Optimize Each Page
One of the most important things to understand is that each page is its own unit
and has its own ranking potential and its own relevant keywords. Usually a home
page has more value than the other pages, since it is typically the easiest place to
build links to. Home pages should generally be optimized for the most relevant
competitive keyword phrases in your market that you feel you would be able to
rank for. Interior pages should be optimized for other relevant phrases that relate
to the content of each page.
There are many things to optimize on each page. We already went through how to
choose your keywords, page titles, and meta tags. Within each page, there is also
content that can be optimized.

On-the-Page Optimization Only Goes So Far

When optimizing a page for competitive terms, the bulk of the ranking algorithm
will be based upon link analysis. Effective link building has no limit to how
much it can help your rankings.
Some people think that more is better, and more is better, and more is better. This
is not true with on-the-page keyword density, and additionally, some search
algorithms may discount artificial links that are created in quick bursts.
The algorithms for grading page copy are based on a bell curve. Some pages will
have near-perfect term weights. But after some point, added placement of certain
words does not make a page any more relevant; in fact, it can make a page become
less relevant.
Imagine a page that starts its page title, meta description, first header, first
paragraph, and second paragraph all with the same word. Does that sound like
natural quality information? Or perhaps more like someone trying to game the
relevancy algorithms?
So the point is, you have to mix it up. Sure, make the page title ultra-relevant, but
don’t forget to use a few subheaders that might not be keyword rich, and don’t

forget to use modifiers and related terms in some of your subheaders and
throughout the page copy.
The more your writing sounds like it was crafted for humans instead of bots,
generally the better it will rank. Search engines want to rank high-quality
information. Think news articles more than optimized pages. If your content
looks more like a newspaper article than a piece of obviously SEOed text, you are
on the right track.
Each search engine has its own algorithms, and they do not all align with one
another. Thus, the most effective way to improve your rankings on all search
engines will be via link building, but proper page structure and on-the-page
optimization play important roles in gaining targeted inbound traffic, especially for
non-competitive keyword phrases or in search engines that rely heavily on page
content.

Text is Important
Almost every page is going to have navigation and design elements. It’s impossible
to have just usability or copywriting or SEO; you need them all. Building a page
and a site is a balancing act. For search engines, the portions of the page that
matter most, and that you have the most control over, are the text parts. Some
places try SEO so hard that the copy reads like rubbish. Obviously, that is no
good. Traffic means nothing if people do not convert.

Use Keywords in Headings

Use keywords in headings and subheadings throughout the page—this heading
should capture the person’s attention and tell them they are in the right place.
Think of these headings like you would a heading in a newspaper; a classic, straight
SEO approach might be
<H1>Optimize Web Pages – Learn SEO Copywriting</H1>
You may wish to use something with a call to action as well. That would appear
more like
<H1>Learn SEO Copywriting Techniques that Drive Killer
Converting Search Engine Traffic </H1>.
Heading tags go from H1 to H6, with the biggest tags being the smallest number
(i.e., H1 renders the biggest font). You can change how the text appears with CSS.
I usually try to get some of my primary and secondary keyword phrases and similar
phrases in my page heading as well as in many subheadings. The rest of the page
copy is usually written with sales conversion in mind, and I do not pay too much
attention to optimizing it for search engines. Natural writing should cause you to
use your keywords throughout the text.

I recommend using a single H1 tag on each page. I also try to use many H2 or H3
tags to break up the page copy and help structure the data.
Break the page into subgroups
h1 (consisting of primary keywords and a modifier or call to action) Only use one
h1 tag per page and do not bold or emphasize it. It probably works best if it
is slightly different than your page title.
Examples of subheadings can be as follows:
h2 (similar subtopic idea with some related keyword phrases in it)
paragraph blah blah blah
h2 (another subtopic with some semantically related words)
paragraph blah blah
paragraph blah blah blah
h2 (Many subtopics do not have the same keywords as the page title and
main heading. If you are writing for conversion, not all of them will,
which is also good for SEO. If your page title and your headings
contain the exact same keyword phrase it may look like an attempt to
manipulate search relevancy. Mix it up. Keep it natural looking.)
h2 (Don’t forget to change word order and use plural and singular
versions)
unordered list
paragraph blah blah
h2 (another subtopic focused on another niche)
paragraph blah blah blah
paragraph blah blah blah
Usually the subheadings will focus on a keyword phrase that is slightly more
specific than the main heading.
The next example set is going to contain a bit of self-promotion, but that is not
really the intent. It is hard for me to think of structuring content without thinking
about a topic, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to tell people to copy any of
my pages or client sites.
If I wrote a page about applying for a job, the page title and headers might look
something like this:
<title>Search Engine Optimization Guru Looks to Help 1 Lucky
Client</title>
<h1>Online Search Engine Optimization Expert for Hire</h1>
<h2>Aaron Wall: Your SEO Expert</h2><h2>History in the Search Community</h2>
<h3>Author of SEO Book: A Well-Known Search
Blog</h3> content
<h3>Top Selling Marketing Book Author</h3>
<h3>Speaker at Search Engine Strategies &
WebmasterWorld</h3> content
<h3>Directory Editor</h3> content
<h3>Moderator at Many Professional Discussion
Forums</h3> content
<h2>Search Engine Ranking Achievements</h2>
<h3>Search Marketing ROI Results</h3> content
<h3>Client Testimonials</h3> content
Descriptive, reader-focused subheadings improve the usability of your website,
both for search engines and human visitors. Remember that the headings help
structure the information, but you shouldn’t overdo it. If you start doing things
like placing all your content in an H1 tag, bolding the H1 tags, or bolding all
occurrences of your keywords, then you are doing things that would give search
engines a reason to discount your page. Thus, the combined effect will be more
likely to hurt your rankings on multiple fronts, since your content may look less
appealing to search engines and site visitors will be less likely to buy from it or link
to it.

Place Your Keywords Where it Makes Sense

Place keywords in paragraphs.
• Place keywords in heading tags.
• Place keywords in img alt tags.
• When the word is part of a small statement making a specific point,
you may bold it or italicize it.
• You may also want to include your keywords a few times in bulleted
lists.
• When possible, place the keywords in links, and don’t forget
navigation.
• Don’t focus on just one core keyword over and over again. Mix in
many variations.
• The key focus of the page should be on readability. If the page does
not make sense to human eyes, then it is no good for a search engine
and it will not make sales. You want to use keywords often, but not
to the point where it sounds like you are writing for the search engine
and not the user.
• When in doubt, ignore the keywords, write your article for people, and
then come back to it and make sure you covered all the important
topics you wanted to cover.

Use Variation
Since latent semantic indexing-type algorithms may be able to detect unnatural
copy that lacks related terms and will score hyper-focused repetitive unnatural text
as being less relevant, it is important to use some mixture of terms and phrases (i.e.,
in some spots you want to use terms related to your keywords and not just your
keywords).
If you took your core keyword out of the page copy and replaced it with blanks,
would humans to be able to understand what the document was about? If they
could, you are in great shape.
Be Creative
There are so many creative ways to mix in your keywords. Again, assuming we
wanted to target eat cheddar, we could write the following:
“Cheddar is one of my favorite foods to eat. Cheddar is…”
Notice how the keywords overlap and are in different sentences. There are many
different ways to get your keywords in the content.
Spread Your Keywords Throughout the Page
Some of the more recent algorithms may have the ability to look for natural
language patterns. In natural language, the different words in a keyword phrase will
appear spread apart from one another.
To boost your rankings in these algorithms, you will want to use the word eat in
some spots and cheddar in other spots. Often your keywords will appear next to
each other naturally. Some words like peanut and butter often occur together, but in
general, all of your occurrences of the keywords should not be together unless that
is how they would appear in a newspaper article about your topic.

Keywords at the Top of the Page

Keywords near the top of the page, and before your navigation, may be weighted
more heavily and enhance your search engine rankings.
Search engines care about the order the content appears in the page code more
than on the screen. Reorganizing the text can easily be accomplished by writing a
sentence above your branding images or through using a floating DIV or another
CSS technique. When using tables, some people use a blank cell technique to make
the search engines see the body content before navigation. If search engines
weight where the keywords are on the page, then they most likely use the order of
the words in the actual page source code and not the visual display of the pages.
Microsoft did research into visual page segmentation, and Google hired some lead
Firefox programmers away from Mozilla. As computer clock cycles get more

Naming File Paths

Usually, you want to use short file names and folder names so that the data is easy
to transmit using various means (such as e-mail). Long file paths may look a bit
spammy to search engine editors or searchers looking through search results.
Generally, you want to use one to a few keywords in each filename or folder. Use
lowercased file paths because some directories & content management systems do
not handle upper-case filenames. Separate words with a hyphen (-) between each
word. If you leave blank spaces, it will look strange in the address bar and if you
use underscores (_), some search engines may not parse the individual words in
each file name. In July of 2007 Google began using underscores as separators.
Some people will be more likely to click relevant looking URLs. Some will cite
your website using the URL as the link text. If you use descriptive URLs, that
should help improve your traffic and rankings. If your site is already built and wellindexed,
there is probably little reason to change filenames, but if you are making a
new site, it is worth the time it takes to use descriptive filenames.

Page Copy Length

Clarity and formatting are more important than shear length of copy. Rather than
aiming for an arbitrary word limit or cut off, you should write pages of varying
length based on the goals of the page. For example, if you want to make a page
look comprehensive and use that idea as part of your marketing strategy it may
make sense to make that page longer than it needs to be. If you are trying to
quickly communicate an important idea it does not hurt to publish that page with
less text on it.