They've carved out a niche as the go-to experts for businesses looking to boost their online presence and navigate the complex terrain of search engine optimization. Learn more about Langley local business SEO solutions here Small World Marketing's AI-driven approach helped identify untapped niches and optimize content to target those areas. This strategic agility is what sets Small World Marketing apart in the competitive SEO landscape. By integrating social media platforms, forums, and directories into their backlink building efforts, Small World Marketing ensures a comprehensive approach to SEO that yields sustainable, long-term results for your business. Recognizing the significance of user experience, Langley local business SEO solutions SEO specialists also highlight the importance of mobile optimization for business growth.
They understand the power of social media in driving traffic to their clients' websites. Small World Marketing leverages advanced AI tools to analyze competitors, identifying gaps and opportunities for their clients. As they process more data, they become better at forecasting future trends, optimizing website content, and refining advertising campaigns for maximum ROI. These posts keep the business profile fresh and engaging, giving potential customers more reasons to visit. Learn more about Best SEO Solutions Langley, BC here.
One standout example involves a local Langley local business SEO solutions bakery that struggled to gain online visibility. This transparency builds trust and allows for a collaborative relationship where feedback is valued and acted upon. Understanding the significance of localization can significantly boost a business's ability to reach its targeted local audience effectively. By ensuring websites are intuitive and easy to navigate, they facilitate longer visits and lower bounce rates, which search engines interpret as signals of quality and relevance. Meta Tags SEO Langley
By analyzing vast amounts of data, they predict future trends and behaviors, allowing them to adjust strategies in real-time. Search engines constantly update their algorithms to provide better user experiences. As Small World Marketing integrates AI into its strategy, it's not just about keyword stuffing or creating bulk content anymore. They suggest that businesses should focus on publishing original research, insightful blog posts, and helpful guides that offer real value to their audience.
Enhancing website performance further, Small World Marketing focuses on improving user navigation to ensure visitors can effortlessly find what they're looking for. As technology evolves, more consumers are turning to voice-activated devices for their search queries.
Entity Name | Description | Source |
---|---|---|
Digital marketing | Strategies and techniques used to promote products or services online. | Source |
Search engine optimization | The process of improving a website's visibility on search engines. | Source |
Search engine marketing | Marketing strategies aimed at increasing a website's visibility in search engines through paid ads. | Source |
Local search (optimization) | SEO practices focused on improving visibility for local searches. | Source |
A global technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. | Source | |
Google Maps | A web mapping service developed by Google. | Source |
Audit | An examination of records or financial accounts to verify accuracy. | Source |
Google Search Console | A web service by Google that allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility. | Source |
Website audit | The process of evaluating a website's performance, structure, and SEO. | Source |
Anchor text | The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. | Source |
Sitemaps | Files that help search engines understand the structure of a website. | Source |
Web traffic | The amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. | Source |
Meta element | HTML tags that provide metadata about a web page. | Source |
Pay-per-click | An online advertising model where advertisers pay each time their ad is clicked. | Source |
Web design | The process of creating the visual layout and usability of a website. | Source |
The City of Langley, commonly referred to as Langley City, or just Langley, is a municipality in the Metro Vancouver Regional District in British Columbia, Canada. It lies directly east of Surrey, adjacent to the Cloverdale area, and is surrounded elsewhere by the Township of Langley, bordered by its neighbourhoods of Willowbrook to the north, Murrayville to the east, and Brookswood and Fern Ridge to the south.
Moreover, they're committed to transparency and education. The team's approach isn't just about getting their clients' names out there; it's about securing a presence that resonates with the local community and search engines alike. They're aware that a significant portion of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices, so they prioritize mobile-friendly designs.
As they continue to lead the charge in this market transformation, Langley local business SEO solutions's business landscape is set to emerge stronger, more resilient, and infinitely more dynamic. Small World Marketing is diving into the world of voice search optimization, preparing for the next wave of internet users who rely on Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant to find what they need. It's a comprehensive strategy that involves improving site speed, ensuring mobile responsiveness, and creating valuable content that resonates with the target audience. Clients have reported an impressive ROI, often citing increased website traffic, higher conversion rates, and a significant boost in sales. SEO serves as the linchpin in enhancing a business's online visibility and driving its growth.
Langley local business SEO solutions's experts craft customized SEO strategies, ensuring each client's unique needs are met with tailored keyword optimization. Website SEO Langley They understand that today's internet users access websites from a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. AI tools now empower Langley local business SEO solutions companies to analyze their SEO strategies more efficiently and accurately. This meticulous approach extends beyond mere selection; they also optimize content structure, metadata, and even image tags to ensure maximum visibility for these carefully chosen terms.
In an increasingly digital world, the combination of AI and SEO is proving to be a game-changer for enhancing user engagement.
Small World Marketing leverages this intelligence to refine content strategies, making them more aligned with what potential customers are looking for. Small World Marketing's approach has also democratized access to sophisticated marketing strategies, previously the domain of corporations with hefty budgets. Page Speed Langley One standout story involves a family-owned cafe that was barely making ends meet. Internal linking is another critical focus. Whether it's recommending products similar to those previously browsed or presenting articles that align with the user's interests, these strategies ensure that every piece of content feels personally curated.
Small World's approach is hands-on and tailored to each client, ensuring that strategies aren't only innovative but also highly effective in driving targeted traffic and increasing online visibility. Small World Marketing's commitment to these cutting-edge techniques exemplifies their role as pioneers in the SEO field, always looking forward to the next digital breakthrough. Small World Marketing also taps into the power of social media to enhance off-page SEO. In essence, Small World Marketing's comprehensive approach to Google My Business optimization empowers businesses in Langley local business SEO solutions to maximize their digital presence, ensuring they're not just found but also chosen by potential customers.
Predictive analytics is another area where AI is making a significant impact. They're not just about improving rankings; they're focused on delivering measurable results, such as increased website visits, higher conversion rates, and enhanced brand visibility. Social Media SEO Langley Building on the foundation of AI analytics benefits, real-time data insights offer businesses the capability to act on information as it unfolds, ensuring strategies remain highly relevant and responsive. The impact of Small World Marketing's work extends beyond individual success stories.
Technical SEO experts ensure that no backend issue undermines online visibility, while data analysts scrutinize performance metrics to refine strategies continually. It's about being proactive, addressing negative feedback promptly, and amplifying positive sentiments. Moreover, they're continually adjusting their strategies based on performance data and evolving SEO trends. Small World Marketing embodies this understanding, leading the way in crafting strategies that not only get businesses noticed but deeply connected with their target audiences.
Small World Marketing's approach isn't just about creating content-it's about creating the right content at the right time for the right audience, thus maximizing impact and driving results. Small World Marketing's expertise ensures that businesses don't just reach more people-they reach the right people in their community. This means creating content that not only ranks well in search engine results but also meets the needs and interests of potential customers. They knew they could leverage their expertise to fill this void. Search Engine Optimization Langley
Their story isn't just about growth but about pushing boundaries and redefining what's possible in SEO. Langley local business SEO solutions companies can now tailor their marketing strategies with precision, thanks to AI. They're not just attracting more traffic; they're engaging users in a more meaningful way, fostering loyalty, and driving business growth.
The process of building quality backlinks begins with creating valuable, share-worthy content. This meticulous attention to detail ensures visitors stay longer, benefiting both user satisfaction and website performance. By adapting to changes in how their target audience searches online, Small World Marketing keeps businesses in Langley local business SEO solutions competitive in an ever-changing digital landscape. SEO for Tech Companies Langley
The success of Small World Marketing isn't accidental; it's the result of a dedicated team's hard work. Small World Marketing's ability to combine technical SEO with off-page strategies results in a robust, holistic SEO plan that drives predictable customer growth and strengthens online presence. Small World Marketing emphasizes the importance of credibility.
This personalized approach makes content more relatable, encouraging a stronger connection between the brand and its audience. Understanding the significance of your digital footprint paves the way for Small World Marketing to offer a range of key SEO services tailored to enhance online visibility. Implementing this effectively allows search engines to better understand the context of the content, potentially leading to enhanced visibility and richer search results. After implementing Small World Marketing's targeted SEO plan, the cafe saw a 75% increase in organic traffic within the first six months, leading to a substantial rise in foot traffic and a complete turnaround in revenue.
![]() | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (October 2014) |
In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website.[1] Briefly, link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks (usually called links) to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.[2]
Editorial links are the links not acquired from paying money, asking, trading or exchanging. These links are attracted because of the good content and marketing strategies of a website. These are the links that the website owner does not need to ask for as they are naturally given by other website owners.[3]
Resource links are a category of links, which can be either one-way or two-way, usually referenced as "Resources" or "Information" in navbars, but sometimes, especially in the early, less compartmentalized years of the Web, simply called "links". Basically, they are hyperlinks to a website or a specific web page containing content believed to be beneficial, useful and relevant to visitors of the site establishing the link.
In recent years, resource links have grown in importance because most major search engines have made it plain that—in Google's words—"quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating".[4]
Search engines measure a website's value and relevance by analyzing the links to the site from other websites. The resulting “link popularity” is a measure of the number and quality of links to a website. It is an integral part of a website's ranking in search engines. Search engines examine each of the links to a particular website to determine its value. Although every link to a website is a vote in its favor, not all votes are counted equally. A website with similar subject matter to the website receiving the inbound link carries more weight than an unrelated site, and a well-regarded website (such as a university) has higher link quality than an unknown or disreputable website.[5][self-published source?]
The text of links helps search engines categorize a website. The engines' insistence on resource links being relevant and beneficial developed because many artificial link building methods were employed solely to spam search engines, i.e. to "fool" the engines' algorithms into awarding the sites employing these unethical devices undeservedly high page ranks and/or return positions.
Google has cautioned site developers to avoid "free-for-all" links, link-popularity schemes, and the submission of a site to thousands of search engines, given that these tactics are typically useless exercises that do not affect the ranking of a site in the results of the major search engines.[6] For many years now, the major [which?] search engines have deployed technology designed to "red flag" and potentially penalize sites employing such practices.[7]
These are the links acquired by the website owner through payment or distribution. They are also known as organically obtained links. Such links include link advertisements, paid linking, article distribution, directory links and comments on forums, blogs, articles and other interactive forms of social media.[8]
A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites, to ensure mutual traffic. For example, Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob's website links to Alice's website and Alice's website links to Bob's website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process. In 2005, with their Jagger 2 update, Google stopped giving credit to reciprocal links as it does not indicate genuine link popularity.[9]
User-generated content such as blog and forum comments with links can drive valuable referral traffic if it's well-thought-out and pertains to the discussion of the post on the blog.[10] However, these links almost always contain the Nofollow or the newer ugc attribute which signal that Google shouldn't take these into its ranking considerations.[11]
Website directories are lists of links to websites which are sorted into categories. Website owners can submit their site to many of these directories. Some directories accept payment for listing in their directory while others are free.
Social bookmarking is a way of saving and categorizing web pages in a public location on the web. Because bookmarks have anchor text and are shared and stored publicly, they are scanned by search engine crawlers and have search engine optimization value.
Image linking is a way of submitting images, such as infographics, to image directories and linking them back to a specific URL.
Also known as guest posting, is a popular SEO technique that consists of writing a piece of content for another website with the goal of getting more visibility and possibly link back to the author's website. According to Google, such links are considered unnatural and should be generally containing the Nofollow attribute.[12]
In early incarnations, when Google's algorithm relied on incoming links as an indicator of website success, Black Hat SEOs manipulated website rankings by creating link-building schemes, such as building subsidiary websites to send links to a primary website. With an abundance of incoming links, the prime website outranked many reputable sites. However, the conflicts of being devalued by major search engines while building links could be caused by web owners using other black hat strategies. Black hat link building refers explicitly to the process of acquiring as many links as possible with minimal effort.
The Penguin algorithm was created to eliminate this type of abuse. At the time, Google clarified its definition of a "bad" link: “Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme.”
With Penguin, it wasn't the quantity of links that improved a site's rankings but the quality. Since then, Google's web spam team has attempted to prevent the manipulation of their search results through link building. Major brands including J.C. Penney, BMW, Forbes, Overstock.com, and many others have received severe penalties to their search rankings for employing spammy and non-user friendly link building tactics.[13]
On October 5, 2014, Google launched a new algorithm update Penguin 3.0 to penalize those sites who use black hat link building tactics to build unnatural links to manipulate search engines. The update affected 0.3% English Language queries all over the world.[14]
Black hat SEO could also be referred to as Spamdexing, which utilizes other black SEO strategies and link building tactics.[15] Some black hat link building strategies include getting unqualified links from and participating in Link farm, link schemes and Doorway page.[6] Black Hat SEO could also refer to "negative SEO," the practice of deliberately harming another website's performance.
White hat link building strategies are those strategies that add value to end users, abide by Google's term of service and produce good results that could be sustained for a long time. White hat link building strategies focus on producing high-quality as well as relevant links to the website. Although more difficult to acquire, white hat link building tactics are widely implemented by website owners because such kind of strategies are not only beneficial to their websites' long-term developments but also good to the overall online environment.
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1][2] SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[3] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers.[4]
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters only needed to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[5] The process involves a search engine spider/crawler crawls a page and storing it on the search engine's own server. A second program, known as an indexer, extracts information about the page, such as the words it contains, where they are located, and any weight for specific words, as well as all links the page contains. All of this information is then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Website owners recognized the value of a high ranking and visibility in search engine results,[6] creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term.[7]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were inaccurate or incomplete, created the potential for pages to be mischaracterized in irrelevant searches.[8][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated some attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[9] By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engine and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[10]
By heavily relying on factors such as keyword density, which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[11] Since the success and popularity of a search engine are determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[12] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[13] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[14]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization.[15][16] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[17] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status.
In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products. In response, many brands began to take a different approach to their Internet marketing strategies.[18]
In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[19] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[20] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[21] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link-building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[22]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.[23] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization and have shared their personal opinions.[24] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[25] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[26]
In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[27] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat any no follow links, in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[28] As a result of this change, the usage of nofollow led to evaporation of PageRank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally, several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash, and JavaScript.[29]
In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[30] On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts, and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google Caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[31] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[32]
In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. However, Google implemented a new system that punishes sites whose content is not unique.[33] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[34] Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it really focuses on spammy links[35] by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from. The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. Hummingbird's language processing system falls under the newly recognized term of "conversational search", where the system pays more attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query rather than a few words.[36] With regards to the changes made to search engine optimization, for content publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.
In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing, but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.[37] In terms of search engine optimization, BERT intended to connect users more easily to relevant content and increase the quality of traffic coming to websites that are ranking in the Search Engine Results Page.
The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine-indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[38] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[39] in addition to their URL submission console.[40] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed to crawl for a cost per click;[41] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by search engines. The distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[42]
Mobile devices are used for the majority of Google searches.[43] In November 2016, Google announced a major change to the way they are crawling websites and started to make their index mobile-first, which means the mobile version of a given website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index.[44] In May 2019, Google updated the rendering engine of their crawler to be the latest version of Chromium (74 at the time of the announcement). Google indicated that they would regularly update the Chromium rendering engine to the latest version.[45] In December 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service. The delay was to allow webmasters time to update their code that responded to particular bot User-Agent strings. Google ran evaluations and felt confident the impact would be minor.[46]
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> ). When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish to crawl. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login-specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[47] In 2020, Google sunsetted the standard (and open-sourced their code) and now treats it as a hint not a directive. To adequately ensure that pages are not indexed, a page-level robot's meta tag should be included.[48]
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to important pages may improve its visibility. Page design makes users trust a site and want to stay once they find it. When people bounce off a site, it counts against the site and affects its credibility.[49] Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrases so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's metadata, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL canonicalization of web pages accessible via multiple URLs, using the canonical link element[50] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the URL all count towards the page's link popularity score. These are known as incoming links, which point to the URL and can count towards the page link's popularity score, impacting the credibility of a website.[49]
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engine companies recommend as part of good design ("white hat"), and those techniques of which search engines do not approve ("black hat"). Search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods and the practitioners who employ them as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO.[51] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[52]
An SEO technique is considered a white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[15][16][53] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the online "spider" algorithms, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[54] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines or involve deception. One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off-screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between the black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but do not act in producing the best content for users. Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for the use of deceptive practices.[55] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[56]
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective, such as paid advertising through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals. Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of designing, running, and optimizing search engine ad campaigns. Its difference from SEO is most simply depicted as the difference between paid and unpaid priority ranking in search results. SEM focuses on prominence more so than relevance; website developers should regard SEM with the utmost importance with consideration to visibility as most navigate to the primary listings of their search.[57] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high-quality web pages to engage and persuade internet users, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[58][59] In November 2015, Google released a full 160-page version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public,[60] which revealed a shift in their focus towards "usefulness" and mobile local search. In recent years the mobile market has exploded, overtaking the use of desktops, as shown in by StatCounter in October 2016, where they analyzed 2.5 million websites and found that 51.3% of the pages were loaded by a mobile device.[61] Google has been one of the companies that are utilizing the popularity of mobile usage by encouraging websites to use their Google Search Console, the Mobile-Friendly Test, which allows companies to measure up their website to the search engine results and determine how user-friendly their websites are. The closer the keywords are together their ranking will improve based on key terms.[49]
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantee and uncertainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[62] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's search engine ranking, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[63] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[64] In addition to accessibility in terms of web crawlers (addressed above), user web accessibility has become increasingly important for SEO.
Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[65] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[66] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[67] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[67] As of June 2008, the market share of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[68] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.
As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable example markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the Czech Republic, where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[67]
On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[69][70]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. KinderStart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit, and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[71][72]
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They seamlessly integrate SEO with PPC campaigns, ensuring a cohesive digital marketing strategy. By analyzing data from both, they optimize for higher traffic and better conversion rates, leveraging each channel's strengths to boost overall performance.
Certain industries in Langley, particularly e-commerce and local services, have seen greater success with Small World Marketing's SEO services due to their tailored strategies that effectively target and engage the specific audience demographics.
Small World Marketing works closely with clients' in-house teams, sharing insights and strategies to ensure both teams' efforts complement each other. They focus on open communication and joint planning to boost the SEO results effectively.