What is SEO anyway?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of improving a website's relevance and ultimately its position in the search engines. Search engine optimizers boost a website's relevance by using a wide array of tactics that are either done on-page or off-page. 

SEO tactics

There are many tactics that can be used to obtain higher positioning in the search engines. Its very important to identify the three types of SEO and choose the one that makes the most sense to your business.

White-Hat: White hat search engine optimization is all about improving positions while following the rules and guidelines set by the major search engines. The tactics used by white hats are mainly for long term gain and focus on usability and maximum conversions. If you care about your business's image and branding then white hat is the only way to go. We at chrysalis websolutions use strictly white hat techniques for long term search engine positioning and a better user experience.

Grey-Hat: Grey hat search engine optimization achieves high rankings but usually at the cost of user experience. The websites are usually stuffed with keywords and therefore use copy that is very hard to understand. Conversion rates when using grey hat tactics will be lower. Grey hats focus on creating website for the search engines which is not necessarily a very smart idea.

Black-Hat: Black hat search engine optimization is all about tricking the search engines to get high rankings. The majority if not all of these tactics are known by the search engines and will get you banned. These tactics might lead to some short term gain but the consequences are long term failure. These tactics will destroy the image of your business and I would recommend you stay away from them even though the temptation of getting high rankings fast is overwhelming. The Google webmaster guidelines do a great job of highlighting the black hat tactics that should not be used.

What are the major search engines?

There are a few major search engine that control nearly 100% of all the searches. These search engines have massive resources to allow for their spiders to go all over the web and find websites. Its important to note that submission to the search engines is not necessary anymore with proper search engine optimization. The search engines will find you and index your website within days if there are enough websites linking to you. The following is a list of the major search engines with their share of searches according to comScore.

• Google: The biggest search engine which gets over 55% of the search volumes.
• Yahoo: A big competitor to Google but holds only 23% of the share of searches.
• MSN Live Search: Holds around 11% of searches.
• Ask: Formerly known as Ask Jeeves holds around 5% of the share.
• AOL: Time Warner/AOL get their results from Google and hold around 5% of the search volume.

This is why search engine submission services that will submit your website to thousands of search engines are a waste of both time and money. There are only a handful of search engines that matter so mass submission to others is useless.

More SEO Tips and Resources

If you need additional search engine positioning information please feel free to read my blog. I will also be producing videos that will be posted on the blog as well so hopefully it will be a big resource of information for more advanced topics. If you still need more resources I recommend the following:

• High-rankings Forum: One of the best search engine optimization forums out there. There are a lot of great contributors and questions are answered pretty well. Read the topics to learn more about SEO and feel free to ask anything. I am a member of this forum and might answer a question or two there.
• SEO Fast Start: This is one of the best SEO books out there by none other than Dan Thies. Its also free and comes with access to a wide selection of free videos and a community to top it off.