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By tracking the keywords that people most often search for, a company can direct its content to people searching those terms to generate targeted traffic. To do this, they weave certain keywords into their articles so that they can be picked up by search engines. This has proven a highly effective tool, as the content is presented to people who are actually interested in the product (since they looked up the keywords).
However, it has also led to keyword abuse by some websites. These sites feature a string of meaningless keywords on their pages, making them hidden by matching them with the background color. Some sites use a keyword-laden welcome page to draw in users, then put the real content in another page. Such deceptive strategies are known as black-hat SEO, as opposed to clean, useful content known as white-hat SEO. Search engines now use more intelligent crawlers that rate an article`s context along with keyword density.
Inbound links
Search engines also rank websites according to their popularity, or the number of pages that link back to them. The more inbound links a page has, the more important it is by search engine standards. That is why websites strive to get themselves linked by as many sites as possible, usually via link exchange. Reciprocal Link Exchange is another form of search engine optimization, which involves exchanging inbound links with another site to improve search engine ranking for both parties. It can be as simple as approaching the site owner and asking for an exchange, or via a link exchange directory provided by a web service.
One thing to remember about link exchange is that both websites should be under the same category. That way, when the relevant keywords are looked up, they both have a fair chance of turning up on the results page. Otherwise, one party`s link might appear on the wrong search page. Some search engines already apply restrictions on link popularity to prevent such incidents.
Seo 20
