Authored by-Geertsen McMahon

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complicated field and if you want to stay ahead of the competition, your SEO skills need to be constantly reevaluated and updated. This article contains some SEO tips and ideas that will help you beat your competition's rank in search engine results pages (SERP).

Create unique content on your site to get found. Think about what everyone else is saying in your field and say it in a different, more powerful way. You don't want to blend in and under your competitors by writing something similar to what they do. You'll probably never get found that way. Keep your writing fresh.

Building backlinks is a good SEO technique, but avoid linking to bad neighborhoods. The number of backlinks your site has usually positively effects your site's search engine results page rank, however any backlinks from bad neighborhoods can make your site guilty by association causing search engines to penalize your website. It is best to avoid adult sites, gambling sites and free-for-all link farms when building backlinks.

Knowing the value of different domain endings is a good way to help with search engine optimization. For instance, focus your efforts on trying to get links from .edu websites, by writing content tailored to them or making them aware of your site, as search engines give them more weight than other endings, like .com or .org.

After deciding on your keywords, be sure to place them in the title of your web page. When people locate your page through a search engine, they will see this title, so make it relevant to your site. This will help your site get clicked since it will fit searches better.

When optimizing your website, be sure to optimize your description meta tag as well. Some experts believe that keyword meta tags are nearly worthless today, as search engines no longer use them, but that descriptions will usually show up under your page title on the results page, and they are also involved in the indexing process.







Put keywords in your headings and page titles. Page titles and headings come up first in internet searches, so keywords in these fields will improve your search ranking. However, do not make headings and page titles too long, because a greater number of words dilutes the importance of each word in the heading or title.

Open your website in a text window browser to check for errors. You want to read through everything, to make sure that your keywords are clear and that your site does not appear to be spammy. Crawlers will only see what you look at in a text browser, so it is a good idea to look at this yourself.

Create Suggested Website to increase your SEO. A link wheel involves writing 10 articles about the keywords you want to associate with your links. In each article, place a link to your website and a link to one of the other articles. You then submit each of those articles to a different article directory. In this way, every article and every article directory links directly to your website, as well as, to each other.

If you would like to increase your search engine traffic through back links, make use of social media. Sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook allow users to share your links on their own page with a simple click of a button. Many Twitter and Facebook pages have high page rankings, and being linked to from them can significantly increase the page rank of your own site.

Keep your site off of link farms and avoid ever linking to one from your site. The search engines do not like link farms and being associated with one will eventually affect your search rankings. If you find yourself being linked from one, talk to the webmaster and request that they remove you.

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.

Psychologically, try this website to get a .com domain name than any other. Most people just assume a domain ends in .com, and are unlikely to remember any of the others. In a rare occasion, like delicio.us, it's okay to choose a country TLD, but only if it's going to be 100% memorable.

The simplest way to ascertain your keyword strength relative to that of your competitors, is to spend time online searching and ranking your site's online presence, based upon the top 100 results generated by each of the top search engines. These tests should be completed periodically to reflect changing search engine algorithms, which tend to shake things up a bit.

Add a site map to your site. By putting a site map on your site, which a page listing that links to all the main pages on your site, it will make it easier for the search engine spiders to search through your site. It is best to require fewer clicks to get to a page on your website.

Build links to your site naturally. There are plenty of automated link-building programs for sale, but they do not always work. Also, the search engines often know and do not appreciate speed-of-light link building. If you have no links today, and one thousand links tomorrow, they will know something's up, and may remove your site from their indexes. Don't chance it build your links manually.

Pick a keyword that is popular but not too popular, which you then optimize your site around. While there is a lot of traffic for the biggest keywords, it's also going to be harder to break into the top couple of pages. If you choose a keyword that is too obscure, however, even being the top result for that search will not greatly benefit your business.

One of the most important things you can do to optimize your search engine results is to have a ton of content. Not just any content but good content. As the rules at Google change, and more and more people are putting up pages, it becomes more and more important that you set yourself above the rest with a ton of good content.

By now you should have realized, if you did not already, just how important it is to optimize your site to get the best results from the search engines. Knowing how to do so is a key part of running a successful web site. So be sure to use the tips you've learned to raise your search rank.