SEO, Search Engine Optimization is all about optimizing a website for a good search engine ranking. It is a technique that is used for designing and developing a website in such a way to rank well in search engine results, improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines, marketing by understanding how search algorithms work, and what human visitors might search.                                       

Now, it is essential to understand the different techniques of SEO to have maximum benefit and to save oneself from getting penalized from the authority. You should know what to do and what not to, in order to get positive results.

Conceptually, there are two ways of optimization:

•On-Page SEO – This method is performed on the page that is to be optimized. It involves writing good content, good keywords selection, placing keywords in appropriate places, giving suitable title to every page, etc.

•Off-Page SEO – this method is performed on a page to link another page to it. It involves link building, submitting open directories, search engines, link exchange, to increase link popularity etc.

Also, there are two types of SEO techniques that are broadly classified into two categories:

1.White Hat SEO – the methods that are recommended by search engines i.e. that are legal and accepted as part of a good design are White hat techniques.

2.Black Hat SEO – the methods that aren’t approved by search engines and they attempt to minimize the effect of such techniques are Black hat techniques. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.
Let us look at both the techniques in details:

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

It conforms and strictly abide to the guidelines of search engine.

It does not involve in any type of duplicity.

It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content that a user will see.

It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users to read on the wesite page and not just for the search engines.

It ensures good quality of the web pages.

It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages that a user wants.

Keep these points always in mind to follow a White Hat SEO tactics and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get good results.

Black Hat SEO - Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

Attempting methods to improve ranking that are unaccepted by the search engines and/or involve duplications.

Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.

Redirecting users to a page that wasn’t same as the page, the search engine ranked.

Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.

Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.

Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.

Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.

Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.

Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs. 

Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking. 

Try not to indulge in any type of the above activities so as to sustain and improve the rank of your website. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you will be penalized.