Search engine optimization is crucial to the success of your online business, as it will determine how visible your website is. Although it may seem daunting at first, and there's no shortage of conflicting advice. However, following some simple tips and principles can make all the difference. In this article, we'll lay out some different ways to make SEO work for you.

Stay ethical. Many websites use what is called "Black Hat" tactics, meaning they use unethical practices to hop their sites up on search lists. These include keyword stuffing, "Doorway pages", and many others. Stay away from these, because if a search engine realizes you are using them, they will likely ban your site from their pages.

Many people still make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do in SEO is to cram as many keywords as possible onto their homepage. Not so. While it is important that your homepage contain some keywords, it's also critical to make sure you have keywords sprinkled throughout your site, since all pages that link to a homepage ultimately count towards its search ranking.

Don't overuse header tags to try to increase your search engine ranking. Use the H1 tag only once on your page, near the top. Then use the H2 tag a few times, 2-3 maximum. Lastly, use the H3 tag for the least important titles on the page. As long as you stick to these rules, feel free to fill your titles with keyword-rich phrases!

Building backlinks is a good SEO technique, but avoid linking to bad neighborhoods. The number of backlinks your site has usually positively effects your site's search engine results page rank, however any backlinks from bad neighborhoods can make your site guilty by association causing search engines to penalize your website. It is best to avoid adult sites, gambling sites and free-for-all link farms when building backlinks.

Optimize your HTML and not just your text. Search engines don't see the pages the same way human users do, so just because it looks good on the outside doesn't mean it'll get ranked highly. For example, using an

tag is a better choice than increasing the font size with the tag, since now the search engine will realize that text is a header.

Although you may outsource some of the work, SEO is still your primary job as a site owner. This means you will have to oversee the process, as tedious as it may seem at times. You cannot let the little details slip by you. One wrong keyword or a broken link today could lead to a poorly ranked site tomorrow. So be sure to stay on top of things and micromanage your site.

As has been suggested, search engine optimization is key for an effective web presence. This article has provided some ideas to work out a strategy that will suit your business, and fit in seamlessly with what you're trying to achieve with your website and social media development. In business, there's no one size fits all, but this article should have given you plenty of new ideas to try out.