Tuesday, 22 December 2009

What Is SEO?

By Carey Lim

A search on any search engine for a well known keyword yields thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of results. In such a competitive situation, Search Engine Optimization or SEO enables a firm to come within the top search results for a query relating to a specific word. Figuring at the top of a web search means more traffic for your website, resulting in more business, and that is why SEO has gained such popularity in the last few years.

There are two kinds of SEO - white hat and black hat. The tools used in black hat SEO to push the website in the top results are not seen as ethical. Whereas, white hat SEO works within the framework laid down by the search engines and focuses on using widely accepted techniques.

The search engines in the past matched a webpage with the search for a particular word by making use of Meta data, which is generally included in the code of a webpage. However, nowadays most search engines make use of extremely sophisticated algorithms, entailing the use of over 200 distinct parameters to come up with the results.

SEO specialists try to find out the significance of several components in the search algorithms and keep in touch with the latest advancements that are brought about by different search engines. This information helps them improve upon the SEO strategies for their customers so that they stay competitive for important keywords. Some time back, when the search engines depended upon Meta data and the text on the page, this process required taking care of the Meta tags and ensuring a reasonable density with which a keyword appeared on the page.

In spite of the continued importance of the onsite factors, the search engines now put a greater stress on how popular a page is. The popularity of a specific web page is decided by how many other pages link to it. It is more like a democratic process as each link to the web page can be seen as a vote. Due to this, SEO these days requires substantial work outside the site such as giving away free content in exchange of links to the website and creating presence on blogs and other social mediums online.

You must always keep in mind that SEO is a continuous and dynamic process. SEO techniques are always getting updated to the changes happening in the sphere of online search. That is why it is so important to have an expert SEO consultant by your side. - 33960

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