Search Engine Optimization or simply SEO is a collection of techniques and methods applied by webmasters to enhance their website rankings on leading online search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The primary objective of any webmaster is to make sure that his/her website is listed in the top ten search results provided by search engines. Webmasters primarily carry out two types of SEO techniques: white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat SEO techniques involve organic and search engine compliant methods, whereas black hat SEO involves inorganic techniques that may be penalized by search engines.
Traditionally, these two techniques have been in practice ever since the conception of search engine enabled results. Most internet users rely on search engines to guide them to their desired online location and also rely on them to pull out keyword related websites and topics. As this trend is on the ascendancy, website owners and online businesses are directly dependent on search engines to advertise and market their website’s online presence. Due to this scenario, webmasters are compelled to adhere to the publisher guidelines issued by search engines.
With over 500 million queries being searched every day on Google, it has become a premier search engine for internet enthusiasts. Since its inception in 1997, Google Search has grown in leaps and bounds by providing reliable and relevant organic search results. To maintain a high level of consistency in providing relevant search results, Google has developed and designed automated programs that crawl the internet day in day out. These crawlers are called Google bots and they endlessly index and rank content.
Google has also developed algorithms that determine the rank of a website. According to Google, PageRank is an analysis algorithm with which it determines the numerical weightage of a website. Based on the weight-age, PageRank may vary anywhere from zero to ten depending on the number of backlinks, a number of visitors, and various other factors.
Of late, Google is focusing on developing algorithms that can screen low-quality websites and spamming websites optimized using black hat SEO techniques. For this purpose, Google rolled out the Panda update in February 2019. The main objective of Google Panda was to detect and penalize websites trying to manipulate search engine indexing methods.
With the inclusion of Google Panda, search engine crawlers can now detect and screen black hat SEO techniques such as keyword and meta-tag stuffing, creation of doorway pages, creation of scraper websites, link spamming, and cloaking. Google Panda release in 2019, advertently changed the way webmasters go about their SEO practices.
To further beef up its efforts against policy breaches and spamming, Google rolled out the Penguin update in April 2019. This time around Google’s Penguin update added far better capabilities to search engine crawlers. This update allowed crawlers to rule webmasters breaching publisher guidelines with an iron fist by hitting the website with a Google Penalty.
A Google penalty would be the death blow for any online business, as the online traffic to your website would completely cease, and in certain cases it may result in the removal of the website from the search results.
With Google focused on the development of such spam-detecting algorithms, it is ascertained that our interaction with search engines will be an authentic one.