Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tool that gives a webpage a higher ranking and increased visibility in a search engine's organic search results. Organic search results are generated by a search engine's algorithm rather than by paid or media relations-earned product placement. Pages that appear earlier or more frequently or are higher ranked in a search engine result page (SERP) receive more visitors. Search engine optimization targets different kinds of search, including but not limited to image, local, academic or scholarly, video, and industry-specific searches. By understanding SEO, public relations professionals can use other techniques such as sentiment analysis and conversation monitoring in order to better craft dialogue and messages to reach a larger percentage of an intended audience.

A search engine creates an internal database of webpages and then searches them according to an internal index to return results. Search engines rely on spiders or crawlers—software algorithms that search Web servers and follow hyperlinks— to search and store webpages within the search engine database. The system then parses these stored pages according to keywords and key phrases to create a keyword index database that can be searched later. Search engines also use algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, to assign importance to certain pages. The PageRank algorithm computes the reputation of the page and its relevance to the user by analyzing how often the page has been updated, how many other pages link to or cite the page, and the quality of the linking or citing pages.

SEO professionals analyze how search engines work to maximize their clients’ pages’ chances of being featured prominently among search results. When site operators began optimizing in the mid-1990s, they simply submitted the page address to various search engines to receive attention from the engine's crawler. Contemporary search engines catalog both on-page factors, such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links, and site structure, and off-page factors, such as the quantity and importance of external links to the page. Google claims to use more than 200 factors when ranking sites, but search engine companies closely guard their algorithms to prevent “gaming” of their search engine, so this cannot be verified. Search engine optimization service providers study patents held by various search engine companies to gain insight into their algorithms, or attempt to reverse-engineer them.

Employing overly aggressive SEO techniques can result in being banned from search results. Techniques that break search engine company regulations and terms of use or are looked upon by the SEO community as unethical are referred to as “black hat” SEO techniques. In 2005, Traffic Power allegedly used black hat SEO techniques and was subsequently banned along with some of their clients by Google. However, many of the black hat SEO techniques, such as BlogPing (BP), can be used in an acceptable fashion by “white hat” or legal SEO practitioners. Black hat BP consists of establishing a large number of blogs, linking them together, and pinging them, or sending messages that the blog has been updated. The white hat version involves pinging only a few links, which still attracts crawlers in just a few days.

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