The Science of SEO
A lot of weight is being given to search engine optimization and how it can help website owners gain an advantage for their respective websites. But for the layman, the term itself only gives a hazy glimpse of what it truly is.
By definition, search engine optimization is the method of increasing or making better the volume of traffic to a website as well as the quality of that traffic with the help of search engine results that are considered natural or algorithmic. The primary way this is achieved is by helping a website achieve higher search engine rankings for the keywords that it uses. A higher ranking means that it will be easier to spot and visit. Search engine users do not usually go beyond the 15th to 20th page of a long search engine result for the keywords they’re researching, thus the higher the website appears the more likelihood it will be visited. Search engine optimization does not only involve general keyword search engines though, it can also involve image and local searches as well as industry-specific searches.
Search engine optimization deals with knowing how search engines operate, how they work and how they get their information. It also involves finding out the psychology of how people search online. The most basic way of optimizing a website for both search engines and internet users is by improving its content and the site’s HTML coding. The improvements are geared towards increasing how relevant the pages are to the keywords used by the website. Additionally, the improvements are also directed towards removing any obstacles to the indexing capabilities of various search engines.
It should be noted that search engine optimization straddles a fine line between legitimate and illegal techniques that are designed to help websites get the ranking results that they want. These techniques are usually called white hat and black hat techniques.
White hat techniques are those optimization methods that follow the guidelines set by search engines. These are above-board methods that do not involve any kind of trickery or deception. It is considered that white hat methods are designed to prioritizing content for users and making the content easily searched and seen by search engine crawlers. It does not trick the crawlers’ algorithms.
On the other hand, black hat techniques are search engine focused. It improves search engine results for website by using methods that are frowned upon, if not out rightly banned by search engines. This would include link farming, hidden text, off screen text positioning and cloaking. Search engines are not kind to black hat SEO and sites that are discovered using these techniques are either given a warning or banned.
Search engine optimization is also considered as a part of marketing strategies as, like a marketing campaign, the goal is similar – to drive traffic to a place in order to see the product / service / content. When seen in this light, SEO is just another tool used to achieve the goals of the marketing campaign, other methods will include advertising, below the line marketing, and constantly improving the site’s technical and creative aspects to drive users and to increase the visibility with search engine crawlers.
