When one of your potential customers uses a search engine to find what they are looking to buy, you want your online business to be at the top, or at least on the first page of the results. If your website SEO (search engine optimization) is not created correctly, your customers will have great difficulty in finding you online.

Your SEO strategy will determine how search engines check the content of your website to produce results. The 7 SEO best practices below will enhance your rankings and potentially even get your online business to the top of the list.

1. Use The Best Keywords.

This is the most important part of your SEO strategy. Keywords are the words and phrases that somebody uses when they are looking for something on the internet. You need to be sure that the words you use within your website are the words that most people search for when looking for information connected to your online business. You need to be sure to choose the correct SEO keywords as it is one of the most important factors in gaining good search engine rankings. There are several free keyword tools that can help such as Wordtracker, SEO Book Keyword Tool and Keyword Eye.

2. Use Keywords In Your Title Tags.

What is a Title Tags? Your title tag is the heading you use for your web page title. Search engines display title tags in their results and is the most important area of your SEO to have your keyword. This will show up as the title of your website in the search results.

3. Use Java Script Menus With Caution.

Java Script is a programming language used to make web pages interactive. It runs on your visitor’s computer and is often used to create polls and quizzes. Search engines do not recognize Java Scripts and therefore should be used sparingly. If certain parts of your website do contain Java Script you will want to create a site map.

4. Maintenance And Consistency.

If you want your website to maintain good search engine rankings, you will need to update your website regularly. One important aspect of your SEO strategy is keeping an eye on your competition and changing your keywords accordingly.

5. Put Tags On Your Website Images.

One the SEO best practices that is often forgotten is the traffic you can receive from images on your website. Search engines can read the descriptions that you give to your images. An ‘alt image tag’ is the text that a website visitor sees when their cursor moves over an image. This text is also read by the search engines and is a great place to embed keywords.

6. Stay Away From Backlink Spamming

Make sure your backlinks are of quality and not just spam as a way to add more keywords. This will only lower your rankings.

7. Your SEO Has To Be Relevant.

The more keywords that appear in your website content the higher your ranking will appear. But only use them in places that will make sense. A page just full of keywords will not work and the search engines will not rank your website. Well placed keywords can be made bold or underlined to make them stand out.