There is a lot to learn about search engine optimization. Although there is not enough room to write about all of it in this one article, there is a wealth of knowledge here that will get you started on making your website stand out and rank higher in the search results.

When setting up your site with SEO, be aware of how search engine spiders view your page. For example, while using images for navigation links may look attractive to human viewers, it will hurt your search engine rankings. Your rankings, and your reputation for users with accessibility issues, will be increased if you use primarily text or at least provide a text alternative for image links.

Track how well your site is doing by analyzing information from analytic tools. Find out which pages are getting the most traffic and which are getting no traffic at all. Find out what brings them to your site. By studying analytics, you are able to adjust your site to one that visitors come to see.

Determine if the keywords you are using in your site are conducive to internet searches. You can test this with any “pay-per-click” search engine. Type in your keywords and see how many other people are searching for those terms. Play around with your vocabulary, and see if you can get a key phrase that contains words that most people will search for. When you modify your keywords using this method, more people will find your site using a search engine.

Your website copy should focus on what a human would search for. Trying to beat the engine with repetitive keywords will get you nowhere. The engine is smarter than that. Look for phrases and strings that will be searched for by the normal human. Effectively targeting these types of key phrases will garner more hits.

Make sure to submit your site to search engines for ranking after you go to the effort of optimizing it. The search engine can’t rank something it doesn’t know about. All of that effort will be wasted if the search engine doesn’t know your site exists. Most search engines today use spiders, but submitting the site yourself will speed up the ranking process.

Make sure that the text on your website is not too large. Large text usually will take away from the look of your site and appears very elementary. Try to stick to size 12 font that is clear and very easy to read. This will help to yield happy customers.

When looking to optimize your site for search engines, don’t forget to take a look at the competition. Bring up a Google search and see what keywords your competition is using, and if their site is ranked higher than yours. If you find that you’re not on top, rewrite some of your keywords to give yourself the advantage.

Do your research on the search engine crawlers. Many search engines use different methods and qualifications for their rankings, but mostly use a similar type of crawler. Read up on the types of crawlers they use, what they can and cannot see, and how you can use these to your advantage.

Add your primary keyword phrase into the first paragraph of content. If you can add it twice, that will be even better. Make sure though that your content is still readable and user friendly and avoid making it come across as spam. If you can fit it in and still keep a good content flow then do it.

Keywords should be placed heavily on your page. By using them many times, this will help the search engines to determine what your page is all about. Use the key phrases that you have chosen several times, putting them as close to the top of your new page as you can. Placing key phrases in the proper place on your website, will help search engines recognize your site.

Try to use CSS as much as possible, avoiding tags like line breaks that clutter the code and slow down page load times. CSS can do everything from bolding text to aligning images, so using it is easy. The beauty of it is that you can load it outside your HTML code, meaning your page will load extremely quickly.

If you have to have less attractive pages on your website, such as user profiles, then bury those links. You can place the links into JavaScript so that search engines will ignore them. You don’t want them indexed because this can spread out your link juice and lower your general page rank.

Content within iframes is hidden to search engine spiders, so only put content there that you don’t want indexed. Iframes are good for advertising or low priority content which you don’t want to use as part of your search engine optimization strategy. Do NOT put any copy in an iframe or it will not be indexed!

Always make sure to go back and optimize your site’s older content pages frequently. If your older material does not appear in rankings like it should you need to analyze it. Once you do that, you can tweak it and update it to help it get better search engine rankings.

Include your top keyword phrase in the first paragraph of your page. You can use it again later in header tags and further content, but don’t overdo it. You want the text to flow in a very natural manner. Words that are crammed into it over and over will stick out like a sore thumb.

As you optimize your site, remember that your actual business competitors and your search engine results competitors aren’t necessarily the same companies. This will determine your specific keywords as you begin to generate your site content. If you sell life insurance, your keyword should include both words: “life” and “insurance”.

If you’ve been avoiding it, or you haven’t been seeing the results that you were hoping for from your previous attempts to maximize your search engine results, then hopefully you will now that you’ve read some of these tips. This isn’t an exhaustive reference, but it is a starting point. This starting point that might make all the difference in the world in your search engine optimization efforts.