Search engines operate in a strange new world. Search engines are visualized as spiders crawling through cyberspace. They pick up “keywords” and add them to their lair of identifying words. They use these words to direct searchers to sites. Search engines operate by artificial intelligence–different from ours. The following tips are designed to help you bridge that gap and help your business gain a valuable friend in these search engine “spiders.”

When setting up your site for SEO in English, make use of synonyms for your target keyword. Search engines in English are generally smart enough to recognize synonyms and will place more weight on your page if you have more instances of the keyword, while you avoid the detracting effect of keyword stuffing.

When setting up your site using SEO, don’t forget the importance of the site-map. Search engines spiders love site-maps, as do human users. It shows both groups where everything is on your site, and increases the keyword density of your pages. Site-maps also help boost your linkage ratings similarly to backlinks.

When dealing with SEO, it is important to remember to take your time. You can’t expect to see results over night, it will take a while to build your reputation in the eyes of the search engines. Also, Google can tell if you try to artificially create links or rapidly increase your traffic and will penalize your site.

Maximize the use of photos and images on your website to enhance your search engine optimization. Give each visual a short interesting caption containing your important keywords. One way that search engines rank images is by the text that surrounds them, so make sure that this information is rich in keywords, including any titles or headings you may use.

Keep track of your visitors. Do so by checking your referrer logs. Things you should look out for include what keywords people are using to find your site in search engines and what websites are referring you. Use this info to increase flow through those channels and possibly add more.

Give your customers points toward free products. Be generous with the points, so it is easy for them to visualize cashing them in after a few orders. The points could be toward products or information, available only to those redeeming points, so customers feel special because they have access to those products. Another option is to throw in a freebie of some sort, with every order.

To rank higher in search results, you should use an index page or a home page that you can link to. Your content is going to vary and be updated: a page might not interest people for very long. You can however rise steadily in search results by referring constantly to the same index page.

Always do keyword research. Selecting the right keywords is the most fundamental part of SEO and by doing initial keyword research, you can save a lot of time and money. If you don’t do any keyword research, you could end up wasting months optimizing for keywords that nobody searches for or keywords that have really tough competition.

When creating external links to promote your website, the anchor text that you use is critical in establishing the effectiveness of the links in raising your search engine rankings. Make sure the anchor text uses the exact key phrase that you want search engines to rank when locating your website. For example, if you run an office supply company and want search engines to locate your website with the phrase “office supply store,” then this is the key phrase you should use as your anchor text. The more external links that point to your business using this phrase in the anchor text, the higher your rankings for the phrase.

Using image maps for website navigation is a bad idea for webmasters looking to optimize search engine performance. While there are ways to link images to keywords for SEO, when it comes to a navigation menu, an image cannot provide more than a tiny fraction of the SEO power offered by a well-tweaked text menu.

Making use of HTML header tags can help optimize a page’s search engine ranking. While the lower levels of header tags are unrestricted, a page can only have one header assigned to the top (H1) level. This is typically reserved for the page’s title. Including multiple H1 tags will break a page’s HTML and render other SEO efforts pointless.

When you are brainstorming the keywords you want to promote, think like Joe Public rather than an industry elite. Find out what terms are actually used when people search for your product or service.

We hope these tips have made this immaterial landscape in which search engine “spiders” operate clearer to you. Leading them to your website will give your business a tremendous boost. Search engines connect your business with customers. Study these tips–and much more information online–and your bottom line will definitely benefit.

Do You Know It All About Search Engine Optimization? was originally published on Spring