Introduction To Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization refers to set of activities that are performed to increase number of desirable visitors who come to your site via search engine. These activities may include thing you do to your site itself, such as making changes to your text and HTML code, formatting text or document to communicate directly to the search engine.

Types of SEO
SEO can be classified into two types: White Hat SEO and Black Hat or Spamdexing

WHITE HAT SEO
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered as White Hat if it follows the followings

If it conforms to the search engine's guidelines.

If it does not involves any deception.

It ensures that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

It ensures that a Web Page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.

It ensures the good quality of the web pages.

It ensures the useful content available on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and don't try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and definitely you will get something more.
BLACK HAT OR SPAMDEXING:
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it follows the followings:

Try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception.

Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.

Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.

Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.

Using Hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.

Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This is called Meta tag stuffing.

Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called Keyword stuffing.

Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar key words and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages

Mirror web sites by hosting multiple web sites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.

Mirror web sites by hosting multiple web sites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.

Creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites. This is called Page hijacking.

Key Elements to ethical SEO
Keyword research
It allows you to see which keywords users actually employ to find products and services within your chosen market, instead of making guesses at the keywords you believe are the most popular.

Content development
Content development involves:

Navigational flow and menu structure

Site copy or articles

Headings and sections

Web development
Web development involves:

Text-based site development wherever possible.

Clean and logical site structure.

Proper markup of key page elements.

Link Building
Building links will make up about 60% of your work. There are ways to automate this process using shortcuts, workarounds, and submission services.

Internal linking is also very important. Treat the way you link to your own content same as you would link from an external site.

Webmaster Tools
Webmaster dashboard is provided by both Google and Bing that gives insight into activity by the search engine on any site that has been registered and verified via dashboard.

Dashboards offer a number of tools which allow us to understand how the search engine sees your site. These are the only way to identify crawling, indexing, and the ranking issue with your site.

SEO Do’s and Do’nts
 
Do's
There are various other tips which can help you to optimize your web site for many Search Engines:

Create logs of pages and each page should however contain a minimum of about 200 visible words of text to maximize relevance with Google.

Create a Sitemap, Help, FAQ, About Us, Link to Us, Copyright, Disclaimer, and Privacy Policy pages on mandatory basis.

Create a home page link to each and every web page and provide easy navigation through all the pages.

Pay attention to your dynamic page URLs. Google can crawl and index dynamic pages as long as you don't have more than 2 parameters in the URL.

Check your complete site for broken links. Broken links will reduce your other pages rank as well.

Don't
 
Here is the list of Don't that one should keep in mind all the times:

Don't keep hidden text on your web pages.

Don't create alt image spamming by putting wrong keywords.

Don't use Meta tags stuffing.

Don't use frames and flash on your site.

Don't exchange your links with black listed sites.

Don't try to fool your site visitors by using miss spelled keywords.

Don't send spam emails to thousand of email IDs.

Don't use too much graphics on your site.

Don't create too many doorway pages.

Don't try to create duplicate content of pages.

Don't submit your website many times in a single search engine.

Don't use sub-directory depth more than 1-2.

Don't create too many dynamic pages. Try to convert them into static pages.

Don't bloat your pages with code.

Don't nest your pages.