Search engine optimization is an art, a science, a mystery and, to the inexperienced, a great big pain. But it need not be so! A little learning goes a long way towards demystifying the whole process. The ideas that follow will show how small changes to a website can have big impacts on the way search engines treat it.

On your website, headings are going to play a vital role in organizing information. So you need to use only a single H1 tag when you are putting your page together. You can use various subheading tags, like H2-H6, but keep things neat and clean by only using one main H1 tag.

For search engine optimization, avoid heavy use of flash, or avoid it altogether if possible. The same goes for frames and the use of things like AJAX. This is because different pages or elements in flash or similar set-ups will all share the same link, rather than having differentiated links. This makes it harder for search engines to find.

Claim your location to maximize search engine optimization! That is for websites that are designed to map out locations for business with a local presence. Search engines will bring up sites local to a customer’s IP address when they are searching for a physical business. By claiming your site on these pages you can control your brand and make customers more likely to visit you.

Avoid unnecessary, miscellaneous data on your website. This strategy goes hand in hand with reducing the length of your page to maximize quality. Miscellaneous data and extraneous facts will only lose the attention of your visitor, which can lose your sale on the spot. Use vital information to your company that explains exactly what you are about.

When creating anchor text on your site links and on incoming links, you can boost your search engine rankings by varying the text content of the links. If the anchor text on every link is the same, it can hurt your rankings as it looks like an automated program. Varied links appear as the work of many different people and are rated more highly.

There are many places you can include keywords to optimize a page’s search engine performance: No place is more important than the title of the page. While all keyword mentions are taken into account, keywords in the title are heavily weighted. A quick research trip will show you that few pages make it to the top of the search results without having relevant search terms right in their titles.

When you have determined which popular search engine terms to use, be sure to place them in your HTML title tag. You should do this because search engines give title tag content the most weight out of any of the other elements found on the page. Also use these phrases in title, tags, and description of your videos that you post on video sharing sites.

Hopefully, search engine optimization looks a little less mystical, now. It is just a collection of techniques for boosting a website’s traffic and therefore, its potential revenue. Some of them are easy to master, while some take more study and practice. If the tips above whet your appetite, there is plenty more enlightenment waiting for you.