It's not sufficient to write great, untertaining content and expect Google to make a subjective decision and promote it on the first search results page keyword targeted.

Instead do a technical evaluation and adjust key elements, here and there, work smart and cut short your effort expenditure.

If you're tackling SEO practices you most definetly heard of On-Page Factors (content formating) and Off-Page Factors (inbound and outbound links).

The following paragraphs will lay down for you to use the best practices for optimizing the on-page factors.

The Title, or Title tag

All split-testing confirms the title tag as being the most important on-page factors.

The reason for this status qwo is the fact the the title represents the first communication channel between you as the webmaster and the search engines. And through this channel the SE bot finds out each webpage topic or subject line.

Here's how to write compelling page titles: in the first (visible) 65 characters place your keywords and finish with the website name or your brand name.

By implementing this tactic you suggest Google and the other major search engines which keywords and key phrases to associate your website with.

The best associative hook to use is the pipe symbol (is right above the "Enter" key and it appears by using in combination the shift key).

Keep in mind that getting the first position in organic listings represents only half of the battle. The other half deals with enticing the people to click your hyperlink.

So write titles that are logical and have a realistic feel to what they promise. As I "leaked" above, limit it's length to 65 characters.

Keywords density

I've included this issue because I know many wonder what's the proper percentage of keywords within a post or article.

To be honest I don't consider keyword density a real, results-renderer factor that must be addressed in a must-do manner. I myself pay little attention to evently spreading keywords in the content I write. Of course you can consider having your keywords placed in the beginning, in the middle section and the ending paragraph but carefully pondering the amounts used I believe it to be an outdated on-page SEO practice.

In fact Google relies more and more on what are called L.S.I. terms - terms which are contextually relevant to the keywords targeted in content webpage. Of course the technology is in it's infancy but it gains ground quickly.

Meta keywords & meta description

For the meta description there is a simple one-step optimization trick to do - use the keyword at least once because if you don't Google won't include the tag in the search results. Instead it will choose a random snippet from the actual text body.

As in the case of title tags, the description must be comprehensive. In addition it must supplement the information contained by the title. Don't make it larger then 160 characters.

Use the keywors or keyphrase to start at least one sentence (preferably at the beginning of the article/post). You don't have to have them embed in the keywords tag, all the more so since this is a "great" way to uncover money keywords to competitors; there's no SEO benefit from using the mea keywords tag.

More on-page tweaks:

o Structure your content with th help of Headers from 1 to 4. However don't use more then one H1, two H2 and H3 and one H4.

Using keywords in the header tags is somehow a sensitive issue for Google. I suggest limiting the use of keywords just in the Header 1 and using LSI terms in the other three or four headers.

o Emphasize your target phrase/key term(s) with Bold or Italics. One such inclusion per article is sufficient.

o It might seem that since Google can't read images, using them on the webpage is a total waste of space and money. But Google can, however read meta-image tags. So a good idea would be that of using relevant pictures for the page's main topic and name those meta-image tags in accordance with that topic - a.k.a. "using keywords whenever you have a justified chance".

Follow web's principle - connection

Whenever you spot an opportunity link out to other web resources relevant for your particular topic. And do this with anchor texts containing your keywords.

These outbound links should be present in the actual text body and not gathered in what are called "links" page or "Recommendations" page. Another key point to linking out is to do this in a disinterested manner, namely using dofollow links. A website that appoints no editorial credentials to the sites it's linking out, presents no credibility with Google.