The Big Secret of SEO

Is there a big SEO secret? Yes there is! And it doesn't cost you anything to learn it . It's one of those things that are so obvious and most people don't see it.

Usually things that are very obvious are often ignored because people want it to be more complicated than it really is. You gain more appreciation with doing something difficult very well, than with doing something simple very well. And thus there is a tendency to make things look more complicated than they really are. No problem if you do that to make your self look better, but when you do this to yourself, you're wasting a lot of time with less results than possible.

This is a bit the case in SEO as well, even though this secret is still pretty difficult to apply by many people, often because of too much knowledge about the subject or because of not being able to see the very obvious. The secret of SEO is:

Focus!

The following parts of a web page have to focus on the same keywords:

• Title

• Meta Keywords

• Meta Description

• H1

• Content

Remember: We're talking about an individual page in your website here,

Is this simple to do? You probably think: "YES!, DUH!"

But go check your pages and see if that's really the case. It starts with the title of the page. There you should find 1 phrase and perhaps some variations of that phrase. Does that phrase show up in all the parts in the list above? Is this the case for all the pages in your website?

Yes? Then you're on your way to real focus.

But wait, did you make the mistake to dilute the focus on those keywords? That means: "how many noisy words or phrases are there? This is a bit more complicated but let me try to explain it:

You can (and even should) use more words than just the chosen keyword phrase in the various parts of a webpage. Obviously you can't write real content if you can't use any other words. So other words are not a problem but you have to make sure that you don't focus on them as well. That's probably the easiest way to prevent a page focuses on other things.

So in practical terms (that's what this website is all about in the end) the chosen keywords are the only words that are allowed to show up in all 5 parts in the list above. A title for example can use an additional phrase to make it more attractive, but you don't want to repeat any of those words in your keywords tag. It's even good to prevent them from showing up in the H1. You might want or need to use them in the description. And they will have to show up in the content.

Always, the only words that are allowed to show up everywhere are the chosen keywords for the page.

In my experience, not everybody gets this and if that's the case for you, it's wise to give this kind of task to somebody that understands these things naturally.