Webupon

They are all in the family. Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization. Keywords. Keyword Density. Internet Marketing. Ranking. SEO Ranking. Listing. Top 10. Top 20. List Inclusion. White Hat. Black Hat.

They are all about making a presence and accessibility in the internet.

Let’s put it simply. The internet, as it is, is a massive depository of information, products and services. To create a natural ordering of these deposits for easy searches, the search engines (examples: Yahoo, Google) built internet road networks leading to site groupings. If you are a business with a website, you need to enlist with a search engine so that you can be given a location and be located by customers or researchers. Otherwise the only people who will find you are yourself and the people who know where your site is.

These virtual road networks are actually lists lined up with websites responding to certain keywords pertaining to the websites’ businesses. And because this is a listing, not all the sites responding to the keyword or keywords will be listed on the first or front page. There can only be one Page 1, one Page 2, and so on. And on Page 1, there can only be one number 1, one number 2, and so on. A page is usually composed of 10 entries ranked numerically, and certainly, the ones that rank near the top or near the first will have a priority privilege to be visited first by a customer.

This gave rise to what is known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Initially, optimizing exposure to the search meant describing your business exactly the way it should be. This process of promoting your business by describing it according to what it truly is has elevated the phrase “content is king” to a kingly position. This search optimization is known as white hat strategy.

But because web design and development have essentially become commercial activities, this white hat strategy has turned into a monopoly of the bigger companies. Because of their size and unlimited financial capabilities, these big companies are able to maintain websites with the best contents and designs, and therefore capture the top ranks in the search engines.

Pity then the small-time entrepreneur with a two-page website designed gratis by a friend. He will most probably find his name in the search list’s last 10!

As the internet rapidly progressed, so did the highways, with the search listings becoming more and more patterned, in some ways. The patterning naturally created a database of the most-searched keywords.

And here, the small entrepreneur saw his chance to even out the competition. Now, by just “stuffing” his website with the most-searched keywords, his site can compete for top ranking against the more established businesses. This “stuffing” practice of course was not received very well by big leaguers and the search engines themselves, because it mocked the integrity of their keyword listings. They have in fact branded this practice and other manipulative activities in internet marketing as black hat strategy, as opposed to white.

But what’s wrong with black hat? Isn’t black hat a fair competition to white hat? What’s the future of black hat? What is the future of white hat? For the majority of small to medium internet businesses, they are singing in chorus: Thanks goodness, there is black hat!