Brief Description of SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process by which online content such as articles and web pages are tailored for maximum ranking by search engines. It takes into account both what people commonly search for and how search engines work to increase the prominence of a website and therefore reach more customers.
Basic SEO tactics include:
• editing the HTML of the website to remove any barriers to the search engine software
• Promoting the website online to encourage more backlinks (links from other websites)
• URL normalisation, i.e. making sure that if a webpage can be accessed by two addresses its search ranking does not show them separately but reflects its true popularity.
• Ensuring that relevant, popular keywords are included in the page’s title tag and meta description
• Regularly updating content so that search engines index the page more frequently.
Choosing appropriate keywords is also important to increase traffic to a website. For example, should you be selling “inexpensive baseball caps”, but people more often search for “cheap baseball caps” you will not reach your target audience and they will not be able to find you, even though you are the best option for their needs.
Search Engine optimisation is commonly considered to be either “black hat” or “white hat”. White hat SEO is not about trying to game the system, but about marketing a website effectively and honestly to the target audience. As search engines are an important way to publicise a website, ensuring that the content of a website is accurately reflected in the search results is a necessary part of a marketing strategy. By contrast, black hat SEO attempts to drive traffic to a website by any means necessary, including using hidden text rich in keywords to boost rankings. Search engines do not hesitate to penalise companies that they find are involved in such deception – in 2006, Google removed BMW Germany from their rankings altogether due to their black hat SEO, as well as many other top brands in recent years.
