Search Engine Optimization: How To Use It

There are expert consultants that make their livings assisting website owners with search engine optimization. Does this mean you can’t learn a few tricks to help you do your own SEO? Of course not! Just a little effort invested in optimizing your website’s search engine performance can pay off big with higher rankings and increased traffic. Keep reading for ideas to optimize your search engine performance.

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Adding high-quality content to your website is one of the best ways to improve its search engine ranking. There are so many arcane methods to improve search engine optimization that you may overlook the most straightforward and honest approach: give your website’s visitors more of what they want. Useful, informative content will be appreciated by visitors and have a ripple effect on your site’s popularity.

There is no sense in optimizing your site for “hooded sweatshirts” if your target market calls them “hoodies.” You simply must know what words people are actually using, not what you think they use. One invaluable tool in your quest is Google Insights, which will show you, in incredible detail, patterns of Google searches, either globally or by country, stretching back to 2004. Get a solid handle on the words people ACTUALLY use to find what they’re looking for and you can have confidence in the keywords that you choose for SEO.

To be sure that your site is always ranked as highly as it should be, you will need to submit a site map to the search engines. Every page on your site will automatically be linked to the site map, so be sure to create an XML map to submit. It makes things easier on your visitors, and search engines will increase your rankings as they receive the information about your site.

Search engine optimize all assets found on your website. By carrying out SEO on spreadsheets (.xls), documents (.doc, .pdf), videos (.avi), audio (.mp3), presentations (.ppt) and images (.jpg, gif, .png) within your website, you can maximize the number of search queries that refer web searchers to your website and increase your website’s traffic.

Make sure you spend time optimizing the content on your website. Good website content is easy to read by visitors and consistent when compared against both the title and tags listed with the story. Otherwise, search engines may rank your content poorly, making it more difficult for you to find a following.

To optimize your site for search engines, avoid using Flash and frames. They share the basic problem of preventing links to a single page. Spiders can’t crawl Flash, so the search engines won’t be able to see as much of your site. If you have to use Flash, be sure to include navigation links as well.

Do not be too general with your keywords. These are what will bring readers to your site, so you want to be specific. If you are talking about backpacking through Tahiti, you do not want your keyword to be “travel.” There are thousands of travel sites, and yours will definitely not get the attention it deserves.

Give each page on your web site a different title, in order to attract more attention from the search engines. Vary your use of keywords and phrases in the titles. Be sure not to use more than 65 to 70 characters in each title and include the most important words, early in the title.

When titling your website files and setting their URLs, use hyphens rather than underscores to separate words. (e.g. “my-homepage” rather than “my_homepage”) Using hyphens lets search engines read separate keywords when they index your site. Underscored titles will appear to search engines as one long keyword – and that keyword is not likely to be a search term.

One tip for increasing your search engine optimization is to get to know your target audience. There is a big difference in what you should post if your readers are stay at home moms verses single men who like to travel. Once you can figure this out you will know what type of blog posts to write.

Keep close track of your page rank so you will get a good idea as to whether your SEO efforts are working as you planned. Try Alexa and Google toolbar to help you keep track of your numbers. Also regularly check your referrer log often so you can track where your readers are coming from.

If you come across favorable reviews, stories, or mentions of your brand or product on another site, capitalize on the free publicity by linking back to that site (and possibly even returning the favor). This is a popular and highly successful tactic that increases your exposure to online visitors to other sites that may not even be directly related to your business.

If you are trying to make money online, search engine optimization can be an important tool. If you follow the suggestions in this article, you will be well on your way to optimum SEO. As long as your website is of high-quality, you will be more likely to receive a lot of traffic, which will lead to more profits.

SEO Bristol

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