SEO Myra

Search Engine Optimization Advice You Should Follow

This guide on search engine optimization could be an excellent source for understanding better what optimization of your site is really about. You need to know what you should include in your site as well as just where the important elements should go. These are very important things to consider and these tips will help to answer your questions so you know how to get started right.

Unfortunately there are some great technical aspects of websites that can hurt your search engine optimization. For instance you should avoid Flash plug-ins if you can allow it. Flash uses images and search engines only read a sites text to determine its relevance. Even if you have great text content within Flash most search engines wont be able to detect it.

The future development strategy for all companies with a web site should include a strategy for search engine optimization getting more traffic to their site. One key point is to be aware of the use of appropriate key words. Appropriate key words should be placed strategically throughout your site the title tag and page header are generally the most important spots for keywords be careful with your choices.

Set forums and blog comments to automatically insert the nofollow attribute into any links users create. Forum and comment spam are a constant problem and setting nofollow on discussion pages prevents spammers from harming your own sites rank by linking to spam sites that sell dodgy products and services.

Try a DIY approach to learning SEO. There is a wide array of resources you can look to for help in learning the trade. These resources can be found on other sites as well as in some good books.

Create a site map for your website to help the major search engines index each of your sites pages. Also known as a navigation bar a site map allows search engines to find pages from any other page of your site. Regardless of how large or small your website is a site map will increase your ranking in search engines.

When linking back to your homepage through other parts of your website be sure that you are linking to the domain name and not <domain name>/index.html or another iteration that has something appended to the end. Your homepage will be placed higher on search results pages if you help search engines recognize that the domain name is the anchor of your site rather than confusing the search engines by having two (or more) separate homepages (such as <domain name>/index.html).

When you are optimizing your site don't forget that there is more than one search engine out there. Don't focus your attention so much on Google that you don't think about the others. Yes Google is the most popular one and what works for it will generally help you with all of them but there are different strategies that can help you out with some of the other search engines.

You should make use of the keyword tool from Google Adwords to optimize the search engine. The keyword tool will find the most popular keywords that are related to your website. The Adwords tool will show you the number of searches for a word or phrase that you enter. Use this tool to find the best overall words or phrases to use for your site.

As a general rule of thumb search engine spiders will ignore sites that have duplicate pages. Having duplicate pages may give you more keyword content but it may also get you ignored. This can certainly backfire. Make sure each of your pages are unique and original so that you will be found.

Add your keywords to the anchor text of your included links. Links are another item that the search engines rank higher in importance than regular text. The more places of importance to the engine that you put your keyword the higher they will value those words in determining where your site should be in the rankings.

Basic HTML includes six levels of "heading" tags. You should make use of all of them for improved performance with search engines. When you include keywords in heading tags search engines weight those keywords more heavily against potential search terms. Headings need not dictate the appearance of your web-page and they offer you a handy way to squeeze extra SEO performance out of your keywords.

If your company has brick-and-mortar locations be sure to include the names of those locations in links and titles about those stores. This will help increase the likelihood of being found when a user performs a location-specific search. You are much more likely to be the best of the business in your city or state than globally and so you rank higher in local searches.

Beware! Your search engine optimization process is not complete when your website appears high on the first search results page. You also need to ensure that your website is helpful and informative to the visitors who find it through the search engines. The engines track visitor behavior. A visitor who visits your site and then returns to the results page is a "bounce" and the search engines will count bounces against your relevance.

Always remember to keep your customers in mind when writing blurbs that contain search engine optimization language. This keeps your customers interested in what you have to say and the products and services you have to offer. Remember using only search engine optimization words will make your blurbs sound spammy.

Use your URL to help with your search engine optimization project! Place keywords inside this string of characters to make it attractive to search engines. Think about how the URL appears to others though; some individuals may not visit a site with too many hyphens - because it does not look legitimate to them!

Be careful how often you use ALT and TITLE attributes on a page. If you have 14 images and very little text the ALT and TITLE tags full of keywords can appear to be overused and an attempt to game the system. Try to balance out how often you use them against how much copy is on the actual page.

Every page on a website offers an opportunity for a customer or a search engine bot to find your website and read your pages. When you add a blog to your website you open up a lot of new opportunities for your site to be found. Your blog can discuss very small aspects of your niche that will appeal to a tangent of your target group. Thats why adding a blog is such a good SEO practice.

After you've read and memorized these great tips you can begin to build or rework your existing website so that its as search-engine-friendly as possible. If your putting the right SEO tweaks on your site the search engine spiders will have no trouble at all finding it and bringing it to the top of the heap.