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Search engine optimization ('''SEO''') is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a Web Site from Search Engine s via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") Search Results . Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including Image Search , Local Search , and industry-specific Vertical Search engines. As a Marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search Algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully Spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique Content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as "Black Hat" SEO or Spamdexing , use methods such as Link Farm s and Keyword Stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove their listings. The Initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of Consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and Design . The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, Menus , Content Management Systems and Shopping Carts that are easy to optimize. HISTORY Webmaster s and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloguing the early Web . Initially, all a Webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL , to the various engines which would send a Spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be Indexed .1 The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an Indexer , extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, as well as any and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date. Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both , 1997 .2 Early versions of search Algorithm s relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword Meta Tag , or index files in engines like ALIWEB . Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable, because some webmasters abused meta tags by including irrelevant keywords to artificially increase page impressions for their website and to increase their ad revenue. Cost Per Thousand Impressions was at the time the common means of Monetizing content websites. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent meta data in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches, and fail to rank for relevant searches.3 Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.4 By relying so much on factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their Results Pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking Algorithm s, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. While graduate students at Stanford University , Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed "backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical Algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank , is a function of the quantity and strength of Inbound Link s.5 PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer. Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.6 Off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis were considered, as well as on-page factors, to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaining PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or Link Farm s, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of Link Spamming .7 To reduce the impact of link schemes, As Of 2007 , search engines consider a wide range of undisclosed factors for their ranking algorithms. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.8 The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft 's Live Search , do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin , Barry Schwartz , Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen , have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.910 SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.11 WEBMASTERS AND SEARCH ENGINES By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek , adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.12 Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,13 was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers. SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal profiled a company, Traffic Power , that allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.14 Wired reported the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.15 Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.16 Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program17 to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.18 Getting listings The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or Cost Per Click .19 Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.20 Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and competitors.21 Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.22 Google offers Google Sitemaps , for which an XML type feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.23 Search Engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when Crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.24 Preventing listings See Also: Robots Exclusion Standard To avoid undesirable search listings, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard Robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a Meta Tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the Root Directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.25 WHITE HAT VERSUS BLACK HAT SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as Spamdexing . Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.26 White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.27 |
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