Search Engine Marketing Firm for Optimization
As a Search Engine Marketing Firm for Optimization (SEO and SEM) in the editing and publishing of all e-communication formats at Communi-Clear first seeks to produce or improve the quantity and quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" search results from popular search engines. Our secondary goal is to maximize the mix of visitor/conversion. The quantity of visitors to a web site is relatively easy to measure through tracking programs at the web site's server or through remote tracking. The quality of visitor traffic can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword completes a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase or requesting further information. Search Engine Optimization is achieved when a balance is struck between meeting the criteria or needs of visitors, other relevant web sites, and search engines.
Search Engines - Friendly SEM and SEO
Search engine marketing through optimization requires carefully planning new web sites or making changes to the source code of an existing website to make the site "Search Engine Friendly." SEO and SEM are most effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site by creating designs, menus, content management systems, and shopping carts that can be optimized easily and effectively. On established sites, the design and creation of maximized pages becomes more difficult and a bit more time consuming—it can be done—it just takes a little longer.
White Hat versus Black Hat
Search engine marketing through optimization employs a wide range of strategies and techniques in the editing and publishing of all e-communication formats to achieve the results desired. This can include: changes to a site's code (often called "on page factors") and obtaining beneficial links from other sites ("off page factors"). The techniques employed in search engine optimization can be divided cleanly into two very different categories:
- Techniques that search engines recommend or approve of as part of good design
- Techniques that search engines do not approve of and the effect of which, they attempt to minimize
A Search engine marketing through optimization tactic, technique, or method is usually classified as "White Hat" if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and/or involves no deception. But in reality, ethics come into play, and true "White Hat SEO" can be more narrowly defined as working within the context of ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
"White Hat" SEO can almost be summed up as creating quality, easily accessible content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to a search engine's searchbots or spiders. White Hat SEO thinking is geared toward quality and accessibility produced and served in a very forthright manner, often within a strict set of guidelines.
"Black Hat" SEO methods are generally those that try to improve rankings in ways, means, methods, or techniques that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception of some sort. This can range from something as simple as hidden text to something a little trickier, like redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is designed to be human friendly. But either way, both methods of trickery would be considered "Black Hat SEO".
The penalties impugned by the search engines for this type of trickery can range from reducing a site's rankings to completely eliminating a website's listings from their database. Penalties such as these can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by manual review.
Optimizing a Site for
Search Engine Marketing Through Optimization
Many factors are taken into consideration when a search engine marketing firm begins the process of optimizing a website, and all of them can be approached or adjusted using "Black Hat" or White Hat" SEO. Some of the more common and better-known factors are:
Ranking Well in Various Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization began around 1997, not long after the first search engines appeared. And it didn't take long before the operators of the search engines recognized that some of the webmasters had figured out loopholes to ranking well. Ranking well on Infoseek was as easy as stealing the source code from a high ranking page, creating your own page with the copied code, and then submitting your URL to the engine to instantly index and rank that page!
Still today, even with the advanced algorithms of search engines like Google, some overly-aggressive site owners and under-handed SEO's have been known to use specially designed programs to automatically churn out sites or employ "Black Hat" techniques that eventually get domains banned from the search engines.
At Communi-Clear, a professional search engine marketing firm, we take an ethical approach to search engine marketing through optimization and communication in general. We believe in the clear, honest communication of quality information, whether for the dispersion of general knowledge and instruction, or to provide a customer or client with the information they need to make an educated decision. As a professional search engine marketing firm, we believe in using all available, ethical techniques for ensuring the widest distribution of that information possible.
After all, what good is information if nobody gets it?
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"Making e-communications clearer"
