The concept of SEO has appeared in the 90s and stands for Search Engine Optimization.  This abbreviation also refers to the people that have this “job”.  In the early times of Internet, when there were only “a few” sites existing (a few millions compared to more than 20 billion, estimated now) search engines have come to existence, that indexed fairly accurate the web content and made up a starting point for browsing. They also represented an important source of traffic for websites. In those times, the specialists realized the necessity of a conscious control in the process of visibility growth in search engines, and due to this fact a new science was born: SEO – optimizing for search engines, which has the purpose of increasing the qualitative traffic of a site.

This relatively new “industry” implies a set of operations made by the promotion team, regarding the increase of the position number of a website in the search list, for some relevant words or key-expressions.

The good, the bad and the profitable

This has place by controlling and improving the ranking criteria, which are the parameters analyzed by the search engines which lead to the better positioning in search results list. Depending on these criteria, SEO is divided in:

• On-site optimization: the promotion methods are applied directly to the site and are depending and influenced only by the SEO team. For example: writing carefully titles and descriptions, eliminating errors, improving the loading speed, processing images, optimizing the structure of the URL addresses and internal links, posting advertisements with moderation. All in all, improving the visitor’s experience.
• Off-site optimization: the promotion is not directly influenced by the SEO team, but by the collective will of the Internet. This means that by starting from an objective reality of a website’s quality, the search engine always tries to find measurable parameters concerning the relevance and importance of the webpage compared to the analyzed keyword. These signals refer to the quality, performance and popularity indicators. For example: the number and quality of the links to the analyzed webpage, the number of social interactions (Facebook likes, shares and comments, Tweets, +1 and so on), the context in which the mentions appear, the credibility and authority of sources, the global and local volume for the searched keywords.

 

In the short run, these techniques might work, but reality has shown that the search engines are continuously fighting with online spam and always takes out potential “holes” in the system. In the same time, they publish official documents that describe “The Webmaster Tools Help”, the moral, legal, allowed and recommended promotion techniques, which every site owner should respect. Disregarding these principles can conduct to the penalty of a site or removing it from database.

Depending on the rank of used morality methods in the process of promotion, SEO is divided in:

• White Hat SEO: the promotion complies with the policies suggested by the search engines. The used techniques are focused on offering a pleasant experience for visitors, but not aiming directly to increase position in search results.
• Black Hat SEO: the purpose of promotion is to manipulate the search engines’ perception of the quality (relevance and importance) of the site. For example; excessively usage of keywords in titles and page content, hiding words behind images, showing different content to human visitors and bots that index the site, buying links or social interactions, excessively optimization of the anchor text, adding a large number of pages with worthless content.
• Grey Hat SEO: a combination of the two above, in which although the moral aspects are respected, some practices are still arguable and in the long run, can be discovered and sanctioned.

Science or magic?

So where does the science end and the magic starts? Google officials stated many times that the best SEO practice is “abstinence”, that means no kind of SEO, but can it be true? This doesn’t fit with the famous words:   “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.” ― Steuart Henderson Britt, Marketing Management and Administrative Action. Another search engines’ recommendation is that the publicity, promotion and optimization to be designed and executed as if search engines did not exist.

Considering the extremes, science means making repeatable and documented operations such as:

• Analyzing keywords, prioritizing them by search volume and modeling the content depending on them.
• Analyzing competition and adopting their strength points in improved form.
• Solving technical problems such as Flash sites, webpages with content difficult to index, sites with sophisticated Java effects, sites hidden behind authentication etc.

Magic takes place when the methods used come from original and ingenious ideas, excellently adapted to the optimized site’s context. For example:

• Sacrificing some positioning factors for others, with the risk of lowering in search results page, but also with the chance of ranking up.
• “Mastering” the manipulation of “numbers”. The not only mathematical approach, but also “visionary” one. Obtaining some conclusions and making decisions based on public or private data, collected from a high number of sources.

Key thoughts on SEO

Now that you know what is SEO and its purpose, it’s time to understand that the final purpose of the optimization must be one and only in the lifetime of the project or of the online business: improving the experience of the visitors. Only like this you can be sure that the site will endure in the harsh climate of search engines. Make a good, useful and pleasant product for end users and you will succeed for sure! Check our service SEO to improve your business’ rankings.