Ethical SEO guide: Chapter One - What is ethical organic optimisation?

[tamecrow]

An Introduction

For those of you who don't know me, I've been working in SEO for a number of years and run a UK-based search engine optimisation company called Rapid Blue. My passion lies in natural optimisation and promoting ethical methods and techniques in order to optimise websites for both search engines and users alike.

Elliot has kindly asked me to write an exclusive series on natural, ethical search engine optimisation techniques which will be serialised in this section of Google Community. If you have any questions or comments regarding anything in the series, please PM me and I'll be happy to clear up anything you're unsure of.


Chapter One - What is ethical organic optimisation?

A very good place to start, don't you think? The first thing that tends to confuse newcomers and those looking to learn SEO is the sheer amount of information, and conflicting information at that. Due to SEO's very nature, no-one can categorically state that anything is fact. It's all speculation and correlation - that's the first thing we must remember. Experiments can be set up and tests can be done, and often are, but we cannot give a cause and effect argument towards anything. It can only be purely correlation at best. Of course, many techniques and guidelines are released by the search engines themselves, and these should be respected. Real knowledge of search engine optimisation comes only through experience, and my goal is to help you on the right path towards that experience.

The whole ethos of ethical optimisation is to think not about what search engines want, but why they want it. Don't overload yourself with concern about the number of backlinks, keyword density or number of keywords in your H1 tags. That's all material and liquid as far as search engine algorithms are concerned. Think about why search engines want these elements and you'll open your mind to a whole new angle on SEO and will begin to come up with new theories and ideas yourself. We'll be taking a closer look at why search engines value particular elements and techniques in later chapters.

A lot of industry commentators will divide techniques (and SEOs themselves) into two broad categories - white hat and black hat. White hat SEO generally refers to techniques which are ethical and increase the overall quality of that page or site, whereas black hat techniques are methods devised purely to trick search engines into ranking your website higher. True search engine optimisation is about increasing the quality of your website in order for it to be valued more highly by search engines and users alike. Shadier techniques will often get your site ranking fairly quickly, but the search engines spend a lot of time and money on developing detection algorithms which will not only devalue these techniques, but will result in your site being banned from the search engine results. Employing ethical optimisation, on the other hand, will give you guaranteed long-term results. Search engines have one static goal - to give their users relevant, authoritative information on the subject they search for. If you can provide this, you'll be at the top for a long, long time.

However, search engine optimisation doesn't end at ranking sites high in the search engines. What's the use of being number one in Google if people will hit your site and not buy from it or even stay on it? Websites should be made accessible for users first and foremost. Perfecting ways of considering both users and search engines equally and wholly is a practice which takes a long time.

It's also well worth remembering that each search engine is distinctly different. You only need to search for one set of keywords across a selection of different engines to see the difference in the results returned. This is because different search engines give different weighting to different elements of a website. Google, for example, values the age and authority of a domain above all else. If your domain has been active for a number of years and enjoys an established reputation through continuous usage and strong inbound links, you're assured to rank well on Google. Yahoo are increasingly seeing value in community aspects of SEO. Community hubs and SMO are important for good rankings in Yahoo. Like Yahoo, MSN are still very focused on on-page elements and give more equal weighting to backlinks than the more selective algorithms at Google. Even directories are considered as fairly strong backlinks with Yahoo and MSN, but we'll expand on that in future chapters - don't go submitting your site to any old directory just yet!

In the next chapter we'll be brushing over some of the techniques and methods which you should include in your on-page optimisation and which techniques each search engine values particularly highly. We'll also be taking a deep look at why the search engines value these techniques, in order to help you understand the thinking of a search engine and to help you develop your own thoughts and theories on successful, ethical optimisation.

[zsk_00]

excellent article, I will wait for the next chapter!

[rosyodb]

hey everyone, i'm rosy. signature ------------------------------ current tags: plumper vids ,plumper gallery

[crowquiller]

I would enjoy reading your next chapter also!
Maybe it will have some answers for my quiet website!

[Z4K]

Great idea for a series, when can we expect the next chapter?

[Harlequin]

Makes for interesting reading, thanks.

[jacobworld1979]

I have to say great article .
I would like to ask How much should we pay if we are to hire a SEO specialist?
I hear different numbers?
I would like to ask about the cheap markets like phil and china maybe India?

[nuisance]

if you really want to acquire SEO services in third world countries like phillippines, pm me
and i can recommend you to some i know

[Salsalero]

Your article is very good

[ccoff]

ilikeyourarticleverymuch。