Google makes it clear that it disapproves of certain SEO tactics, such as hiding keywords with invisible text, or showing one page to Google’s spider and another to actual human visitors. Methods that conform to what the search engines like are called White Hat SEO, and disapproved methods are called Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO are not considered to be good or fair by search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.

Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations
• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site
• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.

Black hat techniques are sometimes referred to as search engine spamming. One example is repeating an important keyphrase many times on the homepage. Another is using text that it is the same colour as the background of the page, so the keyphrase is visible to the search robots and algorithm, but not to the human reader. Engineering pages for robots is a practice known as ‘cloaking’. Other examples of spamming which are well known are doorway pages and link-farms.

So, you must choose a search optimizer who wears a white hat rather than a black hat.

Whether you think Black Hat SEO is bad or not you should avoid it anway, because it can get you banned from the search engines, or at least reduce your ranking. Google has been known to remove sites it felt weren’t playing fair. Granted, this isn’t likely, but why take that risk? Also, much Black Hat SEO involves some fairly technical work.

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Search engines love fresh content. New pages should follow a theme and be placed into categories. Add product reviews, press releases, customer comments, how-to information, and other relevant information, and refresh it often. Incorporate product related keywords in the title tags, on-page titles and descriptive text in the new content being created. Over time, you can watch as the major search engines begin to sit up and take notice of your new, fresh content.

The better your content is, the more likely it will be to show up in search engines and naturally attract links to your site. Additionally, fresh content is a major factor that plays a role in search engine rankings (which was recently confirmed by Google’s patent application). SEO experts will still need to use their skills for all the old SEO tactics like title optimisation, keyword research and backlink building, the new focus will be on fresh content. New content put into a site on a regular basis is what will help the most to get a site to the top position on Google.

Blogs, news, products, customer reviews, buying guides, articles – regularly adding fresh content like this to your website can give your SEO campaign a big boost.

Here are 3 ways content marketing can help your website:

1. Freshness

If search engines spiders see that new content has been added regularly since they last indexed your site, they are more likely to come back and index your site more often. This can also help build authority – search engines will see your site as fresh and up-to-date.

2. More keywords

The more content you have on your site, the more variations of keywords and phrases the search engines can index. This means more chances for your site to be found by many more search terms (sometimes called the ‘long-tail’).

3. Relevancy

Basically, the more relevant content you have on your site, the more likely your site will appear for relevant search terms.

For example, Google doesn’t just look at the content of a page when it ranks sites in its results pages. And one factor it will look at is the amount of relevant content across the site and domain.

So if you’re an estate agency, regularly adding content about buying and selling property will help your site rank for search terms related to your business.

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Website Optimization is a complex issue, but should be known by every entrepreneur who wants to succeed on the Internet. SEO is many things, but it is really the basis of understanding which keywords, markets and methods produce results. Optimization of your website would make it comply with the best possible with each of its functions. You can tweak all the meta tags and descriptions you want, add all the pages, external links or internal links you want or program in just about any platform possible (cfm, asp, aspx, php, html, xhtml, etc.) but without a firm grasp of how everything fits together, it is all in vein.

Just like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, SEO transcends the basic parameters it utilizes to express itself. Rankings are nothing without conversion, and SEO does not matter, unless the market is present and a genuine demand exists.

You could exhaustively cover every facet from the level of usability, programming, design, conversion optimization, market research, competitor analysis, analysis tracking with key performance indicators, baseline benchmarks and the like, but there are all tied by one unique thread that runs through them all (monetization, compensation and results).

There is not enough time in the day to work for working’s sake just to play with ideation and theory, you have to roll up your sleeves, assess all the metrics that are imperative to the success of your website, understand the trends, market, influencers and your competition to push through the barrier to entry and rise above common obstacles online.

Anyone wishing to succeed in the Internet market should make a website that is a true “virtual branch.” That is, this should be an extension of your company and operate as a local online. For this, the site must achieve the objectives for which it was created, must be compatible with the principles and policies of the Company, be functional and actually transmit useful information to its users. So, while you are content to carve away a few keywords in a market and religiously monitor them to see which keywords slipped a few positions that day, there are others out there targeting entire markets with virtually limitless budgets because they understand one thing. What works and how to replicate it…

What is their secret? It is time divided by return on investment scaled by market share. Meaning, while you spend a few hundred dollars to acquire a keyword, a competitor may spend thousands under the same parameters to optimize several. While you write one blog post, there are companies with entire teams dedicated to writing who post 20 a day to stay on top.

We are firm believers in targeting hundreds of keywords simultaneously and eventually ranking for thousands of keywords in the same time other SEO firms might focus on a dozen. You have to hedge your efforts, understand your competitors, but also observe their weaknesses while leaning into your own strategic advantages.

SEO is more than just a collection of techniques and tactics, it is a lifestyle which embraces many layers to fully understand and implement (beyond the processes involved).

This is why we share so much at SEO Design Solutions, because we understand that competition is healthy, that profitable markets are fierce and you can talk about SEO all day, but unless it produces results then it’s not SEO…

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