When you are looking to boost traffic to your website, you need to search engine optimize - or SEO in abbreviation - it. In order to do that you have to understand the basics of SEO and how to use it to make sure your website is found by the people you want to see it. SEO allows search engines, spiders, crawlers, and other search methods to hit upon your website every time. Here we have collected seven SEO tips we think you can use towards achieving this goal and making your website come out as the cream of the crop and not on the bottom of the web searching food chain. Be forewarned: these SEO tips will take some time and effort to put into effect on your website, but they are well worth it and will keep you from losing visitors because they can't find you.

SEO Tips #1: Make sure that your website is designed to be search engine friendly.

How do you do that? Actually, it's pretty easy. Use as much text in your website as possible as most search engines search on keywords. Pictures are great, but keep them to a relevant minimum. If you use things such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript, do not include it with your HTML coding. Instead keep it in a separate file so that the web search engines look through your text first. Research the pros and cons of tables as compared to frames and use the one that is right for you, and try to steer clear of non-HTML file types such as Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word documents.

SEO Tips #2: Use keywords in your text that the search engine will hit upon.

By using the right keywords in your website text you should get some outstanding results when someone searches for your site. The key to search engine optimization is getting your website to the number one spot when the search results are displayed. Use words that describe what your website is about and words that you think other people would use to search for the information you are presenting. Take your time and if you have to, take a look at other websites and see what keywords they are using to score the results they are getting.

SEO Tips #3: Review the information on your page such as headings to see if it is helping or hindering your page rankings.

This particular SEO tip should be done every few months. The information in your page title and header should include not only the description of your website, but also a keyword or two so that the search engines hit on it immediately.

SEO Tips #4: Add META tags and META description tags to all of your pages.

When you use a search engine to find a website, it usually returns a small paragraph telling you what the website is about. This is the META and META description tags. By using keywords in these and including them on all of your web pages - remember, if properly done the search engine will go to one of your web pages as compared to the homepage - you will be able to quickly and efficiently tell the search engine and the visitor what you are all about. This is a very important SEO tip that should not be ignored.

SEO Tips #5: Utilize link popularity. A trick used by Google, link popularity is used to rank your search engine.

This is done by the search engine seeking out all of the other websites and pages that are linked to your website. The more sites that carry a link to you, the better.

SEO Tips #6: List your site with Google's Open Directory Project for more recognition.

Google is partial to websites that are listed in the Open Directory Project, so do your best to get your website listed in there.

SEO Tips #7: Use ALL of the above tips in conjunction with one another.

By using all of the above SEO tips together when you are building or tweaking your website, you should notice an almost immediate difference in your website page rankings. You may have to tweak your website a few times to accomplish your goal, but it will be worth the effort in the long run.