Principles of SEO

"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the 'natural' or un-paid ('organic' or 'algorithmic') search results."

All of the techniques used by Sharkbite are compliant with Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and are referred to as "White Hat SEO".

Safe SEO

White hat methods are generally approved by search engines and follow their guidelines. Even though white hats won't always show results in short periods of time, they tend to produce results that last a long time.

Another class of techniques, known as "Black Hat SEO" or "spamdexing", uses methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the quality of user-experience with search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Keywords

Keyword selection is an essential ingredient for establishing the direction of a website and are generated using a combination of client input, keyword analysis tools and analytics data. Working in collaboration with clients, Sharkbite will help guide a strategy for keyword selection and implementation. The process is extremely interactive and often provides clients with a greater understanding of what they want their site to accomplish.

Backlinks

The internet is a web; connections are extremely important.

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.

Sharkbite can analyze the number and strength of backlinks to a client's site and make strategical recommendations for increasing both of these factors.

Why the Mystery Surrounding SEO?

People tend to have varying degrees of understanding on the SEO process. This in in part due to following reasons:

1. There is no universally accepted SEO designation or licence requirement. Many/most SEO experts are self-taught.
2. Google does not publish their algorithm as to how they rank websites. The result is theoretical explanations that can lead to conflicting conclusions as to which factors bear the most importance.
3. The Google algorithm is constantly changing. What was important last year may be less important today.
4. SEO is as much art as science, and experts need to stay current on common theories and practices. it would not be uncommon to find two different SEO theories with different outcomes on the same site.
5. It is impossible to guarantee specific results
6. Many promise the impossible. Disreputable individuals have taken advantage of this knowledge in the marketplace resulting in tangible scepticism.

Managing Expectations

The fact is, we don't accurately know what the website's ranking will be after SEO is complete.

No one does.

What we do know is that after Sharkbite SEO, a client's site will have the following improvements:

1. Search traffic will increase
2. Rankings will improve for many different keyword searches
3. Less competitive terms will see their rankings improve more that the most popular keywords