The most difficult thing at the start of an SEO project can be to come up with a landing page strategy.

The difficulty is to try and avoid an overlap in strategy – the terms you’ve been asked to optimise may be associated with more than one page, and it can be very difficult to completely restructure the site once it’s been built, especially if you’ve been given a long list of keywords.

The effect of this can be confusion with search engines as to which page is the main focus for which term. However, a strategy I believe in is to focus the homepage upon the general, most searched for term and focus the deeper page on slightly different or longer tailed terms associated with the general term. The simple reason is: the homepage is more likely to get natural links.

This should be reflected in the page titles, which are the most important onsite optimisation factor – they are not only highly considered by the search engines but they also provide a clear insight into your strategy. Remember the 65 character restriction and your strategy should fall into place.

So for example, a marketing agency may focus the homepage on general terms such as ‘marketing’ ‘marketing company’, ‘design company’, ‘brand design company’, ‘brand design’. Then you can focus the pages that outline these services on longer tailed/less popular terms such as ‘internet marketing services leeds’, ‘logo design leeds’ etc. This would give you the following page titles, with most popular term at the front and word proximity also determined by popularity of term:

Homepage: Marketing Company & Brand Design Company

Marketing service page: Print, Online & Internet Marketing Services Leeds & Yorkshire

Brand design service page: Brand Logo Design Services & Branding Services Leeds & Yorkshire

The content on each page should then reflect these titles. For example homepage content should focus on what a great marketing and brand design company you are. The content on the marketing services pages will expand on the marketing service you provide with headings for online & internet marketing and print marketing, and how you provide these services throughout Leeds and Yorkshire. The brand design service page would follow suit.

Links gained to each page should use the appropriate anchor text.

Ok the example isn’t perfect but hopefully you’ve got the gist of what I mean!