Unraveling the Mysteries Behind Good SEO
Search engine algorithms advance more and more each day as engineers devise increasingly complex ways to provide the best search results. While that’s great for the consumer, it means that SEO specialists really need to know what they’re doing if they hope to achieve their goals. A wide variety of strategies and techniques must be used, and this takes time and effort.
Understanding Search Engines
It may help to understand how search engines work. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines are all competing to provide the best search results. Each one has developed complex algorithms designed to provide the most relevant results to each query. To do this, the search engine’s algorithm has to weed out any results that are irrelevant or spam sites.
Once upon a time, site owners were able to “crack” the algorithm code by stuffing their pages with keywords and key phrases – and that meant that plenty of sites showed up in search results that had little or nothing to do with the query. Nowadays, however, sites like this are recognized immediately by the search engines.
Sites that use unethical practices like keyword stuffing are immediately blacklisted. That means that the site will no longer be recognized by search engines, effectively putting it out of commission.
Wearing the White Hat
So obviously, “cracking” the algorithm code is out of the question. Unfortunately, however, some SEO companies may still try to use these illegal “black hat” practices to get the job done. They may make some big promises, but don’t be suckered in. Just remember that if your SEO consultant is pushing questionable practices – or if he won’t share his strategy with you – it may be time to find a new consultant. While “white hat” or legal techniques and practices may take longer to show results, the effects are far greater in the long run.
So what is “good SEO” then? There are three basic areas that can improve your search ranking, and this is where you should focus your energies:
- Link building
This is possibly the most important part of SEO. Links on the internet work kind of like votes. Links show the popularity and importance of a site. While links aren’t everything in SEO, algorithms do base decisions on them. Just remember that trustworthy sites will link to other trusted sites. Links to spammy sites will raise red flags with search engines. - Index inclusion and coverage
This aspect is especially important for new sites. The goal is to get the pages of your site visited or “crawled” by the various search engines. This makes your site visible in the search engine page results (or SERPs). - Web page optimization
Since search engines are looking for the most relevant results, you’ll need to optimize your web pages for maximum visibility. This is accomplished by identifying and including the best keywords and keyword density for your site. Of course, your site not only needs to look good to search engines, but to actual human visitors as well, so key words need to be placed appropriately and in key locations. While this may sound confusing, good SEO can actually be summed up quite simply: A great site plus great content plus links to other great content equal SEO success.
Contribution by Marketing on the Web. Marketing on the Web is a Huntsville Al Marketing company focused on Digital Marketing. https://www.marketing-ontheweb.com/