Search engine optimization is an under-utilized tool that can reap serious rewards. If you have never heard of search engine optimization, know that it uses the key to many search engine algorithms to maximize the results returned for queries similar to your website’s topics. If you’d like to see how search engine optimization can work for you and your website, read on for the newest tips and tricks to direct traffic your way!

A way to bring your website to the top of a list in a search engine is to promote your website or product on various aggregator websites such as Digg, Fark, Reddit, or StumbleUpon. The more prominent linkages you can create through websites such as these will provide more credibility to your website. This will in turn provide the search bots more evidence that your website it valuable and worth putting near the top.

If you are looking to get a better handle on what keywords and phrases to use in SEO, first you have to know which phrases people actually use. Google maintains an AdWords program that will allow you to do this. You enter specific words and phrases, and AdWords will return how many times people have conducted searches for those specific words and phrases.

Make your URL’s easy to understand. Not only will the users of your site have no problem knowing what that particular page will contain, but the search engines will be able to find it easier, as well. Avoid in house classifications that involve numbers and random letters. Stick to keywords and phrases that make sense.

The importance of linking out can not be overstated. Creating a resource page that carries weighted links to related sites that are rich with keywords and phrases carry extra weight with search engines. Make the extra effort to garner these resource links to increase the weight and improve the ranking.

Try to use a static URL. Dynamic URLs appear to search engines as duplicates, so your site may not place as high on their rating lists as you would prefer. Static URLs appear as multiple different sites, allowing the search engines to see that you actually have multiple pages, instead of just seeing a duplicate.

While content is key to any successful search engine optimization, it’s important to remember that ultimately you are writing for other people, not the search engines. High-quality, readable and informative content is going to ultimately win you more visitors than text packed with keywords. Quality wins out over quantity in the end.

Basic HTML includes six levels of “heading” tags. You should make use of all of them for improved performance with search engines. When you include keywords in heading tags, search engines weight those keywords more heavily against potential search terms. Headings need not dictate the appearance of your web-page, and they offer you a handy way to squeeze extra SEO performance out of your keywords.

Avoid using the same keywords or phrases repetitively on your site by sticking to a keyword density of 1-2 percent. Search engines consider this keyword stuffing and spam, which hurts your ranking more than helps it. In addition, content that has too many of the same keywords is not very reader friendly to site visitors.

When you look at competitor’s websites for search engine optimization analysis, make sure you examine their site map carefully. A competitor that gets consistent high rankings from the search engines, likely has a very well-optimized site. Inspect the keywords that show up on their site map. Ask yourself if there are any keywords on your competitor’s site that your site could use.

In regards to search engine optimization, you should avoid using Flash in your website design. Although it can make your site more interesting by providing pretty graphics and eyecatching movement, search engine spiders can’t read Flash content. As a result, if you have Flash in your website it often will not be indexed well in the search engines. By sticking with standard graphics and text instead, you stand a much better chance of having your site listed near the top of the results for your keywords.

You might think that linking to a huge number of other websites will increase the popularity of your site and is a great way to get improved search engine optimization, but remember the quality of the sites you link to is very important. If you link to poor quality sites, it can actually hurt the popularity ranking of your site.

If you use a shared server, make sure you are not sharing your proxy with a site that has been banned by any of the major search engines. Sharing a proxy with a banned site or a site that has been deemed spammers could negatively affect your ratings, and thus not get you the traffic you desire.

Keywords are important to search engine optimization, but watch out how many you put. If you put an insane amount of keywords on your site, it will get labeled as spam. Search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites that are guilty of placing their keywords too frequently on their site. Use good judgement in your keyword use.

Try improving your Google crawl rate. The Google crawl rate refers to how often a search spider from Google visits your website and gathers information that will then become available in search results. Post new content regularly to attract attention from search engine spiders. There are many traffic tools that help you keep track of how often spiders visit your website.

If you want your website to rank high on search results ,you need to understand search engine optimization. Understanding what SEO is and how it works is the first step to making it work for you. It is an evolving concept that is ever changing. Keeping yourself informed, is the only way to master this broad concept.

As you can see search engine optimization is easy to implement and can deliver a vast impact for website owners. It is an intuitive way of working with the tools already at your disposal and oftentimes requires very little money. This makes search engine optimization an ideal way for new start-ups to get the biggest bang for their buck!