SEO 101 Refresher Part 6: Page Optimization Best Practices

In my experiences, many people with a general level of exposure to search engine optimization believe on the page optimization is where the 'magic' happens. I'm here to tell you there isn't any magic, nor a silver bullet that will gain your web site the best search engine visibility. It's adhering to best practices and having a strategy formulated to cover your keywords that will make the difference in the long run, combined with the first five segments of this series.

Best Practices:

Try to use no more than 3-5 keywords on a given page.

Prioritize the keywords you have selected for the page.

Use the keywords in your title tag in a coherent fashion (your title tags play a large part in bringing in visitors from the search engines).

Use the keywords in your meta description tag in a coherent fashion (sometimes a search engine may choose to use the meta description you have provided in conjunction with your title tag).

Use the keywords in your meta keywords (do not spam your keywords tag with keywords that are not amongst those chosen for this page).

Use an h1 header tag to begin the content of your page which contains as many of your keywords as it makes sense to use (remember your prioritization).

The content on the page needs to use the keywords you have chosen. There is no density percentages to target, however it should be clear that this content is about the keywords you have chosen for this page. If you find that your becoming too repetitive with certain keywords, use synonyms.

Break up the logical flow of your content into segments and give each segment a sub-header (ie: h2, h3, etc.) where appropriate. If possible, you could have different paragraphs of text aimed at the keywords selected for the page and use sub-headings with those keywords. This format is very similar to college English term paper writing.

Whenever possible and prudent, link to other pages from within your content and use keywords for those pages when possible (avoid 'click here' links).

These are the fundamentals of SEO page optimization, that when carried out will help to provide a good understanding to the search engines, and especially your users, as to what the page is about.