What is SEO?

The term SEO is an acronym for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ it is a service provided by marketing agencies for promoting website via the organic/unpaid results.

Search engines automatically find websites to put into their results and they will be ranked automatically too. There are various ways to assist the search engine into giving you the best rank possible – this is the process of SEO.

A website’s ranking is  based on:

• Domain Quality
• Content
• Links from other sites
• Competition for the topic

There are two types of seo:

Black Hat

This is a quick fix, it is risky, unethical and I don’t advise you to go down this route. Black Hat SEO abuses search engine rules and regulations and it creates a poor user experience.

Much of what is known today as ‘black hat’ used to be legit, but people went overboard and the search engine didn’t like being abused a so now will penalize these methods and may even completely remove your website from the results.

Some examples of black hat:

• Keyword stuffing – Packing too many keywords into the site, two per page is enough not 100 per page!
• Invisible text – Hiding text through: alt tags, white text and white background, 1px font size…
• Doorway Pages: a fake page that users will not see full of keywords
• Link Farms: lots of poor quality inbound links from dodgy directories

White Hat

This is the ethical method, it can take longer than the black hat way but it is reliable and once you’re at the top, you have a much better chance of staying there.

It’s not in the interest of search engines to promote sites that are cheating. Google, Yahoo, Bing and the rest only what relevant content on their results,

White hat techniques empower the ways search engines look for content and ranks websites, SEO experts understand what is required to show the search engine you are honest and have the best content available and that your site must be at the top.

At Logic Design there are three fundamental rules we follow, firstly ‘Content is king’ basically you must have quality, up to date and relevant content. Secondly, you must promote the site through link building, getting other sites to tell the search engine you have good information on your site will help secure a good ranking. And finally, no cheating! – don’t fill your site with keywords it’s more important that the content reads well, don’t obsess over alt, title or Meta tags and last of all, the links you get must be quality. A link from your local newspaper is far better than a link from a specialist in cuddly toys (unless that is your topic!).