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Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making your page more visible to search engines and increasing its chances of being found organically online.
This video from Search Engine Land gives a great explanation of the whole concept of SEO.
SEO can be improved in a number of ways. We’ve just employed two SEO tactics by linking to another site, and embedding a curated video. Both of these practices are “white-hat” SEO techniques; techniques that don’t rely on poor practice to increase page rank.
SEO can be a long and finicky process, so sometimes SEO ‘experts’ will employ bad practices to increase SEO ranking, such as ‘keyword stuffing’ - repeating the same keyword in the metadata hundreds of times - or buying links. Employing Black-hat SEO techniques is not only poor practice, but it can do more harm than good to your website. Search Engines that detect black-hat SEO will penalize you by lowering your traffic rank, or even banning the site from appearing in search results.
Take a look at this diagram to see which SEO practices to employ, and which to avoid completely.
Find out if you've optimised your website fully with Penquin's Website Grader.