Define SEO. Chances are good that your take on the practice commonly referred to as SEO is similar to that of others. Probably the biggest variations from one definition of SEO to the next involve a person’s individual perspective on SEO. In my opinion, at least 98% of SEO pros out there are scammers, so I like to call it Scam Everyone Often.
What Is SEO?
All that aside, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of organizing and preparing a website or web page to show up optimally and organically within the search engines when searchers search for specific search terms. Again, SEO is organic-meaning that it should help a website show up in the main body of search results, not with the “Sponsored” section of the search engine results page (SERPs) or highlighted top ads above the actual organic search results. In this regard, SEO helps achieve free search engine listings.
What Techniques Does Optimization Utilize?
Well, there are the good guys of SEO and the bad guys. These two different practices are commonly referred to as Whitehat and Blackhat. We’ll leave the middle version of Grayhat SEO for another day and just talk about the extremes.
Some of the SEO techniques that mesh well with our whitehat definition of search optimization include the following:
- Great keyword-focused content.
- Clean, error-free website coding.
- Focused, clear web design.
- Usability and standards-compliance.
- Visitor and search engine friendly link profiles.
- Optimal website navigation and inner-site linking.
- Attention to using Meta-data the way it is supposed to be used.
Of course, these are just a few white-=hat techniques utilized. All in all, our definition embraces the fact that optimizing a site should be about organizing and presenting that site to the engines in the exact format that they specify within their guidelines.
Blackhat on the other hand is tring to trick or deceive Google, Bing, etc. It is risking a penalty, which could be as severe as removal from search results entirely. It’s also bad for visitors as blackhat tactics can often reduce the user experience. Which leads us to the next point.
Good SEO Should Be Defined As Creating A Better Visitor Experience.
The whole point of optimization in the first place is to attract targeted visitors to the website. By maintaining a visitor-first approach to SEO-giving the visitors what they expect and want to see when they click on a search link-a site is much more likely to gain favor with the search engines. And this alone pretty much wraps up how we define search engine optimization in a nutshell.