Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural," or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic"), search results. 

In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search,news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.



As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience.

Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

History

1. Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of 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.

2. 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.

3. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.The first documented use of the term Search Engine Optimization was John Audette and his company Multimedia Marketing Group as documented by a web page from the MMG site from August, 1997.

4. Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages.

5. The number calculated by the algorithm,PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.

9. Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings.

10. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the  search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. 

11. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. 

12. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. 

13. SEO service providers, 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.

In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers

Methods

1. Getting indexed

The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, 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.

Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[30] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review. 

2. Preventing crawling

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots .txt file in the root directory of the domain. 

3. Increasing prominence

A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to most important pages may improve its visibility.

4. Writing

content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. 

5. Image search optimization

Image search optimization is the process of organizing the content of a webpage to increase relevance to a specific keyword on image search engines. Like search engine optimization, the aim is to achieve a higher organic search listing and thus increasing the volume of traffic from search engines.

White hat v/s black hat

An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception.As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note.

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.