As soon as you get serious about increasing your web site’s traffic, you will hear the three magic words: search engine optimization. SEO is not a fad; its benefits have a proven track record. It is not a mystery, either. With a few simple tips you can start improving your web site’s search engine performance immediately.
Even saved images and video files on your server can present an opportunity to increase in the rankings, so be sure that you’re always saving files with keywords. For example: If you have an image on your site dealing with weight loss, like a before-and-after photo, make sure you include a relevant keyword in the title when you save the image.
When trying to get your site ranked well by the search engines, it is important that you write meaningful markups so that the spiders can easily find your content. Always focus on two solid principles here. One, make sure to use the proper headings and listings. Two, remember to always validate your markup.
To succeed at search engine optimization, you must choose your target keywords wisely. If you have a lot of competition for a particular keyword, try specializing in a less competitive, but similar keyword. You can use the traction you gain on that page, to support your other pages with more common keywords.
To ensure that your website is as easy as possible to crawl, keep your site architecture flat. Don’t use too many sub folders, instead use descriptive names for each page. Keep your pages with the most competitive keywords in their names, close to the root folder, so they will gain a higher page rank.
Provide links to other websites and blogs to increase your views. If you have an active linking system, you will improve your search results within the major search engines. Find articles that you like that relate to your content and add links to them. Be sure however to keep your page from becoming just a page of links or you’ll lose your viewers.
Submit your site to major search engines. This may seem like it is an obvious step, but many site owners believe that a search engine will link to you if someone searches a certain keyword. While this may be true, you may not be the first on the list, or even on the first page. Optimize this strategy by paying a small fee to the search engine, and get your site on top of the results.
Create a great resource section to attract visitors and search engines to your site. A well-planned resource section makes your site look professional. It also gives you the appearance of being in a position of authority regarding your chosen subject matter. Keeping the resources updated and uncluttered is also important.
Copyright your website! Let others know that the content on your site is truly your own. Search engines take this into consideration for their rating levels, and it also adds rapport for your customers. It lets you establish that you are trustworthy, and that your content is unique and fresh.
While having relevant and popular keywords is key for proper search engine optimization, it is very important not to stuff your pages with keywords. Search engines take note of pages that are overly stuffed with keywords as a means to get higher search result rankings and penalize them accordingly. Make sure your page does not fall into this category.
To get the best search engine indexing performance, good webmasters learn the more exotic HTML tricks that prevent the search engines from mis-identifying their websites. HTML options like the canonical tag and the 301 redirect exist, so that webmasters can be sure search engines assign all their favorable ranking to the correct, primary website.
Linking directly from your homepage to the pages of your best-selling products will improve both usability and search engine performance. By their very nature, these internal links will see a lot of traffic. Search engines will pick up on all that traffic when they index your site and add plenty of weight to search terms that appear in the links.
Once you have chosen your key words and your pages are ready to go, get listed in the best directories. Being listed in directories is free ,and they are used by the major search engines to build their own directories. It’s believed that if you get listed in the best directories, you will be highly ranked in the search engines.
Search engine optimization can be tricky but one simple task helps your website get the traffic it needs. Post links to your website on social media sites. While tweeting or facebooking be sure to include your website link. People regularly share links on social platforms. This sharing results in your link showing up in places you never imagined.
The easiest way to find out just how effective your attempts at Search Engine Optimization are, go to Google and type in the words you would expect people to use to find the type of information or product you are promoting. If your page doesn’t show up on the very first page of the results then you have work to do!
Make sure that the naming convention you use for your site architecture makes sense when viewed on a search engine. If your visitor is looking for crackers, but your website link is to donsstore.com/yumminums/, they’re unlikely to click through. DonsPantry.com/crackers/ looks spot on, and you can almost guarantee that the searcher will click your link. It also boosts your page rank to have keywords in the directory title.
Make your website work on the most basic of browser. Turn off CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Java, ActiveX, and take a look at your site. If you can’t get around then it’s possible a percentage of your audience won’t be able to get around, either. Keep your website accessible to everyone who wishes to view it.
Though it might seem arcane at first glance, search engine optimization is really not complicated. Tactics like the ones you have just read about can make a big improvement in your web site’s search engine rankings. In the end, good SEO is just a matter of knowing how to get the most out of your website and the effort you put into it.
