Written by:
2009/11/04 11:43 AM 

Here are five simple SEO tips that will improve your Google index rankings, as well as increase natural traffic to your site.

1. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google.

Google indexes your site by traversing your site structure. Following links to different pages on your blog. Most blogs today have dynamically generated pages. So there are no real links to follow. If Google can't follow links or spends too much time looking for links on your blog, then the Google Robot will leave.

A sitemap is just an XML representation of your pages and posts with the correct urls. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools will increase your chances of being indexed and thereby increase your chances of being found via searches.

Sitemaps provide search engines with important information about the pages on your site. This includes the last time each page was updated, its update frequency, and its relative importance based on traffic and comments.

2. Make use of Google Webmaster Tools.

The Google Webmaster site has a great collection of tools to help make your site more Google-friendly. It provides an overview of how your site is crawled. It also displays information about keywords that other sites use to link you, your top search queries and your search result ranking. This information will help you to understand what is driving traffic to your site. If you understand what drives traffic to your site, you can capitalise on that and milk it for every megabit it is worth.

3. Optimise your post titles with relevant keywords.

I sometimes agonize as to what the post title should be. Sometimes we underestimate the importance of page titles. Not only to our readers but also towards Google. You page title is the first port of call for your readers. It describes in a nutshell what the post is all about. Written correctly it has a mesmeric inviting quality. Good blog post titles solicit traffic. Optimized with the correct keyword terms encourages Google to take notice of it's importance and bumps the page up in the Search Index Page results.

4. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Search engines find pages on your site and blog via a method called spidering. Basically the Search engines crawl through your site, navigating the links to find relevant pages to index. Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or at least the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

Make sure you have a well formatted Robots.txt file that the Search Engine spiders can access. A robots.txt file is a simple file that directs the Search Engine robots where and when they can or cannot go or craw your site. Read this article on the Robots.txt file

5. Update your blog frequently

What on earth has frequency got to do with SEO? Well you will be surprised. The freshness of each post plays a huge and important role as to where and when Google indexes or displays your page in the Search Engine Results Pages. Think of it logically, would you come back to a site that has old stale articles that you have already read?

Google and other search engines thrive on new material. It shows that your blog is alive and well. The more frequently you add new relevant articles to your blog the more Google will seek to crawl it.

I have had some of my articles go to Google position one for relevant search terms in well under an hour. Many struggle to do that in days. Why?Because I post relevant fresh articles on a regular basis.

But probably most important of all, your readers will keep coming back to see what's new on your site. If nothing else, you should post frequent and fresh articles for your readers.

Conclusion.

Don't let SEO scare you, but also do not avoid it. Done correctly it can drastically improve your traffic and increase your readership. Apply simple logic, think of your readers.

Have you ever considered SEO for your blog? Let us know if you have or haven't in the comments below.

Related Reading:

The four pillars of SEO

Top 10 Tips on SEO

Website Design, Coding, SEO - RAP - SEO Rapper

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Absolute Beginners

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for the Absolute Beginners II

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