12 SEO Writing & Page Optimzation Best Practices

The most important factor in writing SEO content is not to write for the search engines. Search engine algorithms have advanced to the point of distinguishing poorly written content, i.e. content that is specifically targeted for them, not their users. Imagine Microsoft Word’s ability to identify grammar errors.

The search engines have years of data where they can compare the language of spammy sites with the language of legitimate sites. Good thing they don’t actually score pages based on grammer or I would be in heap big trouble.

If you follow this simple list as an SEO writer your content will perform well in the search engines. Of course, that is only after you have overcome the drunken monkeys.

1. Use the keyword in the title of the page

The single most important on page optimization technique is the title tag. Write an attractive headline using the keyword(s) that you are targeting. The sooner the keyword appears the better.

Oh ye…you might need to find the keyword as well.

2. Matching the title tag and the h1 tag

Use the same title for both the title tag:

and the

1.  
2. <h1> My headline</h1>
3.  

tag.

3. The keyword should appear in the first 100 words of the content

The first paragraph of content should contain the keyword. The sooner the keyword appears the better it performs.

4. Keyword repetition

Forget everything you have ever read about keyword density. Search engines do not measure keyword density. However, repeating keywords the right amount of times will help. Be careful though, to many and you are spamming, too little and you miss a huge opportunity.
Short Articles: 2-3x
Long Articles: 4-6x

Never repeat a keyword if it does not make sense in the article to do so.

5. Use strong (bold) or em (italics) to make a point

Emphasizing text with bold or italics is a great idea. You can highlight the keyword or whole sentence containing the keyword. Our research has shown that italic actually works better than bold. Mainly because people know bold influenced the search engines and abused its use.

6. Incorporate Images

Good bloggers and writers use images to highlight their work. Pages with images or graphs is much more likely to be linked too. When you are uploading an image for an article use the following naming rules:

A picture of a blue widget would be “blue-widgets.jpg”. “Blue widgets” is the keywords and so we want that keywords to appear in the image name. “-“ is read as a word separator by the engines.

7. Write Alt tags

Write a descriptive alt tag containing the keyword for all images. Alt tags play a significant part of on-page optimization. An alt tag looks like this:

1. <img src="”blue-widgets.jpg”" alt="”Blue" />

8. Anchor text

When linking to an outside source (and you should often), use descriptive anchor text with the keyword if plausible. There is a correlation between this practice and top rankings for blogs.

9. Split up keywords if needed

If it is more appropriate to only use “blue widgets” once in short copy, try to use this technique in the remaining copy.
“I have been investigating widgets lately. Blue is my favorite color and so I…”
The point is that both keywords are in the text.

10. No duplicate content

Duplicate content is filtered out by the search engines. This means that if five sites have the exact same content, Google may only choose to show one of them to its users when there is a search. Copying Wikipedia or a similar source will harm rankings.

The engines also know that it is necessary to display duplicate content on occasion, like a large quote or a manufacturer’s description. However, in these circumstances care should be taken to surround the duplicate content with original content.

11. Keyword theme paragraphs or sections of content

If you have several keyword focuses, it is a good idea to divide the content into sections and use the keywords in their respective section. This yields positive results. In some instances we have seen the search engines disregard the description tag of the page and grab the content of the themed section instead when displaying the page in its search rankings.

12. Use the keyword in the description tag

The meta description provides a preview of the page. When it has a word in it that a user has searched on a search engine, it is bolded. Having the bolded keyword increases the likelihood that a search user will click on the listing.

7 Responses to “12 SEO Writing & Page Optimzation Best Practices”

1. priya@latest fashion trends says:

   December 15, 2009 at 2:54 am

   Hi Jason,

   i loved your article. For a seo newbie< this is what exactly helps. keep writing.
   .-= priya@latest fashion trends´s last blog ..Christmas Sales =-.
2. priya@latest fashion trends says:

   December 15, 2009 at 3:03 am

   And yes i am not your regular indian spammer(i am from india)but i liked your clean and neatly written articles genuinely:)
   .-= priya@latest fashion trends´s last blog ..Christmas Sales =-.
3. mainoskuvaaja says:

   January 2, 2010 at 9:11 pm

   Is there a study about what people click more likely? Text being in bold or in italics? For me italics looks more like a reference so I think I would go with the italics…
4. Tess@SEO Content Writing says:

   January 24, 2010 at 7:10 pm

   I really enjoyed this post, and am glad to see you confirm my thought that keyword density is not any concern to the search engines. I have seen many people say to use a keyword density of 10%, which I think is MUCH too high! That would be 50 times in a 500 word article, which is ridiculous. I use a guideline of about 1 time for every 100 words, and it works great for me. Great post!
5. Van says:

   February 3, 2010 at 9:18 am

   Alt tags and content structuring are key for good SEO. I like how you have broken up the levels of SEO importance. thanks
6. Darren@Philippine call center says:

   February 9, 2010 at 11:47 pm

   I’m wondering about the use of bold tags–does Google actually still rely on that?
7. Richard@SEO Sheffield says:

   February 25, 2010 at 9:47 am

   Nice summary - maybe you could try and turn this list into a 12 letter acronym, making it easy to remember?