Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally divided into two distinct camps known as ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’, though like anything in life there is much gray area in between.  For simplicity, let’s say that ‘white hat’ SEO techniques are what the good guys do and ‘black hat’ is what the nefarious spammers use.  Ultimately their goal is the same though: to rise to the top of the search engine’s (mostly people care about Google) results pages (SERPs).  For our site the Firewood Rack Outlet at Firewood-Rack.net, we have stuck to white hat techniques in an attempt to move up to page one for our most important keyword phrases.

What we’ve tried to do is optimize our on-page SEO as much as possible by making it clear to the visitor and the search engine what each page is about; this is done through meta data and making sure the keywords we’re trying to rank for appear on the page (without ‘stuffing’ the page).  We’ve also tried to internally link the site as much as possible, again so the visitor gets a sense of our intention for the site and the search engine spiders can follow it as well.

Link building is a tougher issue, as you can construe any attempt to link build as an attempt to game the search engine.  We choose to build relationships in our niche and to try to get as many guest posting opportunities through these channels.  By adding value to other people’s sites, they often let us link back to our site.  This gets us direct, targeted traffic as well as raises our profile in the eyes of Google.  How this works specifically is that a link is like a “vote” for our site; the site owner by allowing us to link back is tacitly saying “I like this site and I’m willing to let some of my site’s reputation pass along with the link.”  That’s a very powerful method and truly the key to Google’s success as it’s an ingenious system.