What Does Search Engine Optimization Mean?
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to methods used to increase traffic to a website by increasing its search engine page rank.
SEO often involves improving the quality of the content, ensuring that it is rich in relevant keywords and organizing it by using subheads, bullet points, and bold and italic characters. SEO also ensures that the site’s HTML is optimized such that a search engine can determine what is on the page and display it as a search result in relevant searches. These standards involve the use of metadata, including the title tag and meta description. Cross linking within the website is also important.
Techopedia Explains Search Engine Optimization
Search engines attempt to rank results for a given search based on their relevance to the topic, and the quality and reliability a site is judged to have. Google, the world’s most popular search engine, uses an ever-evolving algorithm that aims to evaluate sites in the way that a human reader would. This means that a key part of SEO involves ensuring that the website is a unique and relevant resource for readers.
The following methods are common ways to improve a website’s SEO. These methods are called white hat SEO because they aim to improve search rank by improving the user’s experience on the website.
- Increasing keyword depth
- Increasing interlinking
- Improving the organization of content on the page
Black hat SEO involves techniques such as paying to post links to a website on link farms, stuffing the metadata with nonrelated keywords, and using text that is invisible to readers to attract search engines. These and many other black hat SEO tactics may boost traffic, but search engines frown on the use of such measures. Search engines may punish sites that employ these methods by reducing their page rank or delisting them from search results.
