Probably the most common mistake I see on websites is that the pages are all created in the exact same way. Many sites will have the same page descriptions or keywords across their whole site, rather than using each pages as separate way of competing for keywords. If two pages are talking about different topics, but appear to be optimised for the same keywords, then it is likely to confuse the search engine spiders which they should rank. Treating each page separately is one of the strongest ways of increasing the search engine friendliness of your website.

What should you do?

Create a list of the keywords you want to be found for and then assign each web page with one of these keyword. When you have decided upon your list of main keywords and the pages that best represent each one you need to really optimise that page for the keyword. To do this you:

- Make sure the keyword features in the URL of the page (if you have a static site or use a CMS system that allows URL re-writing)
- Place the keyword in the page Title tag (close to the beginning)
- Make sure the keyword features in the start of the meta keywords list for the page
- Put the keyword in the meta description of the page (close to the beginning)
- Write the body copy so that the keyword features for around 5% of the text
- If you can then you should put the keyword in the H1, H2, H3 tags
- If an image is on that page then add the keyword to the image Alt text
- If possible, add the keywords into the links that point to that page from other places on your site

By following the above pattern for each page you will have the start of a strongly SEO’d site, and therefore better chance of ranking for your keywords than the many businesses that write the same page titles for their whole site, or are trying to optimise every page for the exact same keywords.