How to Optimise a page for a Keyword Search.
This is a question that accounts for around 40-50% of client questions at the moment.
People are realising more and more the importance and value of search traffic with intent over other traffic streams.
Competing for top rankings in the search engines involves three elements:
On-page – Optimising and improving what is on your website pages.
Off-page – Measuring and improving things are that are happening beyond your site, such as the number and quality of links coming into your site from other sites.
Technical factors.
The instructions below relate to the on-page factors that affect search (SEO).
Once you have identified the keyword phrase you are targeting the page for, you need to use it in the following ways:
ON-PAGE SEO:
1. Use the keyword in the first 100 words of the copy.
2. Length is strength: at Least 300 words with the target keyword phrase repeated at least three times within the copy.
3. Relevant images / videos are used on the page with keyword phrase in the alt-description tags
BEHIND THE SCENES:
1. Page Title: 70 chars or less. No more than 70 characters: be specific, be unique, be compelling. Don’t put your company name at the front as you will already rank highly for this. Use keywords first. Separate keyword phrases w/pipes (keyword | keyword). Suggested page title format for eCommerce pages: Product Name & Type | Company Name
2. Page Description: 150 chars or less. This is the marketing copy for your page on Google. While it doesn’t impact your SEO results it is used to convince your searcher to click on your result. Your page description should be a short, declarative sentence that incorporates your keyword, as you laid it out in your page title, in some form. It should not have content verbatim as it appears on the page itself.
3. Target keyword phrase is in the page headline (H1 tag)
4. Target keyword phrase is in at least one page sub-headline (H2 tag)
Rand Fishkin at Moz has done a really great infographic to visualise these elements and the others that affect your SEO.
