Metadata spammers
loaded their pages with junky keywords to obfuscate their true content, and search
engine ranking systems were too dumb to tell the difference between legitimate information
and falsified junk. Today, search engines are more sophisticated. They base their rankings
on site popularity, taking into account factors such as the number of incoming links,
the source of those links, and the context surrounding them.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is actually a combination of crafts related to procuring a
favorable position in a search engine results page (SERP). Part of the work comes from
search engine optimization (SEO), which defines the steps taken to organically grow a site??™s
relevancy by building links, writing strong content, submitting to search sites, and so forth.
The complement is search marketing, which involves actually laying out cash for paid positions,
mostly pay-per-click (PPC) ads. (See Figure 13-1 for the difference in these two disciplines.)
This chapter will cover the basics of SEO.
There are many myths about search engines, especially Google. The most egregious claims
that attaining a top position in the organic results requires actually paying the search sites.
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