TKG SEO Blog

Guest Blogger: Chad Henderson

With your initial keyword research complete, as discussed in the Initial Keyword Research blog entry, you can now start turning your attention to how your phrases will be optimized within individual pages. Remember, you have targeted about 20-30 core phrases, depending on the size of the site, that represent popular but not too competitive key phrases that will maximize qualified traffic.

I don’t want to oversimplify things here, but the optimization of a page generally centers on the selecting optimized keywords and phrases that will be used as the page titles on the page. Page titles, which are displayed in the blue title bar of a browser window, are a crucial component to the optimization of the page and establish the theme to the page you are optimizing. But in addition to developing a page theme, here are a couple of general guidelines when thinking about the page titles to create:

1. Keywords selected for top tier pages, like the homepage, will generally be broader than pages that are more inside. For example, an inside page may contain specific product information. While there are always exceptions, inside pages will be traditionally more specific than top level pages and therefore the selected keywords should reflect it.

2. On any site, never optimize for a single phrase more than two times. Keep track of your optimization efforts so this can be avoided.

3. Don’t use misspellings in your page titles, unless the misspelling of a company phrase is the point of the page.

4. Use the company name only on pages where branding the name is appropriate. These include pages like about us, home, and contact us.

One final thought, while I try to utilize as many core keywords within the page titles as I can, pages can include key phrases that are not on your core phrase list. But don’t forget to research and document these “non-core” phrases to ensure you are making the best choices and not duplicating your efforts anywhere within the site.