What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?
According to Wikipedia, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. The latest trend being Performance Based SEO.”
I have always wondered how do you ensure that when you type a keyword search on a search engine, how do you get the search engines to produce the search results you want and not the ones someone else is trying to make you look at, how do you ensure webmasters haven’t tampered with it for their own gain? I know there are people who work at Google to ensure fair play and they try to make sure search engines are optimized as much as possible.
So if for example, you are trying to get more web traffic for your company, the goal is to get your search results to come up in the top or earlier before the other search results. But how do you win the Web traffic over other webmaster’s entries? There is nothing wrong with a little bit of competition here and there and if you can win over more clients to yourself without spamming or using shady tactics, all the better for you. A lot of times though, you are up against people who don’t play fair.
Some webmasters have used malicious tactics to gain unfair advantage over their competition, they would find ways to cheat to get their search results to come out first. They have used deception such as hidden text , or another techniques such as cloaking to get more web traffic to their site, they even manipulated their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. (Wikipedia)
Then if you pay a “small” fee to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, they can give your search results priority. Some people deemed it to be too much unfair arbitration by the Search Engines and many people felt slighted.
Nowadays many businesses are failing miserably because they are relying too heavily on search engine web traffic for their sales and marketing their products or maybe they aren’t using shrewd tactics like the others. There’s no guarantee that you will sell your products just by paid publishing and advertising on search engines, and search engines cannot guarantee you as much web traffic to your site as before, seeing people grow constantly more weary of the heavy over-done advertising and it no longer catches their attention.
The sky is the limit when marketing a product with Search Engines, and many people around the globe have learned how to use it to their benefit. But nothing lasts forever, and with more people figuring out how to use it to their benefit, the few people who were making good money will soon be making less and people will have to figure out other ways to make money, especially if, the Search Engines don’t work for them as they used to. We can only hope that some good Search Engine Optimization gets done well and quickly. I’m sure the search engine’s web developers will always come up with ways to make it profitable for them.