What is SEO?

Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and telling what our idea of SEO is, here is the wikipedia article on Search Engine Optimization.  Everyone has their own opinion on what is SEO or best practices and best methods, but here is a clean cut, no marketing and no sales pitch take on “What is SEO?”

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

In a nutshell, SEO is identifying how search engines view your site and making necessary changes in order to attract more visitors.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

While this is true, it is an outdated representation. Today, SEO goes beyond keywords and meta tags and reflects the culture of your website and your company’s habits on the internet.

The acronym “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers,” a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Naturally, you want to stay far away from black hat SEO has it’s frowned upon and can actually get you removed from a search index.

search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Some industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO. White hats tend to produce 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.

Once again, beware of the black hats.   They will eventually cost you more than they’re worth.   Stick with reputable firms who can deliver long term results.