What is SEO ?

What do you do when you want to know something, want to get some information or want to get answers for some of your questions? Let me guess what you are thinking. Google! Right? Correct me if I am wrong. Today, Google has become our habit. Most of us are quite familiar with Google but might be completely ignorant about the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

This is one of the most discussed topics over the Internet and also one of the most competitive industries across the globe. If you have been delving into the online world then you have a better understanding of the impact of good SEO not only for website owners but also for Internet surfers. The world seems to be so incomplete without Google as the entire online world seems to be revolving around it.

SEO is the Heartbeat of Online Businesses

Whether we use a PC, laptop, tablet or a smart phone, we look at Google to search for anything that we need out of the Internet. Google has emerged as a one stop shop to feed all our online needs and the best part is that it is doing it quite efficiently. Google specializes in filtering out the most relevant information. It is accessible at our fingertips in a matter of seconds.

This is all because of search engine optimization; most commonly known as SEO. It constitutes the heartbeat of online businesses operating over the Internet. Search Engine Optimization gets natural organic traffic for your websites against your relevant searched keywords by ranking your site higher on Google SERP.

Google SEO Gets Most Relevant Content

In the last couple of years, Google has emerged as one of the largest online search engines to fetch answers to our queries. Offering the most relevant and valued information against the relevant keywords searched has been the biggest USP of Google. Most of the search engines had been focusing to do the same but luckily Google topped the charts in declaring content as the king.

Google tries to fetch the quality content on its SERP and
SEO helps us to submit that quality content in a presentable format to Google.

Today, an entire Search Engine Optimization industry has been built up in parallel to support Google in its quest to find the most relevant information from the Internet. Search Engine Optimization is not a new concept but with the way Google has taken it up, it is revolutionizing old SEO concepts by substituting them with the new SEO concepts continuously. After all, we all have the same objective – Offer the relevant quality content to the end consumers.

Why to Hire Search Engine Optimization Practitioner ?

Google Penguin, Google Panda and the latest Google algorithm update named Google Hummingbird have changed the entire dynamics of the Search Engine Optimization industry. It is one of those industries that keep on changing rapidly so as to discourage the use of spammy practices out of its pursuit. It is quite common to discover one fine morning that whatever you have learned, preached and practiced about SEO has turned obsolete and you need to start it all fresh again.

Most of the SEO Consultants and SEO Analysts have to keep on learning as well as experimenting with the rules of the ever changing Search Engine Optimization industry without any failure. Today, SEO is an indispensable part of all websites, irrespective of the platform or language used for its development. A large percentage of visitors to any site come from organic traffic directed by Google. Search Engine Optimization practitioners ensure that the structure of your site is SEO friendly and well aligned with the Google SEO guidelines.

Good Site SEO Attracts New Business Opportunities

Online businesses are striving hard to rank on top of Google SERP, while businesses missing from the Internet radar are trying to create a spot for themselves. As more and more people are using the Internet to find information about various products and services, more and more business opportunities are emerging everyday.

Consumers are getting smarter day by day and so you as an online business owner need to get smarter too. If you can not get smarter, your competitors are going to snatch this lucrative business opportunity out of your hands. Survival of the fittest seems to be the mantra behind the success of modern online businesses.

Google SEO Thrives to Bring Consumer Satisfaction

Google SEO is not a rocket science and Google recommends some SEO guidelines to be followed by site owners while building up their sites. Google SEO guidelines are framed in such a way so that the relevancy of the content on your site can be evaluated for its relevancy against the searched keywords.

Based on the relevancy and usefulness of the results to the end users, all the filtered websites are ranked on Google SERP. Google wants to present the most relevant information at the top of Google SERP so that the users are satisfied with the information presented on the displayed sites filtered by Google.

No One can Guarantee #1 Ranking on Google SERP

I remember a picture shared by someone on Google+ as the Search Engine Optimization humor of the week. With due respect and credit to its creator (although, I don’t know who created it but it is worth the mention at this point in time), I believe it is worth the share.

“Then the client said – I want to be ranked by tomorrow”.

It is a bitter but the real truth of the SEO industry. Some of the clients don’t understand that ranking on top of Google SERP is not easy. Moreover, it takes time and efforts applied continuously in the right direction. There are a number of Google ranking factors including social media marketing, quality of backlinks, number of backlinks, G+1 shares, Google Authorship, Google Places, Google Business and many more to name.

Even Google does not guarantee #1 ranking on its search engine results page. Google has mentioned it very clearly in its SEO guidelines for Webmasters so how can you expect any SEO Analyst or SEO Consultant to offer that guarantee to you ! It is the biggest misnomer in the Search Engine Optimization industry and if someone guarantees #1 ranking then get ready to experience some big trouble soon.

White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO

The Search Engine Optimization industry is divided into two groups – Good guys and bad guys. Professionally, we call them white hat SEO practitioners and black hat SEO practitioners. Black hat SEO practitioners may offer some form of guarantee as well as promise of quick ranking to your website on Google SERP. You will even be happy to see your website on top of Google SERP in a short frame of time. Ironically, you may be completely unaware about the black hat SEO practices implemented on your site to move it quickly up on Google SERP.

Spammy SEO tricks are bound to get identified by Google sooner or later. Once you are caught using black hat SEO techniques for ranking your sites higher a manual penalty is imposed on your site as well as you stand a high risk of losing your ranking and getting your site deindexed by Google. Once a Google spam penalty is imposed on your site, it would be very difficult to get Google indexing back on your site. It may take weeks, months or even more time even after treating all the spammy links successfully.

White Hat SEO Practitioners Follow Google SEO Guidelines

White hat SEO techniques on the other hand are a sure shot way to get your site ranked high on Google SERP but it takes time and effort. Good SEO Consultants and good SEO Analysts follow all Google SEO guidelines as this safeguards your site from getting any penalties from Google on account of Google Search Engine Optimization guidelines violation. You must have lots of patience when white hat SEO practitioners start improving the SEO of your website. It will never happen in a day or two.

White Hat SEO practitioners work in alignment with Google policies to improve the overall structure of your site so as not to make it only search engine friendly but also to make it human friendly. After all, websites are not developed for machines but for humans. Never forget that content is the king and will remain the king forever, irrespective of how many algorithm changes are rolled by Google in future. Internet, websites as well as humans have got one common interest area – Quality Content.

The complete story of Search Engine Optimization revolves around quality content and if you are continuously publishing quality content on your site then you have already won more than half the battle of SEO. You only need to follow Google SEO guidelines so that Google bots can collect information from your site easily for indexing. Help from some good white hat SEO practitioners is always an added advantage.

Start implementing white hat SEO practices on your site and start building all the positive signals using best Social Media Marketing practices. Implement Google Authorship to rank higher. Build relations and engage people in healthy conversations. Go slow and take your own time and let me know if I can contribute in anyway to improve your site SEO by following only white hat SEO techniques. It would be a pleasure for me to help.