What is an SEO Consultant?
Before we can adequately describe the role of Google SEO Consultants,
the terminology associated with search engine optimisation (SEO) needs
to be defined.
Google:
As most internet users know, Google is the best known and most used
internet search engine on the planet. Founded in 1998 by two graduate
students from Stanford University, Google is now used to carry out
around 75 percent of all web searches. Its market share varies between
countries, from around 85 percent in Western Europe, 40 percent in the
USA and Japan where Yahoo has a strong presence, to less than 10 percent
in China where Baidu is the market leading search engine. In order to
be successful, a website needs to be high in the search engine rankings,
particularly in Google's rankings as a result of its dominant position.
Search Engine Optimisation:
Search engine optimisation (or optimization) is the technique whereby
a webmaster optimises the structure of web pages so that they appear
high in a search engine's rankings.
Search engines operate 'crawler' programs that search for web pages
across the internet and index the links between them. The search engines
use complex algorithms to calculate the popularity of pages in order to
create the all important rankings that are displayed when a user makes a
search using Google or one of its competitors.
Emergence of the SEO Consultant
When search engines first appeared in the mid 1990s, webmasters could
simply submit web page URLs (addresses) to the search engines, so that
their websites would appear in the search engine listings. The early
search engine algorithms used meta tag keywords included in web pages to
calculate their rankings. Website creators quickly realised that
carefully chosen meta tags could increase their search engine rankings.
This use (and abuse) of meta tags led to the concept of search engine
optimization, a term first used in 1996. In addition to the abuse of
meta tags, unscrupulous webmasters have also attempted to improve their
rankings by linking their websites to an increasing number of other
sites, many of them bogus. To counteract the increasing manipulation of
search engine rankings, search engine operators were forced to refine
their algorithms, a process that continues to this day.
Google SEO Consultants
Research has shown that intelligent web design can significantly
increase traffic to your website and that the services of a leading
Google SEO consultancy can help increase your ROI.
Because of Google's dominance in the search engine market, many
website owners consider employing Google SEO consultants to improve the
PageRank (Google's web page ranking system) of their websites. The
leading search engine providers are understandably secretive about the
algorithms that they use because of the importance of the rankings to
website owners. This is where the expertise of a skilled Google SEO
consultant can really make a quantifiable difference to your website.
Google SEO Techniques
Search engine optimisation techniques used by Google SEO consultants
can be broadly characterised into two types, White Hat and Black Hat -
remember the old Western films!
White Hat SEO
SEO consultants who optimise websites using White Hat methods are
unlikely to cause antipathy with Google and the other search engine
operators. White Hat SEO follows search engine operators' rules and aims
to provide good rankings on a long term basis using legitimate SEO
practices.
Black Hat SEO
The aim of Google SEO consultants who employ Black Hat methods is to
increase websites' PageRank by using techniques designed to deceive the
search engine algorithms. This may result in short term improvements in
rankings but could increase the risk of websites being de-listed by
Google for using dishonest practices to manipulate the rankings.
SEO Consultants Relationships with Google
Google does not directly endorse SEO consultants, so consultants'
marketing claims regarding their relationship with Google should always
be viewed with that fact in mind. Nevertheless, any reputable Google SEO
consultant should be able to improve the ranking of a website without
incurring the wrath of Google.
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