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3.3 Prepare the ground for a "comfy landing" (finding a page to act on)

Now you need to prepare a landing page that you′ re going to optimize. There are two options: you either modify an existing page, or make a new one.

Option 1: Modify an existing page


Time to pick out one of your site′ s pages to act on. Follow my instructions, to make the right choice.

First, you check which of your website pages rank best for your first keyword. In which Search Engine you want to rank well? Let it be Google.co.uk. So go to it and type in a query like this:

your_keyword site:your_domain_name

Here′ s an example. If your site is http://www.weddingchannel.com and your main keyphrase is wedding gifts, you type in:

wedding gifts site:www.weddingchannel.com

Serp results

On the first results page, you′ ll see a list of 10 pages that belong to your site and rank best for the keyword wedding gifts.

If you made a normal query, just with a keyword wedding gifts, you′ d see 10 best ranking pages among all websites. And right now, it′ s almost the same. You see top 10 pages for the keyphrase wedding gifts. The only difference is that all these pages are on your own website.

And, you choose one of these 10. Why?
The logic is simple: best–ranking pages are already good, in SEO terms. So if you pick a #1 page, this will save you much effort to optimize. Still, you need to choose between all ten best–ranking pages if you don′ t want to change some of your already well optimized pages.

For instance, now I′ m optimizing a site that sells kitchenware. When I just started, the page that ranked best for free delivery kitchenware was the "buy" page. As I looked at it, I saw that this buy page is greatly done. It makes order and payment convenient, and it′ s not supposed to convince anyone to buy, because if visitors are there, they are already convinced. So it′ s not wise to change this kind of a page. I mean, in a case like this, you′ d better pick out another one.

So, look through your 10 best–ranking pages. Think about each of them, and choose the one you′ d like to optimize now.

Option 2: Make a new page

If you didn′ t pick out any of your 10 best pages no problem!

First, go to your site and choose a typical page with your usual navigational links, headers and footers. Found one? OK, now the #1 thing to do is save a copy of this page with a good search–engine–friendly name. I mean a name that has at least one keyword in it.

Here are some examples. If your main keyword is tyres, a name like tyres–for–trucks–and–buses.html will be great.
Or, if your page′ s name is /buy–gifts.html, and wedding ideas is your keyword, a pretty good new name for the page will be /check –wedding–ideas.html.

Don′ t forget that users see these names and sometimes bookmark and even memorize them. So write something that makes sense.

After you upload the file to your site via FTP, the new page appears on your site.

DO IT NOW! Get ready with a page you′ ll be optimizing: choose an existing one or create a new page.

Ready to go? All right, and now I have to confess one thing. It′ s from my own experience, so trust me...

29 comments

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#1740 2010-12-10 23:39:50 Alan` Osetek

If we add a new page then we should update our sitemap and re-submit so I guess we have to wait for it to be re-crawled to test the ranking then?


Answer
#1470 2010-09-02 06:57:58 Ivo Ignatov

Dan, this is a very smart strategy (to choose the best page for SEO). Thank You!

Answer
#990 2010-02-02 21:38:52 mike kikker

I've heard that for a domain name you want an exact match domain withOUT dashes. But I always see most seo PAGES from people who talk about SEO using dashes.
so
weddingideas.com would be prefered over wedding-ideas.com
However does it matter if it's
weddingsiteonline.com/wedding-ideas
or
weddingsiteonline.com/weddingideas
or
weddingideas.weddingsiteonline.com
??

Answer
#936 2010-01-06 05:41:33 Dan Richmond

@Tim Inglis

<i>What do you think is better for these new pages
wedding-ideas.html or wedding-ideas/
</i>

From the SEO point of view, it doesn't matter which option you use. Using pages "http://www.you-domain-.com/wedding-ideas.html" (not folders) is more popular, because it really doesn't require any redirects (and a lot of users are used to this option).

However if for any reason you really need to use folders instead of files (like "http://www.you-domain-.com/wedding-ideas/"), you can do this using the file "index.html" in the "wedding-ideas/" folder. This won't really influence a page's SEO in any way. The default page name for each folder depends on your server settings, but on most servers, the name "index" is used. So you can just create a folder "wedding-ideas/" and a file "index.html" - it will be available at the address "http://www.you-domain-.com/wedding-ideas/". This is a normal practice and is normal for SEO.

But if you want to use the file "wedding-ideas.html" inside the folder instead of "index.html" (like "http://www.you-domain-.com/wedding-ideas/wedding-ideas.html") - you can set this through the .htaccess file.

You can find all documentation on the use of .htaccess here:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html

Answer
#934 2010-01-05 10:57:07 Dan Richmond

@Paul Watchorn

Sorry, but I'm confused here... I am just not getting the question at all. You say <i>if I want to change text in a meta tag, I just do it and reload the site.</i>

So I assume you _can_ edit the meta keywords tag and upload it to the site. But what is the problem then? What is it that you mean under the "new keywords" that you don't know how to upload?

Answer
#906 2010-01-02 14:30:16 Paul Watchorn

Hi Dan, I am trying to find out how to change keywords of of sites that I have not built myself. For example, I have the FTP codes for a web site, I have been through the steps so far, but now I am stuck. I don't know how to upload the new keywords to the site.
On the sites I have made, obviously it is simple, if I want to change text in a meta tag, I just do it and reload the site.
I have looked for the answer to this one all over, with any luck, can you help with this one?

Answer
#863 2009-12-23 11:58:31 Tim Inglis

2009-03-16 19:48:02: Willy Rios

What do you think is better for these new pages Mr. Dan.

wedding-ideas.html or wedding-ideas/

Thank you..

I would have thought that depended solely on whether or not your wedding-ides.html file was in a folder called wedding-ideas. I'm sure you could set things up so that your server finds wedding-ideas.html instead of index.html by default, and in this case you could easily use wedding-ideas/ as your address. If not, I am of the belief that you will need to give the file extension, otherwise the browser won't know where to find it.

Hope this helps mate.

Answer
#838 2009-12-13 19:49:23 Ken Taylor

@Dan Richmond

Hey Dan, it's for rankings. I'm thinking maybe the reason why the Google Rank is not in the top 100 is because the site is fairly new Sep 2009 with only about 6-Backlinks. The website itself has only 8 pages with 5 pages built around a specific KW. The other three are About, Contact, and Sitemap.

Also, following your instructions in this lesson I found all 5 of the content pages listed followed by the About page. So all is well- so far so good.

Answer
#823 2009-12-09 12:31:15 Dan Richmond

@Ken Taylor

For which kind of search do you get no results? Number of searches in Rank Tracker? Or Rankings in Rank Tracker? Or whatever else wherever else? Please write here what exactly you're doing and what exactly you see. Or write to Link-Assistant.Com's support service at http://www.link-assistant.com/support/ and ask them to explain (but please provide details).

Answer
#812 2009-12-08 20:24:09 Ken Taylor

What does it mean when you get no results?

I had a 4-KW phrase and tried making it more general and neither one returned any results. Is it because the KW was originally not in the top 100 found in RankTracker?

I'm having a few problems trying to apply what you're teaching us to a micro-niche site. I didn't think it would make any difference, but I'm beginning to wonder.

Once I finish this course, if I don't find the answer to these questions I'll go to the forums.

But at least I know now how to check for the best KW.

Answer
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