SEO has truly come a long way since the days of Excite, Lycos, InfoSeek, & Alta Vista. Those were the days that these particular search engines were regulating web searches and until before Yahoo and later Google came along to change this behavior forever. Yes, we’re talking about the evolvement of Search Engine Optimization within the last 12 years – circa before the .com era. Organic search and visibility still matters simply due to the fact that web users are constantly seeking massive amounts of information by utilizing top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing just to name a few.
SEO Remains a Valuable Marketing Strategy
If someone has told you that with SEO you’d strike a gold mine then I’m here to tell you that they’re sadly mistaken. By no means SEO should be your only marketing strategy due to the optimization and maturity in most part that’s involved for its ultimate success. Although SEO remains a valuable marketing strategy more than ever before due to the importance of organic visibility that you should have in the search engines. That’s right! You can have a website which consists of the latest and greatest platform with special effects and other bells and whistles but the matter of fact is that if nobody can find it in a search engine than frankly your fancy website doesn’t serve you much good. If you’re a business owner seeking to dominate a space for given products or services than perhaps you should consider making SEO a part of your ongoing marketing activities.
Does SEO Have Any Value Though?
That’s a good question and perhaps one that all should ask ourselves. I’ll simplify the answer for you. Yes, Search Engine Optimization still contains a tremendous amount of value as it helps you generate leads for your products and services on your website. It can assist with your conversions by offering various options for creating organic visibility in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, & Bing. More importantly you’re probably wondering right about now how exactly you’re able to monetize organic performance. I would start with the various SEO Tools available on the web and familiarize yourself with some of the basics. For the SEO gurus in the audience here I’ll keep this interesting and say that you can check out some of the advanced seo tools out there to help you better monitor and monetize your organic traffic. Furthermore if you’re the type that wants to have a little bit of reassurance and comfort before committing to an SEO strategy I would recommend installing Google Analytics on your website as well to help you track your website traffic. Given the tools that I’ve provided links to I’m sure you’ll be able to put 2 and 2 together. See how SEO can help drive traffic to your website.
White Hat vs Black Hat SEO Tactics
This has always been a touchy subject and one that continues to rattle Google’s cages due to discrepancies in its algorithm. White Hat SEO tactics consists of recommended SEO guidelines that should be followed in order to ensure that you’re maximizing your visibility within a search engine index. Typically some of the components involved in this process include consistency of content delivery to your website in the form of regular updates, link building to related websites and directories in order to create visibility for your domain, and on-page content optimization. Black Hat SEO tactics are in most cases used by affiliate marketers or those seeking to create a boost for their keyword rankings just to earn a few extra bucks within a short timeframe. Some of these types of practices consist of overstuffing with keywords in the Meta Data section of individual pages, using hidden text with keywords to help boost contextual targeting, submission of your domain to link farms, and many other activities that I simply don’t care for personally. You can find more about that by checking out the link above. At the end of the day and over the course of the long-term you should really focus on White Hat SEO especially if you’re seeking longevity of your business.
SEO Is Here To Stay – Beef Up Your Content
The moral of the story here shapes up to the fact that SEO remains a valuable marketing strategy and it’s surely not going anywhere anytime soon. Additional resources and information on SEO can be found by chekcing out Danny Sullivan’s latest SEO blog post in regards to SEO over at Search Engine Land. These guys walk, talk, live, & breathe anything and everything related to Search Engine Optimization. In addition you can head on over to Matt Cutts Blog and read up a little bit on Search Engine Optimization as well. Your site’s web traffic may have also plummeted recently in part due to the new Google algorithm push so being optimistic about SEO may be the last thing on your mind right about now too. Do check out this information and find out more about how you can improve your website SEO. It’ll truly benefit your website for the long-term and crate proper organic visibility within the SERPs.