Search engine optimization (SEO) has advanced in recent years to a much higher level of service than previously offered. In past years, search engine optimization was nothing more than meta tags optimization with SEO firms charging high premiums for a single-tiered approach to SEO.
 As technology advanced and search engines developed, the need for high quality services resulted in SEO firms breaking into two categories - white hat SEO firms and black hat SEO firms. Â
Black Hat search engine optimization firms promised fast results in flashy sales pitches. By manipulating the emerging technology by using questionable techniques including link farms, cloaking, hidden keywords among others, black hat firms got websites fast, but short lived results.
The search engines consistently penalized websites that used black hat optimization techniques, even permanently banning websites, with little recourse for the website owners.
White Hat SEO firms use only legitimate and accepted optimization techniques to drive websites to the top of the rankings. The key to success online is not a mystery, it is the execution that makes the difference. High quality SEO firms like White Hat Marketing use a 3-prong approach to optimizing websites:
 - code optimization (meta tags, title tags, image tags, etc)
- link optimization (internal linking as well as links to/from the website)
- content optimization (optimizing existing content and adding new, optimized content).
SEO has further advanced to the point where the top SEO firms no longer just count traffic, but also consider converting that traffic to sales as a measure of success. For businesses investing in SEO services, maximizing their return on investment means not just counting traffic but counting conversions (sales or leads).
The competition on the Internet is fierce and will get even more fierce as estimates for e-commerce within the next two years is topping $300 billion. As competition grows it will become more important than ever before for businesses to have high quality, advanced search engine optimization.
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