A friend recently asked me what was the best way to place keywords on her site to get optimal results. She helps me with a TON of design stuff (including this blog), so I gave her the format that I use on my client’s sites.

My clients pay me a lot of money each month, sign long term contracts, etc to get this type of information from me…but what the hell…I’ll share here also.

This is “The Brian Horn Magic Formula”

To maximize onpage optimization’s keyword usage with these steps:

  1. Use at least one time in the title tag, maybe twice (or part of a phrase twice) when appropriate and not clunky looking (Houston Apartment Locator | Houston Apartment Locator Help)
  2. At least once or twice in the meta description tag - not for rankings, but to increase the click through rate from the SERP
  3. In the H1 tag of the page at the very top - as the actual headline of the page (this is good for both visitors and search engines)
  4. In at least one sub headline, possibly in a modified form
  5. 1-2 times in bold on the page
  6. 4-6 times in the body text at minimum, but only as it makes sense and looks natural. You really can’t go nuts with too many keywords as long as the writing doesn’t start to sound like you’re stuffing the keywords. It’s a tough call, but as with most things, you’ll know it when you see it.
  7. In the alt tag of at least one image - this lets you pull in image search traffic, but it’s also another way of saying the page has multiple types of content about the subject
  8. NOT in external link anchor text
  9. NOT in internal link anchor text (unless it’s pointing to a more specific kw phrase that includes the target term, like “luxury apartment locator in houston”) This is called cannibalization and won’t help.

On page optimization is only a small part of getting a site ranked, but it is the easiest to control.