Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) equals tactics that help a website rise in the search engine's rankings. They are the things that people do to their websites that will land them on the first page of a search engine's results. The best place to be is in the top three if not to be the first result, but anywhere on the first page is better than being on the second page; 42% of the people who perform searches on the internet never go beyond the first page.

Since it is so important to be on the first page people will do desperate things to get there. These desperate things fall under the umbrella of black hat seo and they are tactics that legitimate business owners need to be aware of in the event that they hire an seo expert who wants to do them. Black hat seo tactics are a series of actions that business owners should never do because the website can be banned from the search engine.

One way that seo experts try to fool the search engines is to hide text within a website's pages. They do this by manipulating the color of the text and the background so that they are either the same color or very close to it. Those who know how to do this by making an image file that they place onto the page as background are the ones who can get away with tricking the search engines at this time. But this is often reported when other people see that it has been done.

Doorway passages are another black hat seo tactic to stay away from. Doorway passages are webpages that are created by software that serve no purpose other than to promote a specific keyword or keyword phrase. They do not exist to add any value to the website or offer anything to the customer; they are only there to draw in visitors who will continue to visit the other pages of the website. This practice is not allowed by the search engines.

Black hat seo tactics are clearly against the search engine rules, but there are also those tactics which are in a grey area and they are called grey hat seo. A website may be able to perform grey hat seo tactics even though they are not condoned by the search engines but this can still be dangerous. The day may come when the search engines will figure out a way to detect these things on their own if they do not currently have the capability to do sot. What they do have now is the competitors' willingness to report anyone who does them.

One grey-hat seo tactic is cloaking. Cloaking is the process of submitting different content to the search engines than is given to the users on a website. At the same time, cloaking can be seen as a legitimate thing to do for some websites which is why it is in the grey area. Business owners must check with the search engines to make sure that their form of cloaking is allowed.

SEO experts are doing many questionable things to promote websites and it can mean an end to a valid business. Before website owners hire one of these experts they just need to be aware.