Search Engine Optimization Tactics

There are many ways to help Internet users find your website via the search engines. You can provide strong content that’s optimized for specific search terms, use appropriate meta tags, obtain backlinks to your site, post on relevant forums and blogs, use social bookmarking and social media sites, and submit your site to relevant directories. And that’s just a few of the possible methods!
But let’s talk about search engine optimization in a more general way. All SEO techniques fall into one of three categories: white-hat (the “good guys”), black-hat (you guessed it – the “bad guys”), and grey-hat (falling somewhere in between good and bad).

White-Hat SEO

White-hat SEO tactics are legitimate in the “eyes” of the search engines. Using them will not cause your website to be banned or otherwise penalized by the search engines. Generally speaking, white-hat SEO takes longer to produce results than grey-hat or black-hat methods, but it’s also much safer. As a result, reputable SEO experts consider white-hat tactics to be the best way to achieve and maintain high rankings in the search engine results pages (“SERPs”).

A few examples of white-hat SEO tactics include the following:
•    Creating strong, effective website content that adds value to the web. It should be original, relevant, informative, engaging and well-written.
•    Optimizing your site by using appropriate meta tags (meta titles, meta keywords and meta descriptions for each of your pages) and subtly tweaking your content for relevant keywords and other search terms.
•    Providing internal links and a sitemap. These techniques make it easier for search engines and human visitors to find their way around your website. Add text links to all the main pages of your site at the bottom of your homepage.

Grey-Hat SEO

Grey-hat SEO tactics fall into the grey area between good and bad. They include practices like paying for links to your site in order to manipulate the search engines, and using duplicate content on your site (copying and pasting another site’s content). There are several other grey-hat SEO tactics, but as a general rule you should avoid using them. Search engines frown upon their use and your site could be penalized.

Black-Hat SEO

NEVER use black-hat SEO. Your website could be banned by the search engines once your use of these tactics is discovered. They include keyword stuffing, using hidden text, cloaking (displaying different page content to the search engine bots than what human visitors see) and many other strategies designed to manipulate the search engines.