As soon as you get serious about increasing your web site's traffic, you will hear the three magic words: search engine optimization. SEO is not a fad; its benefits have a proven track record. It is not a mystery, either. With a few simple tips you can start improving your web site's search engine performance immediately.
One of the most effective ways to optimize your website is to put your keywords in the title tag. Search engines crawl over around 60 to 70 characters of the title, so it is important to keep your title short and your keywords relevant. The search engine will match the title keywords to the actual content of your page, so relevancy is very important.
One of the best ways to keep your site ranked highly is to be very customer-friendly. You can customize error pages that offer a user-friendly message to your traffic, if they so happen to type in the wrong URL. This is not something you need to do, but it does make your site stand out as personable and friendly and it definitely doesn't hurt.
When dealing with SEO, it is important to remember to take your time. You can't expect to see results over night, it will take a while to build your reputation in the eyes of the search engines. Also, Google can tell if you try to artificially create links or rapidly increase your traffic and will penalize your site.
Because search engines need to be able to navigate your site to index it properly, you should use JavaScript for progressive enhancement only. The entire site does not need to be JavaScript-enabled. You only need to use this for enhanced functionally. When it comes to easy navigation, JavaScript is a big no-no in SEO.
Learn about search engine optimization or hire a company that specializes in it. The work you put into your site will be wasted if the site can't be found during a web search. A good SEO plan will have you ranking higher in the results of the major search engines for keyword searches that relate to your company.
Put a sitemap on your webpage. A sitemap is a page that easily links to all available straight from the source pages on your site, and more importantly how to find them. This feature makes it easier for the search engine spiders to navigate your site. The fewer clicks it takes to find or get to a specific page the better.
Every link on a website that leads to an external site should be validated regularly. Links that point to missing content (broken links) are bad news. Not only are broken links annoying to website visitors, they are penalized by search engine indexing algorithms. Fixing or deleting broken links improves a website's position on the search engine results pages.
When you bid on keywords in a pay-per-click (PPC) affiliate marketing program, remember that cheaper is almost always better. Online customers are a fickle often, and it is impossible to guarantee success by buying expensive ads. It is much better to spread your budget out across lots and lots of cheap ads. More ads give you more chances to make a sale and recoup your advertising costs.
When utilizing search engine optimization it is important to be patient. It often times takes many months before search engine optimization results are able to be seen. Always remember that the smaller your company is, and the newer your company is to doing business online, the longer it will take to see positive SEO results.
Webpages for your best-selling products should be carefully used so that your whole site benefits. In some cases individual product pages may appear high on search engine results pages and they can have a big impact on overall ranking if links are used thoughtfully.
One big no-no is publishing the same old article more than once on your website. This may be viewed as an attempt to fool the search engines, and it can get your pages downgraded. It also dilutes your incoming links count, so don't do it!
Do not use 301 redirects on a page that no longer exists on your website. Instead, use a 401 Gone error page to indicate the page is well and truly gone from your website. A 301 redirect should only be used if the content has actually been moved to another page.
In SEO, the more backlinks you create, the better your chances of having a popular website. This will mean that your site will appear favorably on search engines. One good way to get backlinks is by adding posting content in article directories. When you post an article, you would just add a link back to your business website: Voila! Backlink!
If you're going to buy a text link, DON'T point it at your website! Instead, point it at your video on YouTube or any other web 2. site that you have in that particular niche and then have people link to your site from there. With the link pointing at a domain other than your own, you won't be penalized by Google's algorithms.
Include an XML sitemap on your website to help search engines find every part of your website. Google offers a free sitemap creation tool, which will create a sitemap in a way that Google has an easy time reading. Don't forget to update your sitemap often as it will change as you add and remove pages.
Use a lot of keywords in the file names and URLs that you use. Make sure not to use too many hyphens because it will look like it is leading to a spam site and people will not be too sure about whether or not they want to take a chance and click on it.
Change your anchor text. Don't use the same anchor text on your inbound links, because the search engines may recognize them as automated, which could affect your rankings. Change text slightly, using relevant keywords and phrases, so that you have a variety of different links that all lead to your website.
As revealed earlier, search engine optimization is just a calculated method of figuring out how to draw traffic to your site based upon keywords that your customers would use to find a website like yours. By understanding the concept in this article http://homebusiness.about.com/od/homebusinessglossar1/g/internet_market.htm and putting it to work for your website, you can reap great benefits.
