Article by-Lewis Dawson

Search engine optimization is an important part of a company's online strategy. If your company is trying to improve its website and increase its rank in the search engines then you must optimize your website. Read the advice below for some ways to increase your website's traffic and popularity in the search engines.



Search engine optimization is ideal for businesses that conduct their business locally. Google and other search engines offer ways for you to edit your own business listing, making it ripe for search engine optimization. This way, people searching for specific keywords on a local search will be more likely to find your business.

If you are writing a blog, optimize your content by using as many heading tags as you can without depleting readability. Start with the blog title in an

tag and work down from there, with the main content of the post in an

tag. This tells search engine spiders which content you have deemed most important.

Optimize your site with an informative error page, rather than a basic 404 page. This page can offer solutions to the error, such as other relevant content links or a link back to the site's homepage. Search engine spiders will find these pages and index them as if they were content, raising your ranking.

Try to make a list of all the key words in an article before you write it, then make sure you utilize them several times. This makes sure that you reach the right key word density and also makes sure your article is on the right topic and makes sense.

Don't use generic words in your key words list, like "computers" and "books". This will generate too many results and will most likely, not show your site at the top. Instead, using more specific words and phrases like "buy cheap computers online," can be less competitive and be more effective for your site.

When you look at competitor's websites for search engine optimization analysis, make sure you examine their site map carefully. A competitor that gets consistent high rankings from the search engines, likely has a very well-optimized site. Inspect the keywords that show up on their site map. Ask yourself if there are any keywords on your competitor's site that your site could use.

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.

Use the alternate text for your images as another spot to put your keyword phrase. This works very well because you give another keyword to be crawled by the engines but it allows you to hide it from your readers keeping your site more reader friendly. Be careful though because it will still count towards keyword stuffing and you want to avoid that.

No matter the steps you take to work on search engine optimization, it will be difficult for you to see the fruits of your labor without keeping close tabs on your search rankings. A wide variety of online tools allow you to regularly check how you stand in the page rankings. Similarly, maintaining a watchful eye on your referrer log will help you keep track of precisely which search terms visitors are using to arrive at your site, allowing you to further customize your website to boost traffic.

Place a suggestion box on your website so that visitors can let you know what you should do to increase traffic on your site. if you use any suggestions that are submitted you should credit the person who's idea it was and offer them some type of free gift.

When working on linked website , make sure you focus on your titles. They should be filled with keywords that are compelling and unique. Titles will be one way people find your site and you want to make sure they are able to draw people to your site.

The URLs used in your site affect search engine response significantly. If your paths use clear key words, the search engine will pick all of those words up- if URLs contain strings of random numbers and letters, the search engine will have more trouble parsing the page's content and thus give your site a lower ranking.

Double check that your pages don't appear to have duplicate content, even if they seem different to you. Run similar pages through a uniqueness calculator, and make sure they are get at least a 50% grade. Search engines will penalize you if they believe you are repetitively posting the same content on your website to attract traffic.

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 visit my web page doesn't show up on the very first page of the results then you have work to do!

Do your keyword research before you build your site. You can use Googles Adwords Keyword Tool, which is free, and there are others. When you research your keywords ahead of time, you will be able to build content that is search-engine friendly. You want to use keywords with high volumes of searches and little competition.

To optimize your website's search results, you need to come up with strong keywords. Not only do you want to use your website's main point in a lot of text on your website. Make sure you also use strong tags and submit your website to many different search engines. You will get visitors as well, if you constantly keep content updated and relevant to the subject of your website.

In order to gauge how successful your efforts have been for increasing traffic to your site, you must develop a measurement tool. One basic way to measure this is to review the number of sales orders, newsletter subscriptions, membership applications, or other items that are sold from your site. You would need a baseline measure before you worked to increase traffic, and an after measure to compare it with.

With all the information you learned you should have a greater understanding of how search engine optimization works and what you want to do with it. Remember that with a subject like search engine optimization you want to continuously expand your information on the subject and see what applies to you, when you do that success is sure to follow.