SEO - Search engine optimization
SEO ethics
Black hat vs. White hat
Every time 'search engine optimization' is mentioned, one thing comes to my mind: "Don't do evil" the ethics, or moral Google proclaims.
Short: don't use tricks while optimizing websites.
I can hear you think now: "Yeah right. And what about my competitors, all those others that do use tricks (search engine spam) to get higher in the rankings."
Well, oke, lets look into that.
Suppose: You do use spammy tricks (the 'black hat' techniques) or planning to do so, where do you think that stops?
Your competitor is using these kind of trics and you would love to beat him in the rankings. If you would give in and use the exact same or even worse tricks, your competitor will even use stronger or better trics to beat you.
It leads to nothing, it's a rat race in which either you or your competitor is biting your tail.
There is no happy ending.
Leave it to the search engines to beat your competitor! Sooner or later they will!
Instead of following him and putting all your effort and energy into beating him with trics, beat him with "ethical techniques" (the 'white hat' techniques), make sure your site has more and better content. Make it well structured and accessible for your visitors, this way they can see you are an authority, someone they can trust.
On the site of your spamming competitor, visitors won't feel happy, he for most of the time was bussy by finding ways to trick the search engines instead of building a good website. His effort was to gain high positions quick, not to provide the information his visitors want.
Visitors of such 'over' optimized sites often get the immediate feeling the site won't deliver them what they want, which is the fact in 99% of the cases and leave.
Above all, you need to be aware of the fact that all the efforts been made to trick the search engine will be lost if caught. The site might get banned and all the work will be for nothing.
Conclusion:
It is important to: 'work with the search engines, not against them', and beat your competitor with better and accessible content!
Search engine optimization - Ethical SEO jargon:
The SEO industry is still very young and every day there are more new words - expressions introduced. Expressions that for most of us working in that industry are no mystery, for the outsider however must sound like gibberish. A few of the words used in this article are explained below:
- SEO:
Search Engine Opimization - Optimizing websites to be accessible, easy to use and most of all ranking high in the search engines - White hat SEO:
Ethical website optimization - Black hat SEO:
Non ethical website optimization - Rankings:
The place in the results given by search engines - Banned:
Removed from the search engines databases
Search engine optimization - SEO FAQ's
- SEO advice
giving reliable SEO advice - SEO faq
An answer to frequently asked questions and unraveling myths about SEO, Search engines, rankings, website promotion etc. - SEO Expert
What is an SEO expert and does he exist? - SEO ethics
Optimizing websites, is it all about tricks?
SEO basics - SEO links
Links on SEO and search engine optimization information. - Flash and being found
What to do to get your Flash website being found? - Google update Bigdaddy
or, something went wrong. Google's implementation of a new structure for its datacenters has some problems.
Getting back to basics to understand how the internet works and how we can use that to optimise our websites for search engines.