Jargon-Free Search Engine Optimization Advice To Help You Get Your Website Ranked By The World's Most Popular Search Engines

When setting up your site using SEO, don't forget the importance of the site-map. Search engines spiders love site-maps, as do human users. It shows both groups where everything is on your site, and increases the keyword density of your pages. Site-maps also help boost your linkage ratings similarly to backlinks.

Always include a site map page in your website. A site map page ensures that your site can be crawled by search engine spiders. These spiders then index the pages of your website. Site maps also tell the spider about your site's hierarchy and which pages are the most important.

To search engine optimize your website, avoid using navigation menus that utilize JavaScript, forms or CSS. These types of navigation menus can't be crawled by search engine spiders. If you must use one of these types of navigation menus, be sure to duplicate your site navigation, as normal hyperlinks, in the footer of each page.

When tweaking their websites for search engine optimization, website owners should choose their keywords with care. Spreading a website's interest too thin will hurt its position on search engine results pages for any particular keyword. Also, search engines may regard a web page stuffed with keywords as a spam page, and remove it from their indexing algorithm.

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.

Link to any .edu sites that may be relevant to the content of your site and try to contact those .edu sites to link back to you as well. Search engines place a lot of weight on .edu sites and help your site seem more legitimate, raising your rank on search results pages.

Optimize your product pages for search engines by including more than just a picture and a price for each item. Search engine spiders can't read pictures. If you include a title and a small, unique description of each item you sell, it will boost your search engine ranking and relevancy.

Diversify when getting traffic. Seek traffic through a number of methods so that you aren't relying exclusively on search engines to get people to your site. This way, you 'don't put all your eggs in one basket,' and won't be bothered by a momentary slip in search engine rankings.

Use the alt tag (html code) to add keywords to your images. Search engines (as of yet) can not actively search images and create keywords for them. They rely on you to create keywords for their engine searches. More keywords mean more hits for your site, and more search visibility.

The W3C says, "Cool URLs don't change." Avoid like the plague, changing the page names on your site or you'll lose their page rank along with it. If you do have to change the page name, set up a 301 redirect to point to the new location. But really, just don't do it!

Live by the rule that no page on your site should be more than two clicks away from your home page. Search engines hate deep links and often times ignore them. As well, by sticking to this rule, you help guarantee that all of your pages get to enjoy some residual page rank value from your home page.

In descriptions of images, mention that it is an image. People often search for keywords plus the word picture or image. Let search engines know that your site provides images related to the search term. Search engines have a harder time indexing images, so the more information provided, the more likely you are to be included in the search results.

As you can see, search engine optimization is a relatively simple process that can improve your website's traffic for free! Implementing these simple techniques and tricks can make your website many times more visible than a website that lacks search engine optimization. Apply what you've learned now and watch your traffic soar.

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