, “natural” or “earned” results. In general, the earlier and more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the higher number of visitors it will receive from the users. SEO may be used to target different kinds of search, including local search, image search, video search, news search, academic search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
White Hat versus Black Hat Techniques:
SEO techniques can be majorly classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines approve & recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines don’t approve. Industry commentators have classified these methods, as either white hat, or black hat. White hats tends to generate results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.
SEO techniques are considered to be white hat if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and includes no deception. Just following guidelines does not mean white hat SEO, but it is about ensuring that the content a search engine subsequently ranks and indexes is the same content any user will see. White hat technique can be summed up as creating content not for search engines, but for users.
Black hat technique attempts to improve rankings of the website in ways that involve deception or are disapproved of by the search engines. Some black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text having colour similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioning it off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a search engine or a human visitor, this is known as cloaking.
There is also grey hat SEO. This is in between white hat and black hat approaches where the methods employed avoid the site being penalised however those are entirely focused on improving search engine ranking and not on producing the best content for users.
Sites using black hat methods may be penalized by search engines, either by eliminating their listings from their databases or by reducing their rankings. Such penalties can be applied either by a manual site review or automatically by the search engines’ algorithms. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both Ricoh Germany and BMW Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both the companies, however, quickly apologized and fixed their offending pages, and were restored by Google.
SEO as a Marketing Strategy:
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors. Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website’s placement, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic.
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective like paid advertising through pay per click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator’s goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site’s conversion rate.
Benefits of SEO:
Increased Traffic – Top positions on the search engine result pages receive a majority of the impressions and clicks, so ranking in these top positions can result in significant traffic increases for your website.
ROI – SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of whether you are an ecommerce or non-ecommerce site so there are no qualms when it comes to ROI. SEO agencies are able to track nearly every aspect of their strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic and conversions.
Cost effectiveness – SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online. SEO’s inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling.
Brand Awareness – Being on the first page for your targeted keywords not only helps users to associate your brand with those keywords, but it instils trust, since companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy.
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