Thank you to Rand Fishkin also for writing a great article on page optimization. Here is a link and synopsis.
The reasons you want to have an optimized page is as follows:
- higher rank on search engines (see last blog post for more on this)
- traffic from social sites (fb, twitter, g+, etc.)
- get links on other sites
- so internet users will like your page
Other random tips:
- the site looks nice
- have what people want so that they do not need to go back to the search page
- put relevant keywords in the headings on the page
- make pages within 3-4 clicks of one another
- easy to navigate
- scanning gives you good idea of content
- page loads quickly
- has some social aspect about it
- works on many browsers, and devices (mobile, laptop,etc.)
- webpage rules are followed (title length, etc.)
- meta data, like author, is complete
- put important keywords in prime location in the title slide
- putting alt text on your images describing the image with relevant keywords is vital
- the meta data is what shows in a Google search, make it interesting enough to read
- Consider NOT using the Meta Keyword Tag.
- Check this link out
Rand has a few more final suggestions:
- make a uniquely valuable website for your target segment
- make your page sharable, where people will want to share it
- put in your keywords, but don’t sacrifice the users experience by doing so
- make sure that you have your page title, headers, and content all supporting one idea
Remember that you will always have to sacrifice something. You cannot optimize everything. Choose what is most important, and where your strengths are. Not only that but Google and the other big players are always changing, so you will need to change also.