Most Internet marketers would be well versed of the
importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to
increase their search engine rankings, and thus, improve
the traffic to their sites.
Search for the term "SEO" and you can become an expert
overnight with so many articles and insider tips around
these days.
But if you are a newbie, beware!
Before you try out any new SEO trick, you must be clear
of the various labels used to describe search engine
optimizers (i.e., in terms of their philosophy, approach
and methodology for SEO) as briefly defined below:
-
White Hats - Use "ethical" techniques to get the
Search Engines to rank them highly
The "good guys/gals" of SEO build their site slowly (but
surely), using tactics that are legal or permitted by
the Search Engines. They add good content that is
readable by a human. They never spam the Search Engines
and they also add links manually but tediously. They are
quite advanced in SEO to use only white hat techniques.
-
Black Hats - Use "unethical" techniques to trick the
Search Engines to rank them highly
These are the so-called "bad guys/gals" of SEO. They
take the short cuts. Their techniques are focused on
pleasing the robots or spiders of the Search Engines.
You may not understand what they wrote on their site but
in reality, they did not write for you. In fact, they
did not write the content themselves. Some of their
content are invisible to the human eye. And apparently,
they love spamming, cloaking and automating.
-
Gray Hats - Uses both black and white techniques to
get/trick the Search Engines to rank them highly
Those in between, either knowingly or unknowingly. Their
philosophy may be white but their technique may
sometimes be black. Or they may be color blind -
unknowingly utilizes black hat strategies. Most of us
fall under this label. Surprised? Don't be. You can
safely assume that most newbies to intermediate
marketers wear a gray hat.
Why most
Internet marketers wear a gray hat?
Whatever hat you may be wearing,
you would probably know by now that the probability of
your web site being penalized or banned by the Search
Engines is the highest if you wore a black hat, followed
by gray and white. What it means is that your web
site/online business may be short-lived if you employ
black hats SEO tactics.
This is because the mainstay of the leading Search Engines like
Google, Yahoo! and MSN is to provide the best
Search Engine results for their audience. They are multi
national corporations and can afford to spend
millions just to sniff out black hats strategies, and banish
guilty sites from their search results.
It is not really wrong or illegal (after all, black hats are
only tricking the Search Engines, not the humans, right?) to
be the "bad guy/gal". But black hats are essentially
experts in their field, just like the white hats. They know the Search Engines'
algorithm inside out. That is why they can find a
loophole and trick the Search Engines to give their
sites higher rankings. They usually have already taken into account the risks and
consequences of their income generating or business
model.
In reality however, the average Internet marketers like
you and me, are not a SEO expert. We may think we are an
expert after reading countless SEO guides and tips
ebooks/articles. That is why majority of us wear gray
hats as we tend to be more gullible to black
hats SEO tactics thinking that they are white. That is
why, we must make doubly sure that we wear as white a
hat as we can. Don't even be tempted to wear a gray one.
If you unclear about the distinctions
between a white hat and a black hat, keep abreast of the
latest SEO (white hats tactics only, of course) and
Search Engine news. But the learning
curve is long and like the Internet, the rules of SEO
never remain constant. As we are always under the mercy
of the Search Engines, a SEO technique
may be white this
month but black next month.
How to
make sure that you wear a white hat?
Most of us just don't
have the time to absorb all the information and master
SEO. If we did, we are likely to suffer from information
overload. We have to run the business after all.
It is
more productive to just leave the SEO task to someone
or something so that we can concentrate fully on growing
our business. I can only think of a handful of
options that will ensure that you wear a
white hat most of the time. And essentially, these
options are based on your budget and time.
If you have the financial means then:
-
forget SEO, and splash your financial resources
solely on advertising; or
-
get a widely
acknowledged SEO guru to optimize your web site; or
-
purchase a critically acclaimed SEO software
to do the task (but you may have to install and execute
it yourself, and for stand-alone software, you may have
to get it updated quite frequently to comply with the
ever-changing rules of SEO).
If you are a bit budget-tight like me,
then:
-
master the art of white hats SEO full-time and get
your staff/partner to run the business or vice
versa; or
-
get an
all-in-one web business solution like
Site Build It!
which cost more or less the same as a first-rate SEO software.
Personally, I had chosen the last option after many
years wasted running my business and mastering SEO at
the same time. The only thing that turns white was my
hair, not my hat.
SBI!
not only frees me from the dreary task of SEO but also
from the other technical side of building a web business
like web page design, keyword research, link building
and much more.
Today,
I am still not 100% sure that my hat is really white,
but what I am certain is that my hair color is beginning
to lose its white.
