Whether you maintain a blog for commercial purposes or for sharing thoughts and ideas, there is absolutely no point in the effort if the blog traffic is low and no one gets to see it. The solution to this problem? Learn SEO! Search Engine Optimization is the method of bettering the visibility of a website on SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). The problem with many blogs is low blog traffic due to the reason that when the consumer types various keywords, those words are not present in that blog.
The whole goal of learning SEO is to be able to achieve higher rankings for a keyword on a given SERP. One way to increase blog traffic is to build a directory of quality links which would bring the kind of traffic you desire to your blog. All of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have SERPS which comprise of various types of lists. Data is also classified by types such as images, text, blogs, videos, maps etc.
What SEO does is:
- It increases the affinity of the website for a search engine based on suitable keywords.
- Over a specific amount of time (months or years), it increases the website’s ranking for so frequently researched keywords.
- A well planned SEO campaign makes the blog’s ranking better.
- It gives leverage to useful link building by selecting well written content, improving the website rankings over time.
- It incorporates a few selected keywords in the textual content of the blog or website which develop useful links and magnify significance of those keywords for the search engines.
Some people use SEO as a means of advertising their businesses. Even though most of the time it can be an effective form of online advertisement, that is not a good idea. SEO rankings are in constant flux therefore a lowering of these rankings will go negatively for that business. SEO is a long- mid term solution which requires time to show results.
Therefore, to sum up, learn SEO. But do be aware that there are two types of it. One is White Hat which is in accordance with the guidelines provided by search engines. The other kind is Black Hat which exploits weaknesses in a search engine’s algorithm to increase the website rankings. However, due to the high cost of White Hat optimization, most users use Grey Hat which is not fully in accordance with search engine guidelines but does not violate them either. There may not be any defined right or wrong type for SEO but a user should be well aware of the risks involved in the process! 
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