There is no quick-fix key to online marketing success. Yet, with time and effort utilizing ethical search engine optimization techniques will improve your web site’s ranking and drive more web traffic to your company’s web site. But, the concept to stress here is ethical SEO techniques.
Search engines are all premised on providing their users with the information and web pages that are most relevant to the search query that users type into the search interface. Google’s famed “Don’t Be Evil” corporate ethos restated for SEO-types is: “Don’t rig the system to rank less relevant pages.”
There are a number of “quick-fixes” for web pages and web sites that do not rank well for keyword terms on Google and the other search engines. The downside of such “quick-fixes” – keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, paid and dubious links etc. – is that sooner or later (most often, sooner) the search engines will clue into such well-known “Black Hat” SEO tactics, resulting in a permanent banning of the offensive website, or at least a temporary de-listing until the offensive and misleading tweaks are removed from the site. And Google, Yahoo! and the other search engines reserve a contractual right to de-list a site in their Terms of Service.
The Internet is the much-touted “Information Super Highway”. The price for claiming your roadside frontage is creating relevant content that users are looking for online. There are a raft of “White Hat” techniques that will attract web traffic and users to your website, but each of these requires a sustained effort to create relevant content and link structures. While such “White Hat” or ethical SEO techniques – blogging, article writing, participation in relevant forums and directories – take more effort and time to build a site’s relevancy, their effect is much longer lasting and you do not run the risk of having your site shut down peremptorily as a result of trying to game the system. In a “Don’t be Evil” world, “Content is King”, and the creation of quality content and relevant inbound links to your site is the hallmark of ethical and effective SEO and online marketing.