Basics Of SEO

By Carey Lim

A search on any search engine for a popular keyword yields thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of results. In this situation, the methods which allow a company to be displayed in the first few results for a query using a particular word is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Coming within the topmost results on related and important searches increases the number of people who are drawn to your website and hence you get more business. That is why SEO has become so significant.

SEO can be categorized into black hat SEO and white hat SEO. Black hat SEO entails somewhat unethical ways to get a website to the top of the search rankings. Whereas, white hat SEO works within the guidelines laid down by the search engines and focuses on making use of widely accepted techniques.

To connect a specific web page to a particular keyword, the search engines earlier used the Meta data of the page that has been included in the code of that page. However, major search engines now make use of intricate algorithms to display the results that are filtered on the basis of more than 200 distinct factors.

SEO experts try to find out the significance of several components in the search algorithms and stay in touch with the newest modifications that are brought about by different search engines. Based on these findings, they enhance the SEO methods used by their customers so that their websites stay competitive. For the older algorithms, which used just the Meta data and web site content, the optimization method used was to bring the concentration of a keyword on the page to an appropriate level and dealing with the Meta tags of the page.

Although these factors are still quite important, search engines now give a lot more weight to the popularity of a web page. The number of links referring to a web page indicates the popularity of that web page. This method is democratic in essence, where each link is like a vote for the specific web page. Because of this, now SEO has to concentrate on offsite techniques as well, such as offering content for free to get inbound links and developing a presence on online hubs for social interaction, such as blogs, forums etc.

The crucial aspect of SEO to be always kept in mind is that it is not a one time activity. This field keeps changing and your methods must be adapted to the changes. This is what makes using the services of an expert SEO consultant so critical. - 33376

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