SEO

From all the forms of traffic to a website, the traffic driven by the search engine has been the most profitable, along the time. This is why, since the middle of the nineties, many tried to analyze the way they work and to adapt their websites, for a higher and higher rank, in search engines. Search engine optimization became, thus, a profitable business, itself.

For many, though, getting traffic by no means led to less orthodox practices, known today as “Black Hat SEO” practices. These tactics involve abusing the search engines and driving traffic to them, even from irrelevant searches. To defend themselves from these tactics, the search engines evolved and their demands are continuously, changing. Google and Yahoo do not even disclose, any more, most of their algorithm calculations and other criteria they require for delivering targeted, quality traffic, to a website.

Anyway, the times of reciprocal links, three-way links, article spinning, link farming and whatever means automation is over. The serious directories check all the submissions, by hand. Recently, many had their pages un-indexed just for using huge data feeds, to post massive content to their blogs or web-stores.

Today the search engine submission services are obsolete. Each search engine will offer different tools to include websites, for indexing but they do not guarantee a better rank from using them. Google offers the Webmaster Tools and asks for a sitemap to be included in the root of a website, in order to access its content and crawl it, periodically. The webmasters also have the option to exclude certain content, like the password protected one, from being indexed and revealed, to the public. The sitemap will not be able to do its job, unless proper linking or cross-linking between the pages of the same website is done.

The keywords probably, will always be the most important factor for rank improvement in SEO. This is why, without falling into the obsession to please the search engines and to compromise the content, one has to check out the trends in searching. Not only the search engines offer this information but also big online stores, like Amazon. Keyword stuffing and hidden content, typical “Black Hat SEO” tactics, should be avoided, of course. Though, using frequently searched keywords along with one’s legitimate content, in a natural and well balanced manner, is one thing to keep in mind.

These days, the content syndication and spreading the word on major networking sites helps a lot when it comes to getting quality driven content from search engine. Search engine marketing is becoming, more and more a matter of honesty and accurate information. As in real life, one cannot rely only on one method of advertising and search engine marketing should not be the only one to take into consideration, for any website owner. Placing ads on websites with high traffic, permanent visibility and continuously, providing quality content on your own are pretty much the only things that make the search engines tick and work in one’s favor, these days.