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Many website owners invest a large part of their budget on creating a great website. However, many forget the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in getting their website noticed online.

With over 300 million websites currently on the Internet, it's very easy for even the best websites to get lost in cyberspace. No matter how great your product, business or website design, without the right SEO techniques, you could be losing customers to your competitors.

There are many SEO techniques that can boost your search engine ranking. Let's take a look at a few simple ones that you can use to get your website noticed.

Meta Descriptions and Keywords.
Meta data, site descriptions and tags serve to tell search engines and web browsers what your website is about. They are where you should be including commonly searched keywords and search phrases. It's also important to include relevant keywords throughout the content of your website. Just be wary of keyword 'cramming' - while keywords are an important part of your website content, they shouldn't be used at the expense of well-written content.

When you include popular keywords in your meta data and website content, they will be noticed by search engine bots or 'spiders' so your website can be correctly categorised and ranked.

Link Building.
Another thing search engines take note of is the number of links on the Internet that lead back to your website. There are many ways you can link build, but one of the best ways is through creating genuine content that is noticed and recommended by other people, websites, blogs, and on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.

Content is King.
When your website is pulled up by a search engine, it is timed to see how long users are staying on your page. The longer they stay, the better it is for your search ranking. In other words, the better your content, the longer they stick around, and the better your SEO will be! Also remember to regularly put fresh content on your website; it makes search engines more likely to notice and rank you higher in search results. A great way to keep new content on your website is through integrating a blog or news feature.

SEO Don'ts.
Here are a few things to avoid if you are looking to boost your SEO:

Don't use long, complicated URLs with unnecessary parameters and session ID's. Instead, try using simple URLs that clearly represent what is on your website.

Don't use underscores in URLs, which can cause search engines to see words in the URL string as one big word, making your website less likely to appear in a keyword search.

Don't use Flash player. Many search engines are not compatible with Flash, and are unable to crawl or see Flash content.

Don't use hidden links or text. This is a black-hat SEO technique that search engines will ignore.

It may be time to do an assessment on how well your website is ranking in search results. If you can see room for improvement, try using some of these techniques, or ask an SEO professional for assistance.