SEO GENERATION

Try looking up "search engine optimization" on the web, and you’ll no doubt come across terms like "organic", "100% pure", and "all natural". In the search universe, these terms are often used to describe the sites listed along the left-hand side of the search results page, rather than the right-hand sponsored results.

Other times, however, the term "natural" is used to describe the techniques used to optimize a site. In my post entitled, Hiring an SEO– What Does Google Say? I discussed how Google views SEO companies and SEO in general. The bottom line is that Google not only doesn’t mind SEO, they actually encourage basic optimization… but only when it’s done in a "natural" way.

The "Spirit" of Natural SEO
So what exactly is "natural SEO’? How can you be sure that you’re not violating Google’s guidelines when performing SEO on your site? As always, I prefer to bypass the "experts" and go right to Google to find the answer. Google spells out some pretty clear rules in their Webmaster Guidelines section on their site, however, they don’t cover all the specifics. Google even talks about the "spirit" of their guidelines, which is their way of admitting the complexities and nuances of the matter.

There are a wide variety of individual search engine optimization techniques and we can’t cover them all in one post, so let’s take a look at a few common ones to help get a sense of this "spirit" of natural optimization that Google refers to.

"Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines."

This is a quote directly from the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Writing content for humans is obviously considered "natural" behavior. Believe it or not, "fake" content has become a real problem on the web, both for people and for search engines. Software is available that can go out on the web and "scrape" content from other sites and regurgitate it in such a way that a search engine might think it was real. This is obviously designed to just drive traffic and usually ad revenue, but has no benefit to humans searching for high quality information.

This is a very obvious example of a technique can get your site seriously penalized or banned from Google altogether. However, other optimization techniques are not so black and white, and can even be considered appropriate when done "naturally".

Keyword Density – Is it Natural?
Another well-known optimization technique is to simply put the keyword you want to rank for in the title and/or body of your content. The number of times a keyword or phrase is mentioned on your page, in relation to the total # of words on the page is called "keyword density".

Intentionally including keywords that you want to rank for in your content may, at first glance, seem to be an "unnatural" technique. However, Google understand that this particular optimization technique can be beneficial for both humans AND search engines when it’s done in a "natural" way. In fact, they actually advise it: