SEO, or search engine optimisation, is fast becoming the first choice for online marketing, for millions of site owners around the world. Indeed, the SEO industry, which started as a home-grown system for optimising websites around the mid-1990s, is now a multi-billion dollar industry, and continuing to grow.
With the rapid growth of SEO as a means of attracting visitors to websites has meant some firms have, perhaps inevitably, moved towards a degree of rule-bending, or rule-flouting, in the hope of gaining quick and easy wins. Some SEO consultants have practiced dubious means of boosting result rankings for their clients.
One such method is known as link spamming flooding various internet sites with numerous links to the promoted website for example, blogs created under false pretences which consist entirely of links: the purpose is to gain high, though entirely bogus link popularity score, one which is in reality bogus. Such practices are known as black hatSEO. However, you can rest assured that the major search are becoming increasingly adept at detecting black hatpractices, and in-fact penalises the sites being promoted, sometimes by deliberately lowering their search result rankings.
Here at SEO Consult, an established search engine optimisation company, with a companion focus on effective web design, we pride ourselves on practicing only white hat SEO: using industry-standard techniques which conform to search engine guidelines such as judicious keyword selection and placement.
Whilst sharp practices embodied by black hat SEO may bring the odd quick fix, white hat SEO in conjunction with clean web design is the far more likely to bring long-term success.