Have you recently built a website but cannot figure out why you don’t have traffic pouring in? You may be looking around for that proverbial “X” factor to draw visitors to your site. But before you go drop money on the net’s equivalent of the magic beans, read these SEO tips first.

Allow visitors to your site to social bookmark it for later, by providing your visitors this option, you are helping create links that will raise you in search engine ranks. Not only that, but you can find free widgets that can help you accomplish this for free. Remember the higher in search results, the easier you can be found and get more traffic.

If you operate a WordPress blog, the best way to handle SEO is to grab one of the server’s many plug-in options. Instead of looking around and reading articles, you can handle everything on-site. A lot of the difficult steps of the past have been automated on a site like WordPress, so tinkering with the site a little bit, can turn you into an SEO aficionado.

Take care when using your social media presence to boost your main site’s PageRank. The data you provide on your social media pages (e.g. Facebook and Twitter bios) should dovetail with the main keywords of your website. This establishes a relationship between the two that can help improve the positioning of both your social media presence and your main site.

Don’t put large amounts of information in the TITLE or META tags of a website. Putting large numbers of keywords in these two areas of a page is a common tactic used by spammers. There is evidence that websites that have lots of information in these tags are heavily penalized by Google and other search engines.

Plan your website so that the structure is clean and you avoid going too deeply into directories. Every page you write for your website should be no more than three clicks away from the homepage. People, and search engines, like to find the information they are looking for, quickly and easily.

To optimize your site for search engines, avoid using Flash and frames. They share the basic problem of preventing links to a single page. Spiders can’t crawl Flash, so the search engines won’t be able to see as much of your site. If you have to use Flash, be sure to include navigation links as well.

Do you want to rank more highly with the search engines? An efficient search engine optimization strategy is to use the ALT text feature, with any image that you place on your site. This will allow you to place your keywords in as many positions as possible and one extra, can be the ALT text area of an image.

The easier your site is to navigate, the easier it will be to build an audience, and thus the better your chances are of ranking higher in search engine results. Have a clean, coherent website, and make use of simple additions like text links rather than using images or drop-down menus.

Try to keep flash and frames to a minimum on your site. They may look pretty, but they are horrible for search engine optimization and engines can’t decode them easily. If you have to use flash, make sure to also include links or keywords on the bottom of your pages.

Do not create a site with search engine optimization as your primary goal. This won’t make your site money, but the customers do. Build your site with the visitor in mind. Ask yourself: “Is my site fun, enjoyable, or useful?” If you answered no to all of those, you will not see hits and clicks from interested people.

To improve search engine optimization, consider repeating the primary keyword or keywords for your web page, in all of the page titles. For example, if you are a running coach, you may want to title your pages “Running Form,” “Running Therapy,” “Running Tips,” “Running Groups” or something similar. Repeating your primary keyword, indicates to search engines that this keyword is very important.

You should always monitor the ranking of your page using programs such as the Google Tool Bar or Alexa. You should also always know what websites the people visiting your website are from. This gives you an idea of what other kind of websites they may be visiting. Perhaps you can advertise there as well.

A good idea for search engine optimization is to make your URL name an easy one to remember. Use keywords that are relevant to the topic of your page and make sure not add any underscored. This way, when a person wants to come back to your site, they will have no problem remembering the URL.

Pick a keyword for the article that you are writing. It doesn’t matter how good your article is if nobody can find it during an Internet search. Use long tail keywords as much as possible. Some search engines have a keyword tool that will allow you to see what keywords have been searched the most; choose something that has a couple hundred hits each month.

Develop and deploy a solid social media strategy, or get left behind by search engines. Everyone, from small brick and mortar businesses, to mega corporations, is on board the social media train. Not having an approach to this angle of internet marketing, is certainb business suicide with search engines. So have a vivid and constant presence in social media.

For search engine optimization, you should avoid purchasing a domain name that is associated with spam. Search engines will not trust your website if they have the domain name you use classified as spam. Read reviews about domain names before you purchase one, or look domain names up on popular search engines to see how they rank.

Now do you understand why you should avoid those magic beans and snake oil out there? These tips above have just explained to you that earning higher page placement and better overall rankings is about catering to your market and the engine. You don’t need magic for this. You only need to use the tips above.