You should always be careful when taking advice from just anyone when it comes to SEO, but you will need to learn to trust someone. After you read the tips provided for you in this article, you will realize that this information is about as trustworthy as it comes. No thrills or hyperbole here, just the basic truth about how you can use SEO to increase your site’s rankings.

If you plan to retire or change your URL try to use a 301 redirect. This code is beneficial. The 404, or “Page Not Found” code can be damaging. A code 301 will tell your various search engines where they should transfer your old URLs search engine results page position to.

To keep search engines from ignoring your site, only use original content. Copying and pasting product descriptions from your merchant’s site may save you time, but it will also lower your site’s page ranking. To assure your page rank remains high, take the time to write your own content. If you don’t have time to write, hire a copywriter to create original content for you.

Know who you are selling to. Find out everything you can about your target market. One of the first things you should know is how many people make up your target market. You can get a good idea of this by searching your product on Google’s Free Keyword Tool. It will give you some likely keywords along with the number of people who have searched using those keywords.

Use outside resources to track your rank. This may seem like a simple thing to do on your own, but your rankings on the search engines change constantly. Using an outside resource usually means they will keep track of your rankings for a few hours or days, and report back to you where your average sits.

Today most search engines are capable of indexing Flash content on a website, but be cautious in using it on your site. Flash content simply does not index as well or as completely as HTML. For optimal search engine ranking make sure your site relies primarily on plain HTML, and only use Flash for non-essential bonus content.

Whenever it is possible, use your keywords in your URL. Search engines pick up on keywords that are placed in the URL. Instead of using numbers or text in article URLs, try to use a CMS that will use real words. These should be the keywords that readers will, most likely, search for.

If you want a search engine to include more than one page from your site in their results, you should create links within your website from one page to the other. Create pages with information related to the same topic so that different pages will appear as relevant to a search engine.

Use a search engine to your advantage. Find the top ten best rated and most used article directories, and start out by only submitting to those. This will help you keep your focus, and also put you higher on the submission lists for the search engines. You should only associate with reputable companies.

Include keyword-rich descriptions of your images in the ALT tag, to boost your search engine optimization efforts. Search engine spiders are not capable of recognizing pictures or understanding the text contained within the graphics on your site. To help the spiders understand each image, write a keyword filled description in the image ALT tag.

To keep your readers interested and to continually attract new readers, try to keep your article flow constant. It is generally recommended that you write at least 4 new articles a week to keep and attract traffic to your site. It may seem like a lot, but it will become routine and you’ll be able to do it fairly quickly.

To avoid waiting for Google to add your site to its directory, place a link to your site on higher ranking sites. One easy way to do this is to register at a popular forum and include a link to your site in your signature. When Google scans the forum, they’ll see your site and start adding its pages.

To make your website’s linking structure give you good search engine results, avoid deep linking hierarchies, unless you are comfortable with your low-level pages performing poorly on the results pages. Deep linking means using many nested sub-directories to organize your content. Search engines are unlikely to burrow more than two or three sub-directories deep, so make sure pages at that depth are not page that you want to optimize for the search engines.

Using keywords in your domain name is important, but so is using them in your directory path and file names. Whichever software application you’re using to publish your website, ensure that it’s creating file names that are rich in your targeted keywords. Also, use dashes instead of underscores to separate your file name keywords.

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.

Always remember to keep your customers in mind when writing blurbs that contain search engine optimization language. This keeps your customers interested in what you have to say and the products and services you have to offer. Remember using only search engine optimization words will make your blurbs sound spammy.

One tip for increasing search engine optimization on your own blog is to guest post on other blogs. This will put your name and blog out there and drive traffic back to your own site. You can always trade with another blogger and both of you can benefit from helping each other.

As you can tell from this article, the best SEO tips are short, sweet and to the point. They won’t give you the runaround with fluff and they don’t make any bold promises that you’ll be instantly rich, if you only do this or that. This is real advice for the real site owner. Use it wisely and watch your rankings rise.