Search engine optimization is an art, a science, a mystery and, to the inexperienced, a great big pain. But it need not be so! A little learning goes a long way towards demystifying the whole process. The ideas that follow will show how small changes to a website can have big impacts on the way search engines treat it.

When using SEO on your site, don’t forget about organizing your files in the directory. The more layers you have in your file directory, the less weight the search engine spiders will place on those pages. Organizing your files to be closer to the root directory will help to boost your rankings.

Claim your location to maximize search engine optimization! That is for websites that are designed to map out locations for business with a local presence. Search engines will bring up sites local to a customer’s IP address when they are searching for a physical business. By claiming your site on these pages you can control your brand and make customers more likely to visit you.

When optimizing your site for Google, do not use “semi spam” copy. Recent Google algorithm changes penalize not only obvious spam (e.g. “Get [email protected] from 0verseas”), but also low quality content that has no useful purpose other than to drive visitors to a site. Articles spun by computers are a good example of this kind of content.

To draw more traffic to your site, learn which words people use when they are searching for your site. Customers tend to prefer keywords that are broader and easier to remember. Find out what words and phrases are most popular, and then use these on your site to attract more attention.

When it comes to search engine optimization, you have to be patient. You are not going to see immediate jumps in traffic simply because you optimized your site yesterday. It can take up to several months to see a significant result from your search engine optimization process. Especially if you are a new business, or have recently started using a web site.

Cloaking is a technique where one optimized site is given to the search engines and a completely different, un-optimized site is given to consumers. This practice is very controversial and may result in your site being considered spam. Take great caution if this is a road you decide to travel down.

When you initially launch your new site, send out a press release to local media who may be interested in covering the story. Even if you already have an established site, do a “remodel” and send out a press release for the new and improved unveiling. You might be surprised by how many publications have space reserved for just these types of stories.

Use search engine advertising products to find out what keywords related to your field of work are popular. Once you find out what kind of keywords work well, use them to describe your website. Make sure to do searches with this tool regularly to stay up to date: popular keywords can change very quickly.

Add your keyword phrase into the site URL if you are unable to get a domain name that includes them. The engines read the URL and they place value on the words found there. You want your keyword to be found as quickly as possible by the engines to increase your rankings.

Do not overspend on generating traffic. You do not need to buy all different kinds of traffic. Keep the traffic that you are buying specific to the information that you are offering on your site. You will not get anywhere by drawing in readers that have no interest in what you have to offer.

You should keep the URL structure of your site as clear as possible. This will make your site easy to navigate, but also, easy to index for better ranking in search results. You can classify your pages in different categories or by chronological order. Find what works best for the type of website that you have.

To get the most out of SEO, you must remember to always provide links of the highest quality. Links pointing to your site should be well-placed and you should place a lot of them. This will get you to the top quickly. Submitting high quality articles containing link exchanges that are selective will give your site a boost.

In SEO, title and META descriptions of each page are extremely important. Be sure to create descriptions and titles that both people and search engine bots will like. You should be sure they contain the keywords and are compelling. However, don’t stuff them with keywords. This is off-putting, and it will lower your ratings.

Every page on a website offers an opportunity for a customer or a search engine bot to find your website and read your pages. When you add a blog to your website, you open up a lot of new opportunities for your site to be found. Your blog can discuss very small aspects of your niche that will appeal to a tangent of your target group. That’s why adding a blog is such a good SEO practice.

If your website doesn’t get fresh content very often, add a blog! Search engines love to index new, original information, and a website that provides such content will get more attention from their spiders. Your audience will also visit more often if they know there is something new to read. Blog at least three times a week to keep your site vital.

Be sure you check out what headers are getting sent by the server along with the site pages. There are tons of free tools out there to help you analyze information that is sent when a page is loaded. Make use of them. “200 OK” and “301 Moved Permanently” are the only two statuses you’ll want to see.

Hopefully, search engine optimization looks a little less mystical, now. It is just a collection of techniques for boosting a website’s traffic and therefore, its potential revenue. Some of them are easy to master, while some take more study and practice. If the tips above whet your appetite, there is plenty more enlightenment waiting for you.