Search engine optimization or SEO is a very good marketing tool that site owners use to get to the top ranking of the search engines.  Marketers should have a very good grasp of SEO techniques so they can get as many visitors to their sites and translate the number of visitors to actual sales.

A newbie would find the term SEO too complicated for comfort but he will be hanging to SEO for dear life once he gets to know the techniques associated with the term.  The same goes if he realizes the positive effects of good SEO techniques to his business.

There are several SEO techniques but one of the most common techniques known to writers is the use of proper keyword density.  This refers to the number of times that a certain keyword is used in the entire page to maximize the possibility of it being found by the search engines.

Experts have developed different SEO techniques and some of them ethical, most are not.  Those who delve on SEO as a tool for marketing their sites can choose a different SEO anytime depending on his needs and of course his ethical beliefs.

And just like the movies, SEO practitioners are identified either as an SEO white hat practitioner or an SEO black hat practitioner.  The distinction is pretty obvious because those who use white hat SEO are the ethical marketers while those who use black hat SEO are the unethical marketers. 

To make the distinction clearer, black hat SEO refers to the use of spam and other unethical practices.  White hat SEO refers to the use of permission-based or opt-in emails.  While both types of SEOs serve their purpose, white hat SEO is encouraged to make life easier for everyone in the world-wide web.

Those who employ black hat SEO such as spamming can be successful in getting as many traffic as possible but those in the know will ultimately get him and will probably have him suspended from the net.  Worse, a black hat SEO can be blacklisted from most sites.

Black hat SEOs have been berated for what they are doing but most of them are really very successful and earn lots of money by allowing millions of traffic to the target site.  Of course, these people are aware that the law will ultimately get them and their sites will be closed down later.  But they have already though of that so perhaps their earning would more than make up for the blacklisting or the closure.

While it is true that the use of black hat will get the site to the top search engines, good SEO or white SEO techniques will also be able to do the same thing albeit in a longer period of time.

Black hat SEO can ensure the success of a site the soonest possible time but it will also ensure the early demise of the site.  By practicing white hat SEO, the time it would take to get to the top ranking of the search engines would be longer but who needs quick fixes when the ultimate goal is to remain in the business for a long time?

There are a lot of SEO practitioners who can get a site to the top ranking of major search engines but they will be the first to admit that this will take time.  If the business is a major site and it wants to stay in business for quite some time then if it better to use white hat SEO and wait for the rankings to go up.

There are a lot of white hat SEO techniques that will surely help the site get the needed traffic.  The marketer can resort to site promotion using the traditional and non-traditional methods.

One of the best ways to promote a site and to get it to the top rankings of search engines is to post as many keyword-optimized articles on the site.  Search for the top keywords being used by the target market when looking for such topics and use that keyword properly.  Most marketers agree that a three to five percent keyword density is best.  More than that can be classified as black hat SEO already.