The desire of most website owners is to achieve a high ranking in the Google search engine results pages, especially if the site is selling a product or promoting a message. To accomplish this goal, website designers employ a variety of techniques known collectively as search engine optimization, or SEO.
The purpose of SEO is to enable a website to gain prominence with the search engines, the most dominant of which is Google. However, it is essential that website designers understand the difference between good and bad SEO tactics.
Good SEO practices - often referred to as "white hat" SEO - include making appropriate use of strong keywords and keyword phrases, designing a site that is friendly to both user and machine, regularly adding unique content and using formatting that emphasizes the primary content on your site. These and other white hat practices can have a positive effect on your site’s placement in the Google search results.
SEO Google does not endorse, known as "black hat" SEO, can have the opposite effect. Employing these methods may result in your site plummeting in the search results or disappearing altogether. While it is a good idea to use white hat tactics, it is vital that you avoid black hat tactics. Three examples of black hat SEO are:
Keyword stuffing.
Using keywords appropriately means that they fit organically into the content of your site. Keyword stuffing, on the other hand, means you force the terms into the text where they do not naturally fit, conceal entire blocks of keyword on the page or within the HTML code, and create an abnormally high keyword density.
You should employ keywords wisely, but do not use them where they do not belong.
Scraping content from other sites.
Some website owners have made a practice of stealing content that rightfully belongs to others. Rather than creating their own content or paying others to do the job for them, they copy the work of others and claim it as their own. Beyond the ethical and legal concerns, this practice is detrimental to a site’s SEO.
With advances in technology, search engines such as Google are able to identify duplicate, near-duplicate, and spun content present across multiple sites. Therefore, if you scrape content - or even if you legally acquire content that is also posted elsewhere - your website will be seen as not unique, it will lose value, and it will potentially sink in the search results rankings.
Purchasing links from link farms.
Because the number of links directed toward your site can boost your site's ranking, a black market business of selling links has arisen. The concept involves you paying another site to link to your site, thus improving your site's SEO. A variation of this involves link exchanges. Search engines frown on this practice, though, and links to and from disreputable sites can now harm your ranking.
With this in mind, aim to build credible links by submitting your URL to relevant directories, including your website address in your email signature and when posting comments on blogs, and encourage visitors to link to your website from their own sites.
To achieve success with your website through Google and other search engines, you should employ good SEO. To that end, keep current on the latest in SEO practices and apply them to your site. Beware, however, of using black hat tactics that will harm your website's performance. If your site becomes buried deep in the search results, many potential customers will never find it. If Google bans your site entirely, it will likely be a fatal blow.
It doesn't matter how good your product is; if the customer cannot find it, it is not worth anything.
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Xepta prides itself on utilizing only "white-hat" SEO techniques - If you'd like your site to have long term staying power with both your visitors and search engines, contact us today.
