To understand SEO it may be easier to see the
policy to make a web site thatis evolving forHoboTraveler.com Help
Center. Thesethe policies apply the rules of SEO and then create rules to
followthat adhere to theSEO opinions and beliefs of Andy Graham the
owner of HoboTraveler.com. https://www.hobotraveler.com/helpcenter/category/policy-to-make-web-sites/
Search Engine Optimization
Defined
Quote: Search engine
optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic
to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic")
search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results,
or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also
target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and
industry-specific vertical search engines.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's
relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for.
SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as
fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully
spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique
content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine
robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of
techniques, known as "Black hat" SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link
farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience.
Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove their
listings.
The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine
optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out
optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO
services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone
service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may
require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be
incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine
friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management
systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
Contents 1 History 2 Webmasters and search
engines 2.1 Getting listings 2.2 Preventing listings 3 White hat
versus black hat 4 As a marketing strategy 5 International markets 6
Legal precedents 7 See also 7.1 Major search engines 7.2 SEO
organizations 7.3 Notable SEOs 7.4 Search engine representatives 8
References
History Webmasters and
content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as
the first search engines were cataloguing the early Web. Initially, all a
webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which
would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it,
and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves
a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's
own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various
information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are
located, as well as any weight for specific words, as well as any and all links
the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a
later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly
ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both
white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny
Sullivan, the earliest known use of the phrase "search engine optimization" was
a spam message posted on Usenet on July 26, 1997.[2]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information
such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags
provided a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was
found to be less than reliable, because some webmasters abused meta tags by
including irrelevant keywords to artificially increase page impressions for
their website and to increase their ad revenue. Cost per thousand impressions
was at the time the common means of monetizing content websites. Inaccurate,
incomplete, and inconsistent meta data in meta tags caused pages to rank for
irrelevant searches, and fail to rank for relevant searches.[3] Web content
providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a
page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]
By relying so much on factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early
search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better
results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results
pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages
stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Search engines
responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account
additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
While graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin
developed a search engine called "backrub" that relied on a mathematical
algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the
algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound
links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by
a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to
another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a
higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Google opens headquarters in Buenos Aires, ArgentinaPage and Brin founded
Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of
Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors such as
PageRank and hyperlink analysis were considered, as well as on-page factors, to
enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only
considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more
difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and
schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved
similarly applicable to gaining PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging,
buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or
link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of
link spamming.[7]
To reduce the impact of link schemes, as of 2007, search engines consider a
wide range of undisclosed factors for their ranking algorithms. Google says it
ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The three leading search
engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the
algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry
Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to
search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums
and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various
search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11]
Webmasters and search engines By 1997 search engines recognized that some
webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even
manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as
Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating
rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.[12]
Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is
potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In
2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the
Web,[13] was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive
web content providers.
SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client
websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal
profiled a company, Traffic Power, that allegedly used high-risk techniques and
failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[14] Wired reported the same
company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[15] Google's Matt
Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its
clients.[16]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are
frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the
advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the
health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information
and guidelines to help with site optimization.[17][18][19] Google has a Sitemaps
program[20] to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing
their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo!
Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many
pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.[21]
Getting listings The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft,
use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are
linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted
because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!,
operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee
or cost per click.[22] Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the
database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[23]
Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and
competitors.[24] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open
Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.[25]
Google offers Google Sitemaps, for which an XML type feed can be created and
submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that
aren't discoverable by automatically following links.[26]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when
crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of
pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not
pages get crawled.[27]
Preventing listings Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard To
avoid undesirable search listings, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl
certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root
directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a
search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search
engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first
file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as
to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a
cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not
wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login
specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search
results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that
they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are
considered search spam.[28]
White hat versus black hat SEO techniques are classified by some into two
broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good
design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt
to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators
classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white
hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[29] White hats tend to produce results that last a
long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be
banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.[30]
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered white hat if it conforms to
the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine
guidelines[31][17][18][19] are not written as a series of rules or commandments,
this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about
following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine
indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not
for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the
spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm. White hat SEO is in many
ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[32] although the
two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by
the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that
is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible
div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending
on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a
technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods,
either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their
databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the
search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review.
One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany
and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[33] Both companies, however,
quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's
list.[34]
As a marketing strategy Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers
scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right, looking for a
relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore
increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.[35] However, more
search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an
appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies
can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.[36]A
successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic search results to
pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and
other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing
technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those
sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their
successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.[37]
SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid
for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees
of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business
that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the
search engines stop sending visitors.[38] According to notable technologist
Jakob Nielsen, website operators should liberate themselves from dependence on
search engine traffic.[39] A top ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org[40] has reported,
"Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their
traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links
from other websites.[41] STOP QUOTE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_Engine_Optimization
Search Engine
Optimization
