One of the things I’ve learned in my research for Freelance Writer’s Technology Month is how important search engine optimization is. One extremely valuable lesson I’m taking away from all of my research is how to optimize my website to get more traffic.

Why Optimizing Your Website Is Important

The short – and most important answer – of course, is so that your website gets found. The technology behind that though is a bit more complicated. Here I will lay out a few basic tips that every freelance writer who has a website should use to optimize their web pages.
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Treat Every Page Like Its Own Minisite

Before this series, I would simply write text and upload it. After all, my whole website and blog are about the business of freelance writing. So, if someone is searching for that, I figure they’d have a good chance of finding my site.

Some search phrases my website and/or blog can easily be found under? Freelance writing job (#15 in Google search); freelance writing career (#14 in Google search); Freelance writing advice (#15, 16 & 17 in Google search); and freelance writing help (#4 and #10 in Google search).

Following are 5 things I do to optimize my website.

7 Tips for Optimizing Your Website to Get More Traffic
(even if you know nothing about SEO)

Basic Tip #1: Know how your visitors search for you online. To be honest, this is something I still have to figure out. I don’t know the search phrases surfers use to find my sites online. I’ve been online so long that my site kinda gets traffic by osmosis.

That aside, you need to know this to figure out which keywords to use in your content and coding, which I’ll cover in a minute.

Basic Tip #2: Define a niche. Even if you choose to cover a broad topic like “small business marketing,” treat each page like its own minisite. Each piece of content you add to your site/blog – whether it’s a short blog post, an article or a long, detailed case study – should be optimized for a particular set of keywords. That way, you can get found online.

For example, take my niche – freelance writing. It’s very broad. When I type the term “freelance writing” into Google, it returns 1,420,000 results. So, to make it more relevant so that I get found easier online, I need to define what about freelance writing I may be discussing at that point.

Take for example this series on technology. I’ve discussed minisites, seo article writing, traffic generation, etc. All of these are specific topics. And, each web page should be optimized to reflect such.

So, what’s exactly entailed in optimizing a web page? Click here for a great post on how to optimize a web page. It goes into more technical detail than I ever could on the subject. At a minimum, I now do the following – religiously – for every page I upload to my website.

Basic Tip #3: Title Tags. I make sure that my title tag reflects exactly what the post is about. Hence, it is usually the name of the post. For example, the title of this post is How to Optimize Your Website So You Get More Traffic. That’s what’s in the title tag as well.

FYI, a title tag is “An HTML tag with text describing a specific Web page … The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page and be constructed following specific guidelines. The title tag is important because it usually becomes the text link to the page found in search engine listings, and because search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages.” [Source: CavalierWebSolutions.com]

The title of your articles/posts are extremely important in search engine optimization because more than likely, this is how a surfer is going to find you. Experts generally agree that your title tag should contain your keywords.

For example, I started to name this post, How to Optimize a Web Page. It’s short and relevant. BUT, the title I finally settled on is likely to bring more traffic. How do I know?

Basic Tip #4: Use a Keyword Analyzer Tool. Using Google’s keyword analyzer tool, I saw that this (get more traffic) was a very popular search term. So, if a surfer types in “get more traffic” and “website,” this page on my website has a good chance of showing up.

I played around with some other titles that could have fit this post (eg, website marketing tips, generate more traffic, online marketing tips), but this one was the most relevant that fit this post. The others were too generic.

Basic Tip #5: Choose a Descriptive, RELEVANT Title. This may not come first. As I explained above, you may begin with one title in mind, but by the time you complete your writing, a more appropriate, keyword rich title may become evident.

Furthermore, do away with cutesy writing – especially in your titles and subheadings. Eg, I could have named this post “Don’t Get Lost in the Online Forest.” But, that title wouldn’t mean a darn thing to search engines, and would likely bring visitors searching for information about hiking in a forest.

Even though your content may be the greatest, if it doesn’t pop up in the search engines, no one is likely to read it.

This is why a lot of web copy can seem dry and boring. BUT, remember, people go online to find information. The search engines are their guide to the most relevant information – make sure your content can get found.

d) Properly name files, directories, web pages, etc.: Suggestion #11 in the How to Optimize a Webpage checklist says, “Name files and directories with keywords, separating them with hyphens, not the underscore key.”

This has been one of the best things I’ve started to do and have gotten great results from my efforts.

For example, yesterday’s article in this series was about what to charge as an seo article writer. So, what did I name that page on my site: http://inkwelleditorial.com/seo-article-writing-rates.htm.

If someone were researching what to charge as an SEO article writer, they may conduct a Google search using the following: "seo article writing" "rates".

Guess who’s site is #1? Well actually, it’s my blog. And, as I “Dugg” it, it’s also number 3 in the search results. Now, if I could only achieve the same results for the term, “freelance writing.” Oh well, can’t win’em all.

Basic Tip #6: Repeat Your Title in Your Text. Suggestion #12 in the How to Optimize a Webpage checklist reads: “12) Have keyword phrases appear about 3-5 times in the body text, and have keywords appear at least 10 times in the body text.”

Alternatively, I ready somewhere that you should make an effort to repeat your title/main keywords once every 200 or so words in your text. (I couldn’t find the article again when I went to write this article (reminder: clean out “Favorites!”)).

There’s no hard and fast rule about this that I could discover in my research. And, how often a phrase/keyword appears depends on the article length. In a 400-word article then, your title/main phrase should appear at least twice.

I’ve always hated keyword writing for this very reason, as I wrote about in this article. BUT, it’s a necessary evil and as I’ve come to learn, doesn’t have to be as tedious as I thought. It’s a skill, just like any other, that must be developed.

Basic Tip #7: Use Your Label/Keyword tags. I won't regurgitate this here as I wrote about it in the article Freelance Writers: How to Get Found on the Internet Using Labels & Tags.

FYI, since I started using the label/keyword tag indicator, InkwellEditorial.com is now #79 in a Google search for the phrase "Freelance Writing Jobs." Before, it didn't appear in the top 10 pages of results at all. And, this is in about a 6-week span. Not bad!

Conclusion: To generate more website traffic, take the time to learn more tips you can incorporate into your online marketing efforts. As witnessed by the list here, you don’t have to be an SEO genius to optimize your website to get more traffic. A few simple SEO tips, used all the time, can do the trick!

Labels/Keywords: seo tips, get more traffic, generate more traffic, online marketing tips, how to optimize your website

Sincerely,
Yuwanda Black, Publisher
http://www.inkwelleditorial.com/
http://www.inkwelleditorial.blogspot.com/
How to Start a Successful Freelance Career Newsletter
P.S.: Make $250/day writing SEO content: Read here how I'm doing it  and you can too!
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UPDATE 11/30/07: Following is a link to every post in the Freelance Writer's Technology Month series.