Title Tags

Google: 62 characters or less
Yahoo: 112 characters or less
MSN: 70 characters or less

• Write title tags that grab attention
• Do not repeat any words
• Keep keywords closer to beginning of title
• Keyword proximity important
• Use proper grammar
• Long title tags seem to dilute keyword density
• Shorter titles tend to rank better
• Title tag should target your audience
• Use title case or proper case
• Never use the same title tag twice
• Stop words and punctuation ignored: the, is, of, a,
• Bruce Clay says use 9 + or – 3 words
• Rand Fishkin says limit length to 65 characters (including spaces)
• Never more than one title tag per page

Meta Description
Use your keyword in the meta description. Write an enticing description to get people to click on your link.

Body Text
The first priority is to write content that is engaging, informative, and useful to your audience. That rule takes priority over everything else. After you’ve developed your copy, consider optimizing your content with the following recommendations:

• Use at least 250 to 350 words of clean, grammatically correct sentences
• Use strong tags (rather than bold tags) – preferably on keywords
• Check grade level of copy

Keyword Usage

• Keyword density should stay under 3% typically
• Run Bruce Clay’s KDA tool for keyword density recommendations
• Distribute keyword phrases throughout the content – more keyword prominence at top
• Use keyword in bold or strong tag
• Use keyword in URL if possible

Linking

• Link pages together using keywords as anchor text
• Anchor text should be surrounded by copy whenever possible
• Anchor text should not exceed 5 words
• If linked page is not related to content – use “rel=nofollow” attribute

Image Tags

• Alt tag should be meaningful to what the image is
• Alt tags are a great way to add keywords to your page
• Keep alt tags short
• 3 to 4 words – no more than 7 (Matt Cutts)
• Use keyword in an image tag if possible and relevant
• Only use keyword in tag if appropriate
• Buttons or images that convey no content can have no alt tag