Search engine optimization, also called dispensary 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.

Tailoring the meta tags of a website for search engine optimization is a profitable endeavor. Meta tags are not usually visible to website visitors, but their content is thoroughly checked by search engines. This is a great area to pack with the most salient keywords the website owner wants to associate with his or her site.

When you are first starting a website, avoid using sub-domains. Google treats sub-domains as their own site for purposes of assigning them PageRank. Directories from the main site, however, have the same PageRank as the parent site. This means, for instance, that mysite.com/store will have the same PageRank as mysite.com, but store.mysite.com won't.

To better optimize your site for search engines, you should place keywords in the title tag for every post. Most search engines place more importance on titles than other types of contents. This means that using effective keywords is your title is one of the best ways to draw in traffic from search engines.

Insert a keyword phrase on the URL to your website. Search engines will assign a higher value to your URL when they are determining the sites to spit out on searches. The more popular the keyword phrase of your URL, the higher frequency that your site will appear on searches.

After choosing your keyword phrase, purchase a domain name that includes your keyword. It will increase the likelihood of click-throughs, and it will give readers an instant idea as to what your site is about. This is key to rankings and is part of the reason you should always choose slightly less popular keyword phrases so that you are more likely to still find open domain names.

Get a link checker and make sure that your links are all working. Do this check at least every other month to avoid having bad links on your site. Readers hate it because it makes it look like you are not paying attention to the site and the engines will penalize you in the rankings if you have a lot of broken links.

Keep your use of robots.txt files to a minimum. These files are useful for keeping areas of your site hidden from the search engines and are perfectly fine to use. The problem comes if too much of your site is hidden behind these files. The engines will consider your site 'forbidden' and will stop indexing it all together.

If you have a WordPress blog, install the "All in One SEO Pack" plugin. This plugin optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines automatically. You can either use the default options provided or fully customize the plugin to meet your blog's unique SEO needs. The plugin is also compatible with other WordPress plugins, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior and Auto Meta.

For more technical and current insight into your competitors' keywords and site content, visit each of your individual competitors' pages and view the source page. The information contained in the pages' code should help you to identify which keywords your competitors are using to bring in your target market.

SEO requires a finely tuned balance of on-site and off-site optimization. While the two concepts are actually considered separate techniques, the most effective and keyword-optimized sites combine the best aspects of each of the two schools. When well-researched and done properly, the two sides create a site that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The best way to get people to visit your website is to design a good page. The purpose of your site dictates the features that make it great or not so great. The design needs of an online store are not the same needs of a blog. Sometimes simplicity makes the best site of all. Remember, the goal is to be user friendly.

Get involved in social media. Posting links to your blog posts on some of these sites can get you multiple responses that can add to your audience base. It's a great way to draw in new readers!

Make sure that you have some type of software in place that will measure web analytics. You have to set goals for yourself, and this software will help you figure out which methods are working for you and which ones are not. This will save a lot of time that would be wasted on something that is not showing results.

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.