SEO marketing is a set of techniques aimed at increasing website traffic or recognition online.
Most commonly though, these methods are used to boost traffic and increase the magnetization of a given website. Search engine marketing can be free or paid, white or black hat, and internal or external. In this article, we will give an overview of the most common techniques and possibilities provided by most SEO services companies.
Free vs. Paid SEO Marketing
The modern search engine marketing techniques can be free or paid. One of the most popular methods is writing content – the content can be written by the website owner or outsourced to a freelance writer. The second popular technique is link building – this can also be done by the website owner, or ordered from an SEO company. Some marketing techniques always require payment – PPC (Pay per Cost) ads and contextual links. PPC ads can be purchased from large search engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo). Contextual links can be purchased from specialized services, such as AdBrite.
White vs. Black Hat SEO Marketing
Some of the modern search engine marketing techniques are considered appropriate by the search engines (white hat,) while others are considered inappropriate (black hat.) The white hat techniques include: keyword optimization, building back links from relevant sites, using PPC and contextual links, and more. Black hat techniques include: cloaking (presenting users and search engines with two versions of content), link spamming, participating in link farms, using gateway pages, and more. Many of the modern SEO marketing methods are in the middle – these are called “gray hat” methods. The fact is that search engines have diverse guidelines, and something that is accepted by one SE may be frowned upon by another one.
Internal vs. External SEO Marketing
Internal SEO are the changes made on the target website, in order to improve its visibility in the search engines. These methods include keyword optimization in the text and meta-tags, using keyword-optimized alternative texts for images, and more. External SEO is anything that is done on other websites to boost the target site. For the most part, this is back-link building.
It is important to remember that most any website requires some SEO marketing, as it is virtually impossible to gain high SE positions, or increase traffic and profits without the use of certain techniques. As they say, “content is king.” This is true. However, without marketing, not too many people will be able to locate this content through the search engines. The most important aspects about SEO marketing is to try to abstain from all the shady and blatantly black-hat techniques, arm yourself with patience, and keep working on your online business until you see success. Most any online business can become successful, provided that the website owner implements a sound SEO marketing strategy.
