Importance of SEO

You have a website or a business and you want customers, right? That is why you are in business after all. Visitors and customers are the basis of making money. With all of the millions of websites on the Internet how can you make yours stand out from the crowd and gain a high rank in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing? Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key.

A high rank in a search engine's results page brings more visitors to your site and gives your business more visibility. High visibility means potentially more visitors which in turn means more customers. How do search engines decide which pages will get a higher rank? There are some basic principles that you need to understand when considering page ranking.

Cutting Edge Pros

Search engines have programs called spiders that crawl web pages and index the links they find there. The better the link is the more likely a spider will deem it fit for indexing. A good link will lead to a related page such as another page on your site or a page that relates to the content on your site. For example if you have a site that is about growing flowers, a link to another gardening site will rank higher than a link to an unrelated site about golf carts. These backlinks are an important tool for making sure that your pages are optimized.

Quality content is another key for SEO. Well written informative content on your site that is original will be indexed and rank your site higher in the search engine's database. Keywords should fall naturally in the content and not just be placed in there for recognition. Copied of plagiarised content can be detrimental to your efforts and can get your site banned from a search engine's index. When you contract to have your content written, be sure that you have good quality content that people will find interesting and not just content that is stuffed with keywords. This can also get your site flagged for removal from the search engine's database.

These are just a few of the principles known as White Hat SEO. White Hat SEO is an organic way to reach a higher rank on a search engine's results page. There are unethical methods commonly known as Black Hat SEO which include keyword stuffing, hidden text and unrelated backlinks. While these may produce results quickly, they will also get your site flagged and removed from the search engines.

Understanding and practicing White Hat SEO tactics will not only result in a higher ranking but they will also insure that your site will produce quality search results and longevity. These will translate to a better bottom line and success for your site and business.