With the growth of the Internet, various interactive, advertising, and online technologies began to flourish simultaneously. Over time, starting from the 1990s, marketing solutions that completely replaced traditional catalogs became relevant. During this period, the brilliant concept of search engine optimization emerged. SEO became an “epic saga,” representing a continuous battle between SEO experts and search engine developers like Google. Specialists implementing optimization strategies for various websites realized they could leverage online systems. As a result, they began employing different tactics, recognizing the potential for promoting web resources through these means.
Today, the services of SEO companies in Chicago are in incredibly high demand. Brands and businesses must adopt modern marketing technologies to successfully promote their online resources. High-quality search engine optimization can offer websites prosperity, an excellent reputation, a strong status, enhanced authority, and higher rankings. Moreover, an honest system of ranking and indexing, embedded in the algorithms of web crawlers through the introduction of marketing innovations, helps business websites thrive in the online space. This ensures not only their progression but also their sustainable success in the competitive digital landscape.
How has SEO evolved, and what optimization methods are trending today?
Initially, websites were evaluated based on their content and the pre-implemented key phrases and words (the semantic core). The first ranking methods were simple tricks and manipulations involving the “stuffing” of specific thematic and relevant words instead of incorporating high-quality and engaging content. The next evolutionary step was ranking through link building. This included external backlinks (on external web sources) and internal links on the brand’s website.
Nowadays, due to modern circumstances and technologies, any qualified consultant SEO services will tell you that it’s important to apply both key queries and link building. Additionally, the role of original, creative, valuable, and well-written content must be noticed (informational materials play a key role in promotion today). Quality is no longer ignored as it was in the past. Search engine algorithms work in such a way that they immediately identify “clean” methods that help achieve top positions for websites of various businesses, brands, and companies. “Clean” promotion includes several key methods:
- “White” promotion. This is an honest and fully legal method. It involves using both paid and free marketing tools that allow a business’s web platform to reach the top of success. This approach is relevant for generating purely organic traffic, achieving high organic rankings, gaining broad reach among a real, paying audience, and obtaining qualified leads, among other things. It is important to avoid any mistakes when using this method.
- “All by the book”. Legal methods are what businesses need for the highest quality and fastest promotion in the online space. If there are any issues, they must be addressed immediately. SEO specialists should only use relevant marketing efforts to help the web platform perform better. The goal is to improve the website, fix shortcomings and errors, and enhance ranking, indexing, etc. This task requires significant time and experience, but the results will satisfy even the most demanding brand owners or entrepreneurs.
- “Gray” promotion. This refers to using methods in a business project that partially violate some of the rules of online system algorithms. These methods are between the boundary of legality and illegality, honesty and partial dishonesty. Their active use can lead to the web platform of a company or brand receiving a warning such as “this is not allowed,” “this is an error and needs to be fixed immediately,” “something needs to be corrected, updated, or adjusted,” etc.
- Dishonest website promotion. In this case, specialists may resort to “unethical” promotion methods. This means they will use forbidden online channels or other types of “black” marketing services that are completely prohibited by search engines. Their algorithms can easily detect such actions and place the website on a “Blacklist,” “Ban,” or issue a “Final Warning,” after which the web platform will be completely blocked. These methods will eventually be discovered, and the platform will be banned, negatively affecting the brand’s reputation, status, image, and authority.
Professional SEO involves actions aimed solely at improving the position of a company’s, brand’s, or business’s web platform in search results. The main task for experts is to ensure that the web platform ranks on the first page for its relevant keywords and queries.
