| Search
engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving
the visibility of a website or a web page in search
engines via the "natural"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. Other forms of search engine marketing
(SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier
(or higher on the page), and more frequently a site
appears in the search results list, the more visitors
it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target
different kinds of search, including image search, local
search, video search and industry-specific vertical
search engines. This gives a website web presence.
As an Internet
marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines
work and what people search for. 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.
The initialism
"SEO" can 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 and site content, SEO tactics may be
incorporated into website development and design. The
term "search engine friendly" may be used
to describe website designs, menus, content management
systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements
that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine
exposure.
Another class
of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing,
uses methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and
article spinning that degrade both the relevance of
search results and the user-experience of search engines.
Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques
in order to remove them from their indices.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Relationship with search engines
3 Methods
3.1 Getting indexed
3.2 Preventing crawling
3.3 Increasing prominence
4 White hat versus black hat
5 As a marketing strategy
6 International markets
7 Legal precedents
8 See also
9 Notes
10 External links
History 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 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.[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, 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 phrase "search engine optimization" probably
came into use in 1997.[2] 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 on
the Internet Way Back machine (Document Number 19970801004204).[3]
The first registered USA Copyright of a website containing
that phrase is by Bruce Clay effective March, 1997 (Document
Registration Number TX0005001745, US Library of Congress
Copyright Office).[4]
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 provide a guide to each page's
content. Using meta data to index pages was found to
be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's
choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially
be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual
content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data
in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant
searches.[5] 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.[6]
|