SEO, short for search engine optimization (or optimizer) is a phrase used to describe the methodology and set of processes that can help increase your Web site visibility in search engines. While SEO includes a number of tactics to help boost your keyphrase position on search engine result pages (SERPs), when looking for a good SEO company to work on your business Web site, there are a number of things that an SEO company should offer as part of its service.
Getting Started: Learn the SEO Lingo
SEO is like a world of its own, with hundreds of phrases and abbreviations. Unfortunately, talking to an expert at an SEO company can leave you feeling a bit dazed and confused, unless you learn the lingo first. Learning a bit about SEO is also important for another reason -- it will help you understand exactly what the company offers, and it will help you figure out if the company is legit or a scam. To get you started, here are 12 popular SEO terms that you should know, courtesy of Webopedia.com.
Ecommerce-Guide Tip: Hundreds of search engine optimization (SEO) terms can be found in Webopedia’s Search Engine Dictionary.
How Can SEO help your Web site? The idea behind SEO is to apply a number of optimization techniques that, when combined with marketing and linking campaigns, will help a Web site to obtain a higher ranking in Google and other search engines.
The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that people will visit the site. People won't click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
SEO helps to ensure that a Web site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
The Difference Between Good and Bad SEO Practices
When looking to find a good SEO company, there are a number of things to consider. Since the goal of hiring a company is to improve your Web site and ranking, you have to know a little bit about SEO yourself to avoid hiring a company that may, in the end, damage your site and your online reputation.
It's important to understand the differences between "White Hat SEO" and "Black Hat SEO," and to ensure that any company you hire to do your SEO work uses only ethical SEO practices.
White Hat SEO basically refers to SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience, as opposed to search engines, and it also follows search engine rules and policies. A company that uses these techniques will go over proper Web design, site code and standards for a good navigation structure.
In addition to using proper keywords and keyword analysis, a good SEO company will use professional link-building to improve your site's popularity. Another important thing to look for is a company that will develop content or improve your existing content for human readers as part of its SEO services.
On the other hand, professional businesses and organizations looking to improve their Web site’s keyphrase position need to avoid Black Hat SEO at all costs. Black Hat SEO is used to describe more aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience.
An SEO company offering a very “quick result or Google boost” may be using Black Hat strategies. Often, these strategies do not obey search engines rules and may result in your Web site being banned from a search engine.
Spamdexing is a typical Black Hat SEO practice, as is keyword stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages. If you hear your SEO expert mention any of these “services,” you really want to get off the phone (or end the e-mail discussion) in a hurry.
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