SEO (Search engine optimization)
What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym of Search Engine OptimizationThis acronym reffers to all the techniques and strategies used to optimize web pages with the sole objective of reaching the highest rank in search results (in the results that search engines return to the users’ search intentions).
1. SEO and SEM
Newcomers to digital marketing, often don’t know very well the differences between SEO and SEM, although both actions are opposites.
- SEO. It is the strategy used for organic rank boosting, so the goal is to organically optimize ranking on search engines, without paying for it.In an SEO strategy you don’t pay Google or any search engine to gain positions in the SERP (search results based on content). That is, only the quality of the content and its value, makes it get a higher place in the search results.
- SEM. Now we are talking about paid campaigns; SEM refers to strategies that include the use of paid ads to show the url in search results, we can’t talk about SEM without payment.To work with a SEM strategy, an advertising campaign should be created in search engines so that when a user is searching for a specific information, our website is displayed before the organic results, the result is displayed as an ad, provided that it is in accordance with the search intent entered by the user.
2. SEO on-site and SEO off-site
If you want to improve your strategy, it is necessary to work both on-site SEO, focused on the relevance of the content internally, as well as off-site SEO, which focuses on external factors that improve SEO.
- SEO on-site. Here we are talking about actions that will improve the content and the website, so it will be correctly indexed by search engines.This includes code optimization, keyword selection, ease of use, loading time, etc.
- SEO off-site. The goal here is to focus on factors external to the website, but which could affect its ranking.
Some of the most important factors in off-site SEO are: the number of links redirecting to the website and their quality, relevance in social networks, notoriety of the places where we are mentioned, the time visitors spend on our website, number of pages visited by users, etc.?
3. Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO
There are, so to speak, two different types of SEO techniques. On the one hand we have Black Hat SEO, which uses techniques that are not allowed by search algorithms, and White Hat SEO where the guidelines allowed by search engines are used.
- Black Hat SEO. It is the use of unethical or prohibited techniques in the rules of web search engines, to improve the search engine ranking of one or more web pages.Black hat SEO can include actions such as Cloaking, spamming in forums and blog comments, Spinning or Keyword Stuffing. This can help us to achieve results in the short term but its use is not recommended, since we will be penalized if we are discovered and we can be excluded from search results.
- White Hat SEO. These are the actions that, while focusing on improving the positioning of our site, are ethically correct and comply with the guidelines set by search engines to position a web page.They are therefore all those techniques or actions that seek to provide pages with more relevance for users, in order to respond appropriately to the user’s search intentions and obtain higher positions.