Search Engine Optimization and Its Types

What is Seo?

Search engine optimizations refer to that SEO Technique which affects the “visibility” of a phrase or name on the internet. It is basically the response you receive when you search for a web page on any non-paid internet platform. This type of result is often referred to as “natural” and “earned”. The system works in this way: the more number of people view a particular website, higher are the chances that such kind of people will be converted into the customer base for that website, and this is even more fruitful for a business based platform.

                                                     SEO Technique

SEO Technique not only relates to mere web links, but also shows results for images, videos, news, industry- specific research, and so on. Mostly computer programmed algorithms help various companies figure out marketing strategies of SEO Technique. It helps them to analyze what people enter as keywords or phrases, and whether the name of the business pops up as results, and if it does, then by how many numbers. The search engine is then used to target potential customers based on these searches and the analysis. A lot of effort goes into optimizing a website, with tasks such as editing the content, adding or removing content, doing HTML, and using the process of coding to index the activities of search engines. A web resource also known as back links and inbound links are both SEO Technique which help promote the site. A recent research showed that these days mobile searches have over powered computer searches by a very large amount, so SEO Technique now focuses on increasing the efficiency of mobile based searches. Even Google is harboring ways through SEO to improve mobile searches. This is all in sync with the fact that companies are constantly evolving to stay at par with the future of marketing strategies.

The next part of the article now focuses on why SEO is famously known as a Black Hat technique these days.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black hat SEO refers to a set of practices which are used to increase the sites or a particular keyword’s in search engine which violate the search engine’s terms of services. The term originates from western movies were in order to distinguish the villains from the “good guys”, they wore “black hats”. Recently, however, it refers to computer viruses, and unethical computer actions. Black hat SEO Technique, since they are against the norms and regulations, can even lead to banning of that particular site from the search engine and the affiliated sites. One can refer to Google’s web master guidelines- to see if the techniques that they use fall under any kind of violation or not. If the work done by the concerned employee leads to absolutely no value addition, but helps increase the response, then the task performed might actually be black hat. Obviously this black hat technique is commonly used by those firms looking for financial returns in a jiffy; why else would anyone violate the rules and risk getting banned. This method of violation is also commonly referred to as “spam- dexing”.

Black Hat Techniques

Some of the most famous and most used black hat SEO Technique is explained below:

• Website over optimization- this includes performing tasks such as thin content, or keyword stuffing.
• Over optimized description- using keyword stuffing in description images.
• Irrelevant keyword- use of abusive keywords just to increase the rankings.
• Hiding texts- hiding links or texts, or even writing them in a tiny font, just to build better rank and links.
• Content abuse- copying content from other sources, or using automated ways to generate your content.
• Bait and switch- the use of bait and switch technique so frequently that it confuses and tricks Google itself.
• Rings- generating web links to adopt traffic from related web pages.
• Advertisements- posting useless ads which guarantee a free product or service just to increase the viewership.
• Cyber squatting or domain squatting.
• Social network- using social media platforms to send lists of useless and unrelated links to increase traffic.
• Negative SEO Technique - false accusations and reporting of competitors so that they get penalized, and you get all the positive attention.
• Article spinning- a way of re- crafting content, i.e., redirecting the way of copied content so that no one can accuse you of plagiarism.
• Cloaking- dishonesty is using two pieces of varied content, to show the viewers that your content, is in fact- original.
• Guest post scheme- commenting on blogger’s pages, and convincing them to write articles for you on a particular link, leads them to click the link, however what one finds most of the times is just a follow – link.
• Link farm- it is basically a group of links, and whenever one clicks on any one of them, it results in decreasing the trustworthiness of the link profile, redirecting to various other inbound links. Footer links- this is a common site while watching movies online, or playing games online. Often there is a link at the bottom of the page asking you to click on it for, say, a list of characters, etc. this is most often a black hat technique as clicking the link would again reduce or hamper the link profile.
• Buying or selling links- selling links can cut your traffic in half, and even de-index the particular website. This is because selling links is prohibited as per Google guidelines. Buying links has a similar repercussion. Often sites from where you would buy such malicious links would claim to be genuine, however that is not the case, hence do not be fooled by such petty tactics.
• Directory listing- buying or selling placements from directories is anything but a good practice. If you do want to post via directories, then one of the genuine options could be using Yahoo’s.

Black hat techniques should be avoided at any cost because of the above mentioned disadvantages. Along with them, it is important to understand that even though such schemes will result in short term financial booms, the long term effects will be disastrous on the traffic.