Search Engine Optimization Secrets: Do What You Never Thought Possible with SEO

Chapter 6. SEO Best Practices

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Maximizing information design

• Avoiding content creation pitfalls

• Understanding experts' recommendations

How do I build the perfectly optimized page? As an SEO, you will probably hear this question a lot. Sadly, there isn't a cut-and-dried answer, but you can draw from sets of best practices to help get close. In this chapter, I am going to teach you my top recommendations for achieving on-page, keyword-targeting "perfection," or, at least, close to it. Some of these recommendations are backed by data points, correlation studies, and extensive testing. Others are secrets based on my experience. Because this is in a form that I can't easily update, it will be your responsibility to take these suggestions and do your own research and testing to see if they are still the current best practice. To make this easier, I have tried to focus on big-picture ideas and skip the less important details. (That said, you can see current SEO best practices at www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/.)

PAGE-LEVEL INFORMATION HIERARCHY

Chapter 1 discussed the importance of relevancy and popularity. As you now know, a significant amount of the relevancy metrics that search engines use to rank pages comes from on-page elements. This section shows the best format for these metrics.

Best Practice

Figure 6-1 shows the best practice for optimizing a URL with a single keyword or phrase. Notice that the relevant phrase is located in all of the SEO page elements.

Figure 6.1. Diagram of ...