Should you choose to accept Mission #5 of the “90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge,” you’ll learn how to solidly optimize your web pages so that they rank strong in the search engines for your keywords.

Here’s a smart question from an awesome Self Made Chick who is working through the 90-Day Challenge:

I’ve accepted the 90-day challenge and have completed all four weeks worth of exercises so far – the amount I’m learning is astounding. As I’ve researched the keyword and SEO info I’ve come across a (smallish) dilemma.

We currently have a product that is called and searched for by two names. The first keyword gets around 720 searches a month with approximately 4,610 in organic competition. Another similar term (the same item, different name) has about 5,400 searches a month with 17,000 in organic competition.

In theory it would be great to optimize for both words, but I’m stuck as to how to do this. Does it make sense to have a “double title” in the SEO and on the page?

Quick Response

You can definitely optimize for both keywords on the page! You can absolutely create a title tag with both keywords and use the two different keywords throughout the page and in the headings and subheadings.

Here’s a quick run-down:

The most important parts of the page to optimize for SEO are:

• The title tag (the text at the very top of the browser)
• The “H” Tags (Headings and subheadings on the page labeled with “H1″ or “H2″ in the HTML)
• The content itself

And

• You’ll also need to build backlinks TO your page in those keywords (see challenge #4)

Today’s Mission: Optimizing Your Onsite Content

Est. time to complete: 20-30 minutes per page for existing content, 45-90 minutes per page for new content

The Nitty Gritty of On Page Optimization

Step #1: Keyword Map

You absolutely, positively, must do keyword research and create a keyword map before you get started optimizing your onsite content. This may seem boring and tedious and frustrating, but it is essential! Plus, you’re likely to experience an enlightening revelation at some point during the process where you really “get” what visitors are searching for and how best to reach them.

Before you even start, you should have a page that looks something like the image below that will become your sacred document whenever you’re writing any piece of content for your website.

Tips for creating a keyword map:

• Each page should be optimized for different keywords! You don’t want to optimize all of your pages for the same keyword. If you decide that you want your homepage to rank for “motivational speaker,” then only your homepage should be fully optimized for the term “motivational speaker.” Other pages can be fully optimized for other terms people may be searching for like “inspirational speaker,” “business speakers,” etc.
• Each page should be optimized for only one primary keyword and maybe one to two secondary keywords.

With this keyword shortlist in hand, you can now optimize your pages.

Step #2: Writing Optimized Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

A title tag is 62 characters and a meta description is around 175 characters. These are important pieces of the page – both for SEO and for conversion. Not only do the title tag and meta description need to be keyword rich, they should also be something compelling that invites a person to click through to the site. You can think of it like a mini AdWords ad.

What I recommend is doing a search in Google for the keywords and find one that jumps out at me. Then I try to figure out WHY I was drawn to it and try to recreate something similar.

This example is from the always awesome Lynn Terry who has done an excellent job of optimizing her title tag and meta description for the term “learn internet marketing.” But the title and meta aren’t just keyword stuffed… the way she’s written them begs me to click through!

Step 3: Writing Titles and Subtitles

A big block of text with no subtitles is intimidating and frustrating for readers. Visitors use titles to make a judgment about whether the page will offer the information they were seeking. They use subtitles to skim to the part of the webpage that will answer their question. But titles and subtitles serve another purpose in onsite search engine optimization.

Instead of simply bolding your titles and subtitles or putting them in larger font, you’ll need to place them in H Tags. Just like the title of a book or the chapter names in a book, the titles and subtitles should reflect the content below it. Content within an H (heading) tag tells the search engine “Hey! This is the gist of this page!” Because search engines give greater significance to the text within H Tags, it is essential to use keywords in your titles and subtitles.

However, when writing these keyword rich titles and subtitles, never lose sight of the fact that they need to also be useful to the reader.

Step 4: Content Writing

Here’s where I could go for days about the craft of writing — but I’m not going to. I’m only going to focus on the technical aspect here.

After you write your titles and subtitles, it’s time to start filling in the content. My suggestion is to write first and optimize later. After a while, you’ll be able to do this simultaneously. However, if you focus too much on keywords in the beginning, it can really slow down the writing process and result in robotic writing.

After you write content that is 100% useful in relation to the title or subtitle, you can go back and look at keywords. You will likely find may places where you used words like “it” or “this” or “we” or “they” or “these” that you could replace with or add in a keyword. (Ex. “After two years in beta testing, we felt it was ready for market.” Vs. After two years in beta testing, our application development team felt that the workflow process software was ready for market.”)

After writing you’ll want to calculate your keyword density and make adjustments as needed. I like Live Keyword Analysis for calculating keyword density of a Word document. However, there are some tips for calculating keyword density with this tool that you’ll want to read before you unknowingly calculate the terms incorrectly or get so frustrated that you want to punch your computer in the face.

When writing content here are few things to keep in mind:

• Shoot for a keyword density of 2.5% to 5.0%
• Plural terms are different from singular terms. If your keyword is singular, use singular — not plural.
• When optimizing for location specific keywords, optimize for the root term and use several variations of the location a few times on the page. Pairing the location with the keyword every time sounds spammy and weird.

Step 5: Internal Keyword Linking

Now that you’ve optimized your page for its primary keywords, you’ll want to look at places where you can link to other pages on your site using the other page’s primary keyword as anchor text.

Recall our motivational speaker. One of her internal pages is optimized for the term “business speakers” and she has optimized that page for that term by using it properly in title tags and writing content with a solid keyword density. Recall that the target keyword for her homepage is “motivational speaker.” Now, on her page, she will use the term “motivational speaker” once and place a link to her homepage in that anchor text. An internal link.

Please don’t get too hung up on which pages link to what or try to base everything on this exact diagram. Just be conscious of trying to link to other internal pages within their target keyword throughout the site where it makes sense.

Take Action!

Now its time to take action! No doubt you will run into some issues with optimizing when writing your web content. After 5+ years of writing web content for just about every industry, I’ve probably run into your issue or something similar. If you have questions, feel free to comment and add to the knowledge base for others!

Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge by Christine | 10 Comments »