Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to your company’s website, few things have as much influence on your site traffic than its presence (or lack thereof) on the first results pages of the top search engines. This handpicked selection of search engine optimization tips and tricks will help you to get your name near the top of the list.

Since Search Engine Optimization is well over a decade old, a lot of the process has been automated around the web. You can check out a service like Google Webmaster Tools, which can easily handle much of the Search Engine Optimization work for your website or blog. Google wants you to be successful because your earnings are their earnings. Therefore, you can trust their tools to do a good job for you.

Posting content from your web site on article directory sites can be a great way to get exposure and build traffic. When you post on these directories you will be building a link back to your site which can increase the amount of visits you receive. The more directories you use the more links you create.

You should try to have as many other web pages link to yours as possible. Having more web sites linking to yours helps in two ways, the first being that crawlers and spiders can find your content more easily. Secondly, you will increase your traffic, especially if you are linked with a large and reputable site. Having links to good sites increases your own reputation and will result in a much more favorable search engine ranking.

Linking to lists is very popular for website owners and bloggers and can help your search engine optimization. You can find a lot of articles on the internet that are written as a top 10 list or top 100 list of tips or small facts. If possible, present well- written articles with relevant content composed as lists with numbers, not bullets, such as “10 ways to buy a new car.”

Track where people on your site are going. When you determine where people are going, you know where you need to concentrate your efforts. If you have a restaurant, chances are people are checking out your menu. This lets you know that this is an area of your site that you need to keep fresh and updated.

Find your keywords. Search through other sites to find out what keywords will be most likely to link back to your website. Use this information to plan the keywords you will use to increase volume to your site. The better matches you have, the more likely you will be to increase visitors.

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.

Find free tools to help you submit. Several websites offer automated submission tools, that help you submit to up to hundreds of article directory sites in a short amount of time. Search very hard to find the free tools that do this. Most sites charge a fee for this task, but if you are lucky you will find those that do not.

Having a blog on your company website increases its search engine ratings because it makes the website competitive outside of its product keyword areas. Your company may have very strong keywords on every page, but so do other companies that sell the same product. Adding a blog opens up a whole new world of keywords because the content is not so structured.

When you do a search on YouTube, the site will suggest related terms that are popular. Use this as a tool for keyword research! Remember that the keywords you type in, while being highly related to the video, aren’t necessarily as popular as the suggestions YouTube is making underneath them.

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website through Google Adwords, do NOT link to any pages that disable the back button. Honestly, most of your audience will be upset if they’re not permitted to go backwards as they feel they should be able to move around as they please. Also, Google, on the other hand, will remove your link if you remove the back button.

Whatever you do, don’t overstuff your pages full of keywords. Search engines don’t like it, and they will penalize your site. Some people cram a ton of keywords into their pages just to increase search engine rankings. The problem is, the visitor clicks on the page, only to discover there is no valuable information for them, just a bunch of useless words. Keyword stuffing can get your site banned from search engine results.

Look for ways to obtain the most competitive keywords. You can do this with a main page that has a considerable number of internal links. This can also be achieved by including two or more pages that share themed content, which then will increase the ranking factor of both pages.

When you are creating your title tag, you should always keep it in the title case. For example ‘Professional Search Engine Optimization Tips.’ Search engines penalize the people who just use strings of keywords and keyword phrases for there title tags and making sure that your title tag is grammatically correct helps avoid this problem.

It is always a great idea to insert comment tags into the body of your web pages. These comment tags will be hidden from any visitors, but you better believe that most search engines look for them when determining how to rank your website. Make sure your comments include important keywords.

Instead of overlooking the power of search engines, your business should take full advantage of relevancy and online equity that can be increased through Search Engine Optimization practices. By choosing to follow the advice in this article, you will be better prepared to take the necessary actions needed to place your site at the beginning of search results pages.