Search engine optimization, also called SEO, refers to the method of improving visibility of a website in a search engine, often using different methods of manipulating a search engine’s algorithm so that the search engine directs searchers that use certain keywords to their website. This article can help you understand the concept of search engine optimization and apply it to your purposes.

You may be looking to optimize your site to cover every contingency, but you would do better to focus on a smaller, manageable number of keywords, and claim the top search spots, then to overextend yourself and try to conquer too much search territory. Pick five to ten keywords, do your homework, and then optimize your pages with that focused set of words in mind.

To reach the top of the search engine results page, your site needs to offer regular, fresh content. One good way to keep a stream of new content is by including a blog on your site. This will show the search engines that your site is active, and if your blog is interesting, it will naturally bring in more human traffic.

A web page meta tag is where you include a description of what the page is all about. Instead of just a few words like you would include in the title tag, the meta tag has room for a few well constructed sentences. For effective search engine optimization, don’t simply repeat what you already have in the title tag!

If you are trying to lower costs in your initial SEO run, use and test long tail keywords. You might be surprised at the cost/visitor ratio of certain long tail variations of popular keywords. If you can spend $100 to get 1000 visitors to your site, that’s better than spending $1000 to get 5000 visitors. Keep in mind that you might have to run several campaigns simultaneously if you use this method.

If your page is undergoing a search engine optimization makeover, you will probably try to include your keywords more often in your text. However, you must keep your text natural and readable. If the inclusion of keywords interrupts your writing style, it makes the site’s text look unprofessional. Take your time and be creative when you increase the number of keywords in the site’s content.

Optimize your site using breadcrumb navigation. Breadcrumb navigation means including a series of links that lead the viewer incrementally back to the homepage of your site. These make it easier for visitors to find their way around your site and increase the incidence of your target keywords, plus the search engine spiders can index your site more easily.

Start from the top. You likely will not be able to tackle your entire website for optimization in a week, let alone a day. Begin by working with your top ranked pages, and move down from there. The most popular pages will be the ones to bring you the most hits from optimization anyway, but optimizing them all will bring your site ranking upwards as a whole.

Starting a blog is a great way to optimize a website’s search engine performance. The structured, frequently-updated content of a blog is treated favorably by search engines, which drives up a website’s position on the search engine results page. Committing to a high-quality blog will also draw a website into communication with its visitors and industry peers.

You should not have a separate page full of links. It’s a good idea to keep links relevant to the content of the page. Search engines often ignore link pages and readers have no interest in them. If your links flow naturally with your content, it will improve your relationship with both human readers and search engine bots.

To avoid lowering your page rank when changing domains, request sticky forwarding from your hosting company. Sticky forwarding will forward search engines from your old domain to your new one, allowing them to catalog all pages of your new site. You can specify the period of time that you want to use the sticky forwarding function and you only have to hold onto your old domain for as long as it lasts.

There is no one single method of search engine optimization, but using meta tags is a good start. When choosing your tag be sure that the keyword actually matches your website. Use a search phrase that you think your target market would use to find your product or service.

Don’t fall into the SEO trap of believing that links can outweigh good content. Building a site that will appear at the top of the search engine rankings isn’t about beating the algorithms, it’s about providing good content. A single link from a high-ranking site will not help you outrank other sites that have relevant, recently-updated content about your keyword.

Use a keyword checking tool to make sure the keywords you want to be prevalent on your page are the ones the search engines will be finding. Sometimes you don’t realize how often other common words are being repeated in the other text on your page, like advertising or navigation links.

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website through Google Adwords, do NOT link to any pages that disable the back button. Honestly, most of your audience will be upset if they’re not permitted to go backwards as they feel they should be able to move around as they please. Also, Google, on the other hand, will remove your link if you remove the back button.

If you want local users to be able to search for your site, it is important to include your company’s complete physical address on every page of your website. This makes it more visible to search engine algorithms that take geographical descriptors into account, as they analyze sites and assign rankings.

As revealed earlier in the article, search engine optimization is simply a calculated method of directing people that are searching for a keyword on a search engine, so that they end up with your website showing up as one of the top results found. By understanding and applying the information here, you can maximize the traffic and visibility of your website.