The only real important thing you need to generate legitimate money online, is traffic. It's the blood that any online business needs to flourish and survive. Search engines offer the best kind of well targeted traffic that so many desperately seek every single day. It's no surprise that a lot of marketing websites are designed to be more attractive to the search engines rather than towards their potential customers. Search engine algorithms still remain mysterious and are a closely guarded secret in the industry. So, what really makes search engines happy?

Through all of our attempts to influence the search engines, we forget why they exist in the first place. The search engine's primary and most important function is to provide the best relevant search results from every search inquiry made. So, it's actually in the search engine's best interest that no one manipulates their rankings through SEO techniques to ensure that the people using their service get the most relevant search results possible. Of course, this doesn't work out the way the search companies wish them to and they really cannot punish a lot of websites for doing it. Keep in mind, they will punish those sites that are utilizing deceptive SEO techniques that are being used to fool the search engines. These strategies are know as Black Hat SEO techniques, and if caught using them, you can get your site removed from the search engine indexes.

Here are a few examples of Black Hat SEO: Linkfarms(massive linking with other sites in a group where the only goal is to increase link popularity), creating web pages with duplicate content, overuse of keywords, cloaking(purposely giving search engine spiders different pages than visitors see) and hiding text from visitors that only spiders can read. These are a few of the controversial methods that people are using to manipulate the search engines. Some of these techniques will drop your ranking significantly and others can get you banned. Search engines hate being manipulated to this extreme. If they find out, you will be penalized.

If you want your website to rank well, it's important to know how search engines work. Algorithms are the mathematical formulas that search engines use to figure out how to rank a web page for a particular search term. These algorithms are one of the best kept secrets in the search engine world. Nobody really understands how their ranking system works, but they do vary with each search company. What we do know is that these algorithms are always changing, especially to fight over abused SEO techniques. SEO strategies that are effective today, may not work well the next day. It's always best to use basic SEO fundamentals that have passed the test of time.

Search engines are always looking for ways to bring better search results to their customers. Instead of focusing on methods to trick search engines, it's much safer and more rewarding to concentrate on developing relevant content for your website. You will never get punished if you do this. Place yourself in the search engine's position. They want to give searchers the most relevant search results possible, so give them lots of relevant content on your site. Using bad tricks can get you penalized and cause you to lose a lot of valuable traffic for your online business. You should focus more on consistently developing your website with quality content and stay away from dirty SEO tricks. This is the true way to the search engine's heart and it always will be. Good luck to you and your success!