Have you ever wondered how many blog posts are published every day for SEO purposes?
In WordPress alone, there are millions of articles posted a day, which means a couple of blog posts go out every second, with the many users WordPress has. And that’s only for WordPress. If we include other platforms, there will be way more than that.
So, why is blogging utilized by businesses for their websites or online platforms? It’s
because ranking on the front page of Google search is one of the deciding
factors for business success.
Showing up on the front page of the search engine proves that your website or page is getting more traffic than the rest of your competitors in your niche.
This marketing technique is what we call Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
What is SEO?
By definition, SEO stands for search engine optimization, which we can put as the art of ranking high in a particular search engine through organic traffic.
It is the process of optimizing your online content, such as the design and writing, so
that Google and other search engines will show your content at the top result of searches of a specific keyword.
To explain it further, there are three elements to it: first is your content, second is
the search engine, and third will be the searcher.
Let’s say you have an article about Scandinavian home décor, and you want the search engine to show it at the top result to people who would search for the phrase ‘Scandinavian décor’. Manipulating the SEO is the magic that will make your content move to the top of Google’s front page. So you should consider using keywords that are possible search terms by someone who might be interested in your content.
Sounds easy, right? But that’s not all that there is.
SEO Strategies
For some, SEO sounds like something you can do in a blink of an eye – because it’s known as the magic that ranks pages high on Google search. But it is way more than that.
It’s a long-term commitment to work on your platform’s SEO game before you can rank
high on search engines.
There are two ways you can work on SEO, one is a white hat or SEO for the long haul,
while the other one is black hat or something like a get-rich-quick scheme.
Getting traffic may not be that easy without the help of SEO, but it’s possible with Black Hat techniques.
Black Hat Techniques
With this type of SEO, content marketers only focus on optimizing content for the sake of
ranking in search engines, not considering the target audience at all. In other
words, we break the rules to rank high in search engines to get fast cash.
However, this approach is frowned upon as it often results in spammy pages that can be
banned fast. Or worse, it can lead to a punishment that takes away the chance
to scale your online platform.
Some of the ways content marketers use to dodge rules through Black Hat SEO are stated
below:
- Redirecting the user to another site
- Including Duplicate Content
- Inserting Invisible Content
- Linking to Sites with Non-Relevant Content
- Stuff Content with Keywords
White Hat Techniques
If you want to start with a clean slate and you don’t mind dedicating some time to build a
sustainable online business, then White Hat SEO is for you. Doing this requires
content marketers to focus on what their target audience really needs.
Google has its own algorithm and using white hat techniques is playing by the rules of
the search engine. Here are some of the ways you can produce the best possible
content for SEO:
- Create Relevant Content
- Include Relevant Links and References
- Label Images Properly
- Write Complete Sentences with Good Grammar and Spelling
- Write Unique and Relevant Page Titles
Finally…
This is what makes digital marketing, SEO to be exact, so fun and interesting. It’s a
competition. And it’s a matter of which technique you use to rank high on Google’s front page.
However, SEO is also unpredictable as search engine rules and algorithms change all the
time. That’s why there are other techniques that resurface aside from Black Hat and White Hat, including guest posting. But ultimately, what matters is that marketing tactics must be scalable to generate ROI for your business.
Previously published on The Smitten Wordsmith.
