V9.46: Improving Your SEO Today

Ultimately how your website attacks the right type of prospect will make or break your company’s success. Because of that, SEO should be definitely high on the list of techniques every marketer needs, don’t you think?

We came across an interesting article that sheds some light on 4 basic, yet important facets of Search Engine Optimization. Let’s dive in!

• “On-site optimization.” This basically means that you’re ensuring your site receives acceptance from both viewers and search engines. A multitude of factors can help you achieve this– think relevant keywords, key phrases, and tags on your site. These are some of the things that Google uses to determine how to rank your website.
• “Off-site optimization.” Off-site optimization is all about trying to gain a high rank using external methods. In this instance, Google ranks sites that it deems “most important” or “more authoritative” higher on the list. Most of the time, this is determined by how many other sites are linked to yours. Basically, having links that redirect to your website on larger platforms or on blogs can really boost your ranking.
• “White-hat SEO.” This is the Glinda the Good Witch of SEO. This is the process of legal optimization strategies that drive more traffic to your site and therefore, increase your ranking. Some of these techniques include back-linking, link building, and keyword analysis. Create content can really help with this.
• “Black-hat SEO.” If white-hat SEO is Glinda, then Black-hat SEO is the Wicked Witch of the West. This technique relies on illegal methods in order to cheat the system and gain an unearned high ranking. Invisible text, page swapping, and keyword stuffing are just some of the illegal techniques. While it helps increase your ranking in the short term, you run the risk of getting caught and shut down. If you ask us, the risk is NOT worth the immediate (but not long lasting) reward.

We’ll leave you with a very astute observation made by the author of this article, Toby Nwazor:

“Online patronage is determined by your visibility. Your visibility is determined by your popularity and ranking, and your popularity by how well you use SEO.”