Driving more site traffic is goal most of us have. To do that we have to improve our rank in the search engines (i.e. Google’s PageRank). We also have to make sure the search engines are connecting appropriate keywords to our site. Here are some simple to implement tips that will help you accomplish exactly that.

1.  Give Your Pages Appropriate Filenames.  A common mistake I see on many sites are strange abbreviations webmasters use to name their files.  For example, a page that contains information about green living should not be named grnliv.html.  Instead, name it green-living.html.  This lets the search engines connect the page to the most appropriate keywords.

WordPress Tip – If you are using WordPress or another content management system that supports it, select the option for “name-based” Permalinks.  This will ensure that URL for each page or post contains the title – and, therefore, appropriate keywords – and not just a numeric reference.

2.  Use Appropriate Title, Keyword and Description Meta Tags.  Another common mistake is the failure to create an appropriate title for each of your pages.  Many HTML editors automatically create a title tag for each page.  Unfortunately, it is usually something like “New Page 1″.  This of course is not going to help the search engines connect the page to appropriate keywords.  Make sure you give each page on your site an appropriate title.

Very related to this are the meta tags used to identify the page’s keywords and description.  Make sure you each of your pages have these tags and that they have appropriate values.  The tags should be placed within the head tags of your page.

WordPress Tip:  Consider using a plugin like the All in One SEO Pack.  It handles many of these tasks automatically.

3.  Create a Site Map.  It is common for sites to have page that provides an outline or list of links to all of the pages on the site.  That’s definately useful for your visitors, but it’s not the type of sitemap I am referring to.  What I am referring to is a specially formatted XML file that tells the search engines about all of the pages on your site.  This is important for one very obvious reasons: the search engines can’t rank your pages if they don’t know about them.  To learn more about creating a site map see the post I have written on that topic:  Create and Submit a Site Map Feed.

WordPress Tip:  Use the Google Sitemaps plugin.  It will update your sitemap each time you post.

4.  Keep your Content Fresh.  The search engines love fresh content.  Creating new and updating existing pages on your site goes a long way to improving your position in relevant searches.  One of the easiest ways to to do this is to start blog.  Blogging software like WordPress make content management much easier then using HTML editing tools, so your more likely to stay on top of it.  And it’s not just the search engines like fresh content – so do your visitors.  Creating area of your site that is updated regularly is a great way to keep them coming backup.  They are also more likely to bookmark and share your site with others.

5.  Avoid Duplicate Content.  Having duplicate content on your site – or content duplicated from other sites – will dilute your page rank.  Avoid this by creating original content for each page on your site.  Take this further by avoiding duplicate title, keyword and description meta tags.

Tip:  Use Google Webmaster Tools to help monitor some of these issues.

6.  Make your Content Easy to Share. Speaking of bookmarking another important way of improving your PageRank is to have several other sites and pages link back to your site.  Social bookmark sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are excellent forums for doing just that.  Promoting your site using these means is called Social Media Marketing and to be effective you need to make your content easy to share.  Do this using a social bookmarking widget, like Bookmarkify.

Have some SEO experience that you would like to share?  Your comments are welcome.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 6:53 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.