Keywords, meta tag descriptions and top ranking – this optimization tutorial is what it’s all about. I am giving the love away… Can you feel it? Okay, then, let’s get down to work.

I’m sure you have wondered why some pages are ranking higher than others, right? Especially if you’re in this business. I’m also sure you’ve heard and seen 100 ways to get all your pages ranking well, and you’re still wondering why it’s not working for you or why you only see a minimal change in your traffic.

Well, you’re not alone. I’ve been there, seen that and done it. Read on. You’ll see what it takes and then wonder why you didn’t think about it. It’s so obvious it’ll make a grown man cry. Well, maybe not, but you will feel better.

Here are the 10 rules or commandments you should use to SEO your pages for keywords and meta tag descriptions:

Rule #1. Let’s say you already have your page created. Remember, this isn’t a tutorial to build your website. It’s a guide for SEO.

First off, the entire page you’re creating should determine the amount of content. For instance, a landing page (or sales page) should normally hold no more than 1500 – 2000 words. Here, you would describe the advantages of the service you’re providing along with how they are a solution to the consumer. Testimonials are a great additional feature, so place them appropriately. You could go as far as telling a story of how a client had “pain” in their sales effort and how it was solved by using your service. Don’t blabber – get to the point and make it interesting.

Your product page will be different that your sales page. This should be 500 – 700 words. On this page, what you’re trying to accomplish is selling your product. If your user gets to this page, you know they want specifics. The job is convincing the user that your product or service will take the” pain” away.

If you have an article page to match your product or service, don’t worry about length. People are coming to find out information, and now’s your chance to give it to them. Some may argue with this, saying that Internet users have a short attention span, but if the visitor has already looked at your product and is looking for more information, you want them to find it on your site. This way, they can order from you once they find out what they’re looking for.

Rule #2 The keyword your page is based on should match your page name. The search engines will match up your keywords with the page and give the page a higher relevancy spot.

For example: “copywriting”

Your URL and page name might read something like this copywriting.com/copywriters.php

Rule #3 Do not use more than 5 keywords on your page. More specifically, pick a main keyword and then use other keywords to support it. For instance, this page is about SEO; therefore, SEO is the main keyword. However, I might also use optimization, optimizers and search engine optimization as well. All the words are derivatives of the main keyword.

Rule #4 When writing your meta description, remember that users come first. You want to use your main keyword (at least) in the description, but only if it doesn’t compromise the overall read. This is your first handshake with the consumer, so write the description with this in mind.

Rule #5 Your meta description should be no more than 146 characters, counting the spaces. Not words – characters. If you want to write more, that’s fine, but make sure your main message is in those first characters. The rest may be cut off in the search engine listing.

Rule #6 When you are setting up your meta description, do it so it looks like a sentence. Search engines don’t read it like this, but people do. Keep it professional, with proper grammar and punctuation.

Rule #7 Read your content at least 3 times. Check spelling, grammar, placement and paragraph description. Once you’re confident with your page, proofread it again and focus on you keyword placement and repetition. You want your keywords placed in your content sparingly.

As well, read your content aloud. When a person reads their content silently, they may not catch spelling errors or may miss hiccups in the word flow.

Rule #8 Place your meta description in one line in your html code. Do NOT use a hard enter; let it naturally flow. Some search engines will miss the second line. I have seen it happen.

Rule #9 If you choose to put links in your page, try not to use more than 1 link per 100 words. The links can be close together, even right after one another, but keep the links down. For instance, if you have 500 words, use no more than 5 links. (This is only if the links are for SEO purposes, not if they are actually relevant to the page)

Rule #10 Use your primary keyword in the first and last paragraph of your page, as well as the header. The search engines will give more relevance to your page if they find your keywords at the beginning and the end of your page.

Extra Kudos for you –

Get a bookmark widget on your page. This makes it easier for your visitors to bookmark and save your site. In conclusion, use your keywords wisely. Content is king – keywords are just a bonus.

When you start to see your Page Rank fall, what do you need to look at and then what do you need to do to bring you page ranking with the popular search engines? This is a pretty powerful and very useful question which requires a very good and insightful answer, so that you may, with knowledge and guidance, solve this problem and bring your page ranking back up to where it was only a few days to a couple of weeks ago. First, you should look at what you were doing when your page rank was at its highest and how you were writing your web copy (or what your copywriter was creating). Look also at how many links you had in both the articles and your web copy itself. If you had 33 to 35 links on your web page before, and several in your articles, and then you drop the number of links down to say 20 links instead of the original 35 that you had before, you will start to see your Page Rank fall pretty quickly.

No doubt about it, this is not something that you want to see happen! There is another very good reason that you will see your Page Rank fall; and that is because you either do not have nearly enough keywords or key phrases in either your SEO Articles or your website content or in both. Not having enough keywords/phrases in your copy written material is something that really will drop your page ranking faster than a lead balloon! If you need to bring the page ranking up very quickly, then you really need to go back and re-work your web content and make sure that you have more than enough links and keywords/phrases in your web copy and content to help the search engine crawlers to find your SEO Articles, as well as your web page, by the links and the keywords/phrases.

Now that you are aware of the things that can and will make your Page Rank fall, as well as a few good hints about what you need to do to bring your page rank back up to where it previously was, you should be good to go. With this knowledge in mind, you really need to take these hints and tips and put them to work for you to bring your page ranking back up to its previous great ranking. To make sure that you are doing this right, you can always ask for advice from Professional SEO consultants. In conclusion, don’t worry too much about your page rank, as long as you have interesting content, with valuable information let the readers make your site valuable.

Methodologies of SEO:
Starting as early as 1995 to 2008 this industry has changed In the infancy of Yahoo SEO was born. There basic idea was to have a search engine work on the concept of the yellow pages. Starting with the alphabetical A to A#1. Basically keywords were seasoned here and there. It was all just a stab in the dark. They tested and tried variations of the concept. As a matter of fact on Yahoo you can still get your site submitted and added in less than 72 hours.

By the late 90’ around 1996 some of the first pages appear throughout the web with Search Engine programs, matching text, and mining data. The general public started to learn how their database worked. It was like having a light bulb of Eureka that’s how this puppy works. Then the “algo” started to become more comprehensive. Specifically Excite got wind of what Yahoo was doing and in turn fine tuned the SEO parameters and generated #1 pages with the correct keywords. People started to realize that these sites were portals and manipulations of words started to take place.

Then Infoseek, Hotbot, AltaVista started to get into the game. Simple results of getting on the top of search engines started to become a serious problem when these giants came into the game. People started to see their pages rise to the top of the page ranks within less than 24 hours of submitting their websites. Then like everything else on the World Wide Web. Page jacking started to take place. People started stealing their competitor’s codes and would kick each other off the first page ranking.

Oh brother what to do? The algo decoding had some serious problems ahead of them. By the late 90’s specifically 1998 several of the big optimization firms started hiring programmer that could write algo-cracking codes. This would enable them to get into the first top 10 positions. Entire websites were going crazy with their rankings.

Finally the Search engines got wind of these tactics and put a stop to all this double and triple submission and only allowed limited submissions per site. What about the Spam’s pop up links and doorways? They started showing up everywhere on the Internet during the 1998 and 1999 frenzy. Some were good if you could stay under the radar then your site wasn’t getting kicked off. But there was a period when large amounts of site were getting banned and kicked off due to this practice. I am sure if you have been doing this as long as I have you recall hideous bothersome pop up windows. God forbid you ever went on a porn site because of a keyword you may have used! My goodness you had more pop-up windows slamming into your monitor than you could close at once. This looked horrible especially if it was an accident.

Not to bore you but by the early 2000 into 2002 Google got a hold of the “search engines” it was Goggle all the time. They have tightened the reigns of SEO and submitting sites and now you play clean and fair. Not to say you cannot pay to get ranked but it’s all about your ad words and keywords usage.