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Search Engine Optimisation

History

Continued

In the mid 1990’s, the owners of websites began to realise the value associated with having their sites not only ranked highly but also visible in search engine results. This created the following opportunities:
“White Hat” SEO - This refers to an “ethical” hacker who focuses on securing and protecting a company's information systems. White hat methods are acceptable to the search engines, and their results tend to be long lasting.
“Black Hat” SEO - It refers to a hacker who compromises networks or computers, or who generates computer viruses. Black hats are fully aware that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently as soon as the search engines uncover their activities.

According to the industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the concept of search engine optimization more than likely came into prominence around 1997.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the method of increasing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from one or more search engines by way of unpaid "natural" or "organic" search results. This is in direct contrast to search engine marketing which deals with paid inclusion.

In essence, the higher a site is positioned in the list of search results, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

Terms:
Website – A website consists of a number of associated web pages (documents which are accessible by way of a web browser), images, videos, etc that can be accessed using a common domain name or IP (Internet Protocol) address. A web site is hosted on at least one web server (which is a computer programme that delivers content, such as a web page), accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network (or LAN).
Search Engine – A web search engine is a mechanism whose purpose is to search for information on the Internet. The search results normally appear in the form of a list and are generally referred to as “hits”. The results may be in the form of web pages, images, information, etc. Search engines operate algorithmically (an algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions in order to complete a specified task).
Search Results – A search engine results page, or SERP, is a list of web pages returned by a search engine responding to a keyword (search term) query. The results will include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description identifying where the keywords have matched the content within the web page. A SERP may relate to a single page of links returned, or to all links returned for a search query.
Search Engine Marketing - Search engine marketing, or SEM, refers to Internet marketing whose aim is to promote websites by maximising their presence in search engine result pages (SERPs) by way of either paid placement of ads (such as pay per click, where advertisers pay only when their ad is clicked, or cost per click, what advertisers pay search engines for a single click on its ad), or contextual advertising (an advertising programme which scans the text of a website for keywords and generates ads on the webpage in harmony with what the user is viewing), or paid inclusion (where the search engine company makes a charge for including websites in their search index).

Articles – How To Succeed