Search Engine Optimization Tips That Drive Your Site To The Top Of The Results Page

While preparing to launch a new website, or updating a current one, spend some time working on optimizing the website so that it ranks well in the search engines. It takes some time, but the return on investment can be huge. Read this article for tips on how to easily make changes to your website that can ramp up your visibility on the web.

Your homepage carries roughly 50 percent of the weight in searches. Up to 5 percent of your copy and links throughout the site should be weighted with keywords and phrases. This density will give depth to searches and bring your site closer to the top rankings on the major engines.

The site map page is used less and less by modern websites, but including one can be vital for search engine optimization. Regardless of its utility to website visitors, the site map is very useful to search engine indexers. A comprehensive site map ensures that all of a website's pages are visited by search engines, improving its ranking.

Don't over-stuff your site with keywords as this can be used against you. The search engines look for words located primarily in content. however, having an unnatural amount of the same keywords in the content of your site can actually work to your disadvantage because it will send up a "red flag" to search results to skip as it seems fishy.

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.

Many search engine optimization experts agree that the use of hyphens instead of underscores in URLs actually helps to boost your search engine page rank. I've seen the results of a test which showed that traffic dropped when hyphens were used as compared to underscores, so it's worth it to stick with the advice given and not question it.

To truly excel your business to the next level, you will have to take advantage of the possibilities that search engine optimization brings to the table. SEO will publicize your business or organization to the public in a whole new light and help you reach more targeted audiences with your product or service.

Try to get your page link on a .edu or .gov site for better search engine optimization. Because these sites are top-level domains and are considered to be very credible and reliable, people who see your link on a .edu or .gov will think you are legitimate and credible as well.

For search engine optimization use prominence. Prominence refers to how a keyword is placed in relation to the beginning of your website. Two ways to increase your prominence is to include your keywords in title tags that search engines can see and also in the title of the website, which is visible to visitors. Another way to make your keywords more prominent is to put header tags around your visible title.

Make URL's with easy, simple and user-friendly keywords. Visitors will have a general idea of what your page is about without even clicking. Search engines will take these pages and rank them under those keywords, thus improving your ranking and getting you closer to a top page listing.

If you are optimizing a company website, make sure you get listed in local directories. Google Maps is one of the most used services for finding companies near you, so get your company and it's website on there ASAP. The only requirement is a telephone number as they call you to verify the listing.

Use caution when linking your website to other websites in order to avoid being banned from Google's index for inadvertently associating yourself with Black Hat practitioners. Black Hat practitioners use cloaking, spamming, redirect pages and other deceptive means to try and circumvent search engine techniques. Although Google or other search engines can exclude your website from their index for linking to one of these sites, you won't be penalized if one of these sites link to yours.

The only guaranteed way to get your website seen by more than just your personal network is to include a search engine optimization plan when setting up your business. Without a high page rank the effort you put into building your site will be for naught so get cracking on your keywords and site building and maximize your page views!

Senuke X