There is a fair amount of discussion on organic Search Engine Optimization at forums, blogs, and web sites about SEO – but how do you know if your SEO strategy is actually organic, or what could be changed to make it more organic?

It isn’t quite as simple as just not using PPC ads. There are a number of characteristics which determine whether or not an SEO campaign is organic. To know if your SEO is organic, see if can you agree with the statements in the following checklist:

- You don’t use paid/guaranteed inclusion services or pay for expedited submission on any of the search engines.

- Your web site’s inbound links (preferably not bought) appear on web pages which have relevant or similar content.

- You don’t use software or online scripts which “mass-submit” your site to huge numbers of search engines or directories.

- None of your site’s search engine listings were bought through pay per click (PPC) sponsored search result programs.

- You don’t apply techniques like “cloaking” or “doorway pages”, which are aimed at deceiving search engine spiders/robots.

- The site doesn’t have lots of useless, automatically generated, or basically identical pages designed to attract hits.

- You haven’t reciprocally linked to web sites which have little or no relevance to the site you are promoting.

- Your SEO strategy includes an emphasis upon optimizing the web site itself (META tags, keyword density, navigation, etc).

- You know that none of your affiliates or other promoters are using any of the above-mentioned techniques to advertise your site.

If you were able to check all of these items, your SEO methods are probably considered organic. However, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with using non-organic SEO, as long as you know that your techniques are effective, up to date, and ethical.

Organic SEO usually provides a more long-term effect than other strategies, and generates traffic from a wider range of search engines without separate efforts. It’s also well-accepted by search engines, isn’t affected by “click fraud”, and generally has a lower ongoing cost.

However, organic SEO techniques typically take longer to start producing hits than PPC or paid inclusion listings. They are also more time-consuming and don’t allow the effectiveness of different keywords, phrases, or page descriptions to be tested as easily.

Actually, not one but several Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct lists can be found on various SEO related web sites. They vary from one to the next, but generally address ethics regarding how the search engines, other SEO firms, and clients should be treated. Read on for more details about the concept of an SEO Code of Ethics.

Most people involved in SEO agree that ethical practices include making realistic claims about the services offered to clients and avoiding deceptive “black hat” search optimization techniques. These measures can be found on most of the above-mentioned Code of Ethics pages.

Many of these Code of Ethics lists also refer to matters of professionalism, such as abstaining from negative public statements about customers or other firms. This prevents retaliatory statements and helps preserve a more positive image of SEO in general.

However, there are some issues in which the role of ethics remains unclear. Some say that guaranteeing high rankings for particular keywords is unethical, while firms offering these guarantees might argue that it is only unethical if the guarantee isn’t genuine.

Another example is the use of automated SEO software. One site’s Code of Ethics lists not using automatic software. On the other hand, it could be said that there’s nothing wrong with software that works properly and applies ethical techniques. Issues involving more than one client competing for the same keyword can also become problematic.

Nonetheless, there are many issues the vast majority of SEO marketers can agree on. Submitting clients’ sites to “FFA” link pages, artificial “keyword stuffing”, trying to deceive searchers into visiting offensive sites, or creating “doorway pages” is generally seen as unethical. The same goes for any practice likely to worsen a client’s search rankings.

As in most professions and industries, the ethical practices of one individual or company providing these services has an impact upon the reputation of SEO in general. Upholding ethics encourages clients to continue using it for promotion and search engines to apply favorable policies.

Basically, ethical SEO practices clearly include being honest to customers and search engines, while forgoing undesirable practices like web page “cloaking.” However, there are disagreements over issues like paid links, social bookmarking, and ranking guarantees which make it difficult to create a single, specific Code of Ethics everyone can agree with.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are the major search engines right now and each of them have lots of rules and algorithms to try and ensure the best results are returned in searches. The purpose of search engine optimization is to have your site rank high in relevant categories. But, there are some tactics to avoid as the major engines see them as unscrupulous and will punish you if they think you are deceiving searchers. Here are a few big ones to avoid.

1.    “Cloaking” redirects, which display different content to search engines and to your visitors.
2.    Having broken links or 404 redirects.
3.    Having duplicate content on your site.
4.    Having non-relevant or artificial links to your site, such as with link farms.
5.    Cross linking to falsely increase a site’s popularity. This is when the owner of multiple sites links all of his or her sites together, even if they aren’t relevant to one another.

Doing any of these along with a number of other “black hat” search engine optimization activities can lead to your site being banned or dropped from search engine rankings. If that were to happen then not only will you lose traffic immediately, you may never get linked to again because other sites will not want to be associated with yours.

A website’s PageRank (or “PR”) on Google can significantly affect how much traffic the site receives from Google search results. However, this is not the only effect the PageRank may have upon a website. Read on to learn more about the true meaning of a site’s PageRank and how Google determines it…

While it is true that a website which is linked to by other sites will generally attain a better PageRank, it is not really this simple. The benefit to a site’s PR is greater as the websites linking to it have higher PageRank levels; thus, if a major website like CNN.com (PR9) were to link to it, there would be a more significant impact.

A site’s rank is also affected by the other webpages it links to; linking to (or getting links from) PR zero sites may have a negative effect. Also, using techniques which Google finds undesirable (selling links, “cloaking”, etc.) can cause the PR to reduce. The higher the rank, the closer to the top of search results (for related keywords) a website will appear, although other factors also play a role in this.

As for the meaning of the rank to a website, it has several implications beyond direct Google search traffic, although it’s true this will often be its most significant effect. The PR determines a site’s placement in several different web directories; additionally, there are some directories which only list sites that exceed a certain PageRank level. Regardless of the true amount of traffic a site receives, the PageRank also plays an important role in determining how much someone will pay for advertising on it, or to purchase the website itself. If the site in question is a directory of some type, people are likely to submit more links and/or articles to it if the PR is high.

Some additional search engines, such as AOL.com and various meta-search sites (like Dogpile.com and Search.com), rely upon Google for some or all of their search results; the PR level will impact the amount of traffic received from these engines as well. If a website participates in reciprocal linking and has a high PR, other sites are also more likely to accept its link exchange requests.

Basically, a high PageRank is gained by obtaining links on other websites with high PRs and avoiding “black hat” methods Google dislikes. A good PageRank level can have significant positive meaning for a website in several different fields, including directories, monetary value, and search engine traffic. At the same time, it is true that a high PR doesn’t automatically give a website traffic, members, or customers.

A search for the well-known phrase “content is king” returns over two million results on Yahoo! Search. It basically means that websites which provide quality content are likely to achieve popularity. However, some site owners and promoters have sought to use certain SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques as a replacement for content. Read on to learn why content is still “king” of SEO…

1. Various undesirable SEO practices which attempt to simulate real content have been cracked down upon by search engines, because of their deceptive nature. These have included putting lots of keywords at the end of a page in small text, or feeding entirely different text to search engine “spiders.” New SEO techniques of this type can still be temporarily effective, but search engines eventually catch on to and penalize them.

2. Quality content often generates voluntary links, a major aim of most SEO campaigns. Other websites, forum users, and bloggers are more likely to voluntarily link to a site if it provides good information. This requires much less effort than gaining links through reciprocal linking or link purchases, and is viewed more favorably by search engines.

3. Search engines rank duplicate pages less prominently in their results than unique text not available elsewhere on the web. Trying to avoid the effort or cost of original content creation, by obtaining articles from public domain sources or article directories, is unlikely to produce the same SEO benefit as unique material. Still, the unique text will more effectively gain traffic if it is SEO optimized.

4. Even if a website can attract visitors using methods which don’t rely upon quality content, there is a reduced probability that they will find the site useful. This reduces the chance that they will continue to explore the site, click on ads, return later, or recommend it to others. It is generally a waste of bandwidth and SEO work to attract internet users to pages they are unlikely to find useful.

Basically, SEO is important and often necessary for a web site to attain high search engine rankings and become more popular, but should not be used to replace quality original content. Providing material of this type is more beneficial to both website visitors (who want valuable information) and search engines, which want to provide the most helpful results to users. This is why good content should still be considered the “king” of SEO.

There are a number of words and acronyms involved in search engine optimization (SEO) which are not considered self-explanatory. It is helpful to know what they mean before reading articles or forum messages about SEO. Read on to learn about some of their definitions…

Keyword Density: Webpages are more likely to receive a high ranking in search results for a particular keyword if they use that word frequently (but not excessively). The keyword density is the percentage of the total number of words in which one keyword is used.

META Tags: This refers to part of a website’s HTML code, near the beginning, and includes the Title, Description, and Keywords tags. The Title tag is visible to both users and search engines, while the Description and Keywords tags are only used by search engine spiders. Many SEO experts feel that the “Keywords” tag is of minimal importance.

PageRank: The PageRank, or “PR”, of a website is a numeric ranking applied to it by Google, and largely based upon how many other sites link to it. The higher the ranking, the closer to the top of relevant search results a website is likely to appear. If you own a website, it is helpful to know its PageRank and check it periodically to determine if progress is being made.

Link Bombing: This practice (sometimes called “Google Bombing”) remains effective to some extent, but generally doesn’t allow for the kind of manipulation it once did. The concept is that if enough websites link to a particular webpage and use a specific phrase in the link text, the targeted site will appear in the top search results for that phrase or keyword.

White/Black Hat: Different types of SEO practices are frequently referred to in this manner. “Black hat” techniques usually are efforts to manipulate search results which are opposed by search engines; on the other hand, “white hat” SEO methods can improve a site’s ranking but generally don’t have the potential to harm it.

CTR: This acronym, meaning Click Through Rate, refers to the percentage of website users who click on a link or advertisement. This term can be applied to search results,  e-mail advertisements, banners, and other forms of promotion.

Natural/Organic: When website traffic is called “organic” or “natural”, it means that it comes without the recipient providing payment or anything in exchange. Examples of this are unpaid search listing clicks and voluntary links from other websites or blogs. SEO is a major way to generate such traffic.

Reciprocal Linking: This is a method in which two website owners add links to each other’s sites. It can provide both SEO and direct traffic benefits, especially if the websites are about similar subjects. However, Google has imposed a policy aimed at limiting the SEO benefits of reciprocal linking.

Analytics: When it involves SEO, this is the practice of collecting and analyzing data on a website’s traffic, then using it to more effectively promote the site. It can also be useful when making decisions with regard to web design.

Directories: Online directories are often used as a part of SEO promotional efforts. This usually refers to either “web directories”, which are categorized lists of approved sites (like dmoz.org), or “article directories”, which contain articles on one or more subjects (such as searchwarp.com).

There are lots of companies and individuals that claim to be SEO Experts. If you want to test the SEO savvy of your favorite SEO consultant, try these:

1.  What significance do meta keywords have for SEO?

Answer: The meta keyword tag is almost entirely useless, as search engines ignore it.  In addition, the meta description is almost useless, but it may affect your CTR (click through rate), as it often displayed in search engine results pages.

2.  What are the major search engines you optimize for?

Answer: Google currently owns a dominant market share over Microsoft (#3) and Yahoo(#2).  In fact, Google and Yahoo represent almost 85% of all internet search traffic and adding MSN takes the total over 90%.  Some companies might optimize for AOL or Ask.com, but it should not be a primary focus for them.

3.  What are the most important on-site page factors for SEO?

Answer:  Visible and spiderable text is very influential in improving your rankings particulary your Title and Header tags. The first 3 -4 words of your title, the first sentence of your body text, your H1 and H2 text are very important.  It is also very important that your top keywords are supported by high keyword density.  Keyword density is the percentage of times a particular keyword is used compared to the total word count for the page analyzed.

4.  How would you recommend build link popularity to my site?

Answer: Directory submission and article syndication are just a few examples of link building exercises that have proven to be successful.  One of our favorites is to analyze the back links of the top sites for a particular keyword in Google SERPs and look for high popularity sites that link to more than 3 of the Top 10 Sites.  This provides a good list of high quality sites to build back links to your site.

5. What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO refers to techniques outside the TOS (Terms of Service) of a search engine.  A few examples are HTML insertion, blog comment spamming, IP cloaking, and using links from link farms.

6.  What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content is any content that appears elsewhere within your web site or perhaps somewhere else on the internet.  Slight changes to a page, such as replacing a city name or movie title, may still be classified as duplicate content.  Unique and useful content is still one of the best search engine optimization strategies.

6. What is Page Rank?

Answer: PageRank is Google’s mathematical representation of the likelihood of a visitor randomly arriving on a given page.  It is an indicator of page importance, and Google uses this as a factor in search engine rankings.  Any link theoretically increases PageRank, but Google assesses the relevancy of the said links as well.