What is SEO Marketing
People use them every day and yet we do not know how they work. Have you ever wondered what makes the links that appear after using a search engine show in a certain order? Now you have the chance to get an idea of how the system works through a well-structured and useful intro to SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a marketing tool that allows websites to rank top or down when you get your search results. The better position the link has the more chances it has to be visited by the user. For example, you want to find the location of Chicago on the map, you type the keywords "Chicago" and "location" and press enter. After a couple of seconds or even less a list of links will appear before your eyes and you decide which one is more relevant for your needs. Usually the first one is the most relevant for our case "Chicago location" but this isn't always the case because the algorithms vary between search engines. If you are not happy with your results you can try another search engine or add other keywords.
How does SEO work?
In order for a SEO to rank websites according to the query, it performs several operations. They are crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.
- Crawling: a software program called crawler or spider (depending on the search engine it may appear under different names) that jumps from one page to another using links and then indexes everything in its way. Keep in mind that due to the high number of sites that exist on the internet, the crawler\spider may visit new sites only after a couple of weeks or even months. For instance, in the case of a website related to the city of Chicago, the crawler will index all information related to this subject.
- Indexing: is the task that searches and identifies similarities between the key words and the web page content. Afterwards it stores indexed pages according to the specified criteria in a giant library or data base from where it can be accessed later.
- Processing: is the task of comparing the search string with the indexed pages in the library\database.
- Calculating the relevancy: due to the fact that millions of page will be relevant to the search string it is necessary to calculate the relevancy of every page in order to submit the search results in a particular order. For this process, mathematical algorithms are used which have different weights according to metatags, keywords and links.
- Retrieving: is the last process that consists in displaying the results according to the order dictated by the previous task.
SEO techniques
Regardless of the objectives one desires to achieve, SEO techniques can be divided into two categories according to the approval of the search engines. For a marketing campaign about Chicago, in terms of SEO there two categories of techniques, commonly known as "white hat" and "black hat".
White hat techniques are the ones that search engines approve of because they do not seek to deceit or mislead users. White hat techniques are aimed to produce consistent results which will last a long time. A SEO technique can be considered white hat as long as it follows the search engines guidelines. They are generally user oriented and are not created specially for search engines, although the content is crawler\spider friendly. If you want to enjoy long-term results, then you should use white hat SEO techniques to advertise, for instance, the city of Chicago. Plus, the information supplied by an intro to SEO gives you a competitive advantage.
Black hat techniques on the other hand are created with the sole purpose to rank top no matter the cost. They are disapproved by the search engines because they mislead or cause deception. This technique uses several tactics to get on top positions within the search results. One of the tactics is to increase the content volume with keywords, the y are not visible because then nobody would access that page anymore but instead the extra content is written in "invisible ink" or positioned off screen.
Because of this methods search engines can apply penalties automatically or can even suspend sites from the search engines data base.
Future of SEO
Every day millions of new web sites are being created and new black hat techniques appear. Whether we are talking about businesses in Chicago or anywhere else in the world, the same SEO techniques can be applied, and successful is applied correctly. An intro to SEO is the first step towards a successful and well-ranked website.
SEO must try and keep up with the demands that tomorrow will bring and for that technology alone will not suffice. Human ingenuity and creativity are the cornerstones of any software as it is the case with Search Engine Optimization and this will help marketers get better results using a great variety of tools. New algorithms will be developed more complex and faster that will provide the most relevant sites in our search list.
In the end, the content of the web sites is what matters most when it comes to attracting users. The biggest search engine companies such as Google, Yahoo or Bing already announce new technologies which will influence greatly the future of SEOs.