The primary way to win the SEO game is to write and present unique content through an optimized page with the keywords frequently repeated, in clear, easy to read language.
SEO expects advise editors on content to make sure that it can be easily indexed by search engine robots, while also making sure the the site is appealing to users through effectively written webcopy.
However, in recent years, some site owners were playing the SEO game in a rather underhanded manner with what are commonly referrer to as Black Hat SEO tactics, for example stuffing a page with keywords either visibly on the page, or in white text on a white background, or in the metatags, the hidden parts of the page that search engine spiders tend to look at, which well organized sites should pay special attention to (if you look at Yahoo, for example, the little mini site descriptions which appear on your search results page often come from the metatags written by the owner of the site.
Each of the major search engines use various algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the META tag, others whether the search term appears in the body text or the actual URL of a web page (using dashes versus _ between words is a much debated topic).
Many search engines check for instances of black hat SEO tactics, and will remove suspect pages from their indexes.
Search is big business due to the amount of ad revenue generated each year. Each search engine wants to deliver the best results possible to provide a fast, superior experience for their users.
So our advice is to stay strictly white hat when it comes to SEO. You might get some fast results playing fast and lose with black hat tactics, but you might also cause yourself more harm in the long run.
Build your business based on legitimate SEO tactics, and you will not see your results plummet like a stone, and you will also not have to panic if you hear that one of the search engines is changing their algorithms.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how the search algorithms work with the different search engines, and also tries to discover what people search for, and how.
For example, they many not just search for one single word, but two or more words, also known as the ‘long tail’. (NB: Long tail can also refer to the length of a campaign on the internet, how it keeps on going even when it is no longer being actively promoted.)
SEO also takes into account common misspellings or typos; a smart SEOSEM/PPC manager will capitalize on this relatively easy and cheap traffic.
SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, enticing the search engines little robots, which search each website in order to give their readers the best search results.
SEO can also involve tweaking problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Or to avoid duplicate content from one site to the next, which the search engines will penalize you for.
Meta tags are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers.
Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use, what style sheet, or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Here is a sample from a client who does not mind being identified: This tag
Its worthwhile to use the meta description tag for your pages, because it gives you some degree of control with various crawlers. An easy way to do this often is to take the first sentence or two of body copy from your web page and use that for the meta description content.The Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy.
The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for. For instance, if you had a page about nutrition– AND you say the word nutrition at various places in your body copy — then mentioning the words “nurition” in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.
Remember, if you don’t use the words “nutrition” on the page at all, then just adding it to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page do well for the term. so no keywrod stuffing, please!
The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. For instance, let’s say you had a page all about the “detox diet”. You never actually say the word “detox diet” on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for “how can I start a detox diet.” Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word “detox diet” in the body copy of the page itself.
Far too many people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta keywords tag. FEW crawlers support it. For those that do, it MIGHT! MAYBE! PERHAPS! POSSIBLY! BUT WITH NO GUARANTEE! help improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your page’s chances of ranking well because they will think you are stuffing the metatag. Because of this, I strongly suggest that those new to search engine optimization not focus totally on the metatags.
Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization think is no longer worth using the tags. Speaking from personal experience, I would say that it does help, and if at all possible, I would rather hanve the chance to write my own marketing copy for my site than leave it to to the search engine spiders.
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites to search engine users by increasing the website’s profile so that it will appear as high as possible in the results list (also referred to as the Search Engine result pages (SERPs).
SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO)
paid placement (or PPC)
paid inclusion (you have to pay to get into the search engine)
allowing search engines full access to your content for free as a way of enticing buyers
