Search Engine Optimisation, alternatively referred to SEO or Search Engine Placement is a kind of Online Marketing used to maximise the chances of a business getting online visits from the right sort of visitor and in the end achieving good business from that visit. A good Search Engine Optimization Company will only use ethical means to enhance the Search Engine Placement on a search engine’s search results page for a website.

The starting point of ethical optimisation is in depth analysis and use of keywords and phrases that a surfer is likely to use in and around a business’s website. The Search Engine Optimization Company should agree the keywords to be used with the business owners, because this keyword list will form the basis of payments made by the business for its improved Search Engine Placement.

References or links to the client site, especially from other web-sites that are relevant will also improve its profile and importance with the search engines. A website with more of these back links will naturally appear more popular. The right links in the right places help both the receiver and the giver.

These methods are also supported by the creation of various articles mentioning the client’s business. These articles are then widely published around the internet. The articles will contain back linkslinks that connect with the client website.

These techniques, sometimes known as White Hat methods, normally enjoy better long-term success. They enhance the search from a human point of view rather than the pure mechanics of a search. They adhere to the rules and policies laid down by the search engines. Optimisation using ethical techniques will not only enhance the client success rate but also improve the reputation of the client with potential customers and search engines. This also reflects well on the Search Engine Optimisation Company and the reliability of the search engines themselves for Online Marketing.

As with many types of business, there are many ways of achieving the desired results. Unethical techniques can be applied aggressively for better short term impact, but with long-term consequences. They may even result in a company’s website being actively banned from search engines. However, Optimisers employing these methods (referred to in some circles as Black Hat methods) seem to believe that a damaged reputation is an acceptable price of that gain, not worrying about the long-term future.

One popular method used was spamdexing, or keyword stuffing, which involves overloading a web page with keywords to make the page seem more relevant to a search robot. Such inappropriate use of keywords could, in the past, result in a search engine giving a mistakenly high priority to an irrelevant website. This overloading or Keyword Stuffing was frequently done by making keywords invisible to someone viewing the web site. Keyword stuffing is sometimes still employedused as a way of directing searchers to a doorway page, an intermediate web site usually owned by the optimizer. This site is then used to direct searchers to the client’s site instead of allowing the searcher to pass directly from the search results list to the actual site that he is seeking. This result is likely to make a searcher return [spin]straight away to the search engine results in the hope of finding a more useful outcome with another company and can [spin]result in an undeserved distrust of that search engine.