What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to methods used to increase traffic to a website by increasing the search engine's page rank.
SEO often involves improving the quality of the content by making sure it is rich in relevant keywords and organizing it through the use of subheadings, bullets, and bold and italic characters. SEO also ensures that the website's HTML code is optimized so that a search engine can determine what is on the page and display it as a search result in relevant searches. These standards involve the use of metadata, including the title tag and meta description. Cross-linking within the website is also important.
Search engines try to rank the results for a particular search based on their relevance to the topic and the quality and reliability of a website. Google, the world's most popular search engine, uses an ever-evolving algorithm that aims to rank websites the way a human reader would. This means that an important part of SEO is making sure the website is a unique and relevant resource for readers.
The following methods are common ways to improve a website's SEO. These methods are called white hat SEO because they improve search rank by improving the user experience on the website.
- Increase keyword depth
- Increasing networking
- Improving the organization of content on the site
Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO involves techniques like paying for links to a website on link farms, populating the metadata with unrelated keywords, and using text that is invisible to readers to attract search engines. These and many other black hat SEO tactics can increase traffic, but search engines frown upon their use. Search engines can penalize websites that use these methods by lowering their page rank or removing them from search results.