There are three types of search engine optimization one can perform on their site. You do not always need to do all three, but you do also do not need to limit yourself to just one type. However, the different types can hinder one another so it is important that you pick a main type to focus on the most.
The three types of search engine optimization are:
- Homepage optimization
- Category page optimization
- Content/product page optimization
The steps you must take to optimize a homepage are different from the steps you must take to optimize a content or product page. Additionally the goal of someone optimizing a content or product page is usually different from the goal of someone optimizing a homepage. Your site's topic and the competition may influence your decision to focus on one type of optimization or another. What follows will be an explanation of the three types and a description of the situations in which they are best used.
1. Homepage Optimization
Homepage optimization is obviously the optimization of a site's home or index page. Sites only have one such page, which is an important factor when deciding to engage in this type of optimization. You see a homepage gives you a single chance to hit your target. You can at most focus on a single major keyphrase and a handful of minor ones. So, for homepage optimization to be your focus, you need to have a major keyphrase that is worth it.
First your keyword research and figure out how often this phrase is searched for. Is the word popular enough? Next check out the competition, do you have any chance at competing with them? For instance if your site is about something general such as "sports" or "books" you probably should forget about optimizing your homepage for such general keywords, the competition is too strong and your energy is better spent on the other two types of optimization. On this site I do not engage in any homepage optimization because words like "web development" are too competitive and "website publishing" or its derivatives are not popular enough.
Assuming your keyphrase is popular and the competition is not insurmountable you can procede to optimize your homepage. The most important thing when optimizing a homepage is to name your site using your keywords. It isn't enough to put your keywords in your title tag, though that certainly is very important too. The actual name of your site, the name appearing in your graphical header or logo, needs to include delimited keywords. By delimited keywords I mean spaces between the words so that someone making a link to your site does not think they're supposed to be run together. For example do not use a run-on domain like "PurpleWidgets.com" as your site's name. If your domain is "PurpleWidgets.com" then name your site "Purple Widgets." It may seem like a minor thing, but it makes a mountain of difference. People will most often link to you using your site name as the anchor text and the anchor text of your incoming links is vitally important to ranking well. It is possible to rank well on keywords without doing this, but you will have to work much much harder and it may take a couple years or more to build up the necessary popularity.
A keyword rich domain can also help, but it isn't required so long as the title and site name are keyword rich. Also you'll want to engage in standard on-page optimization by placing keywords in your body content, headers, and elsewhere.
It is also important that you link back to your homepage from every page on your site, preferably using your keywords instead of just the word "home" or if you like something such as "Purple Widgets Home." This will help send PageRank to your homepage and keep with the good anchor text.
2. Category Page Optimization
A category page is like an index or a subsection of your site. For an ecommerce site that sells shoes it would be the page that lists all the men's hiking boots. For a content site such as this one it would be the page that lists all the search engine optimization articles.
As a general rule category pages carry more specific keywords than homepages. If the competition for your homepage keywords is too great there is a chance the competition for your category page keywords will be palatable. Sites with just one homepage can include dozens of category pages (or more) and so there can be significantly more traffic potential.
There are also sometimes different levels of category pages. For instance, using the shoe store example. The first level category page would be "Men's" then perhaps "Men's Boots" then finally "Men's Hiking Boots." If your site contains multiple category levels you should decide which ones you want to focus on the most. Some things can be done for all category levels, but others will favor one or the other.
Category page optimization is simpler since you will be responsible for most of the incoming links for each category page as they will be coming from other parts of your site. You must link to the category page using keywords as the anchor text, you should put the keywords prominently in the title tag and in headings on the page itself. It also can help if you include a paragraph or two or keyword rich content. This is especially true for ecommerce sites which so often do not include any text at all on category pages.
The important thing here though is your internal linking structure. You should link to every category page at the level which you are targeting on your homepage. This can be a lot of links, and that may affect your decision of which level to target. For instance on this site's homepage the left menu includes just the first level category, plus Search Engine Optimization, which is a second level category but one I want to give extra attention too. However on the homepage itself I also list all the second level categories.
Linking to the categories on every page of your site also helps, which is why I put the search engine optimization link on the left menu. However the other secondary level categories are not there because I want to keep the left menu small. Also the more links you add, the less weight each will receive.
The important thing to remember when doing category optimization is that the more links you can add to that category on your site the better off it is. Putting a link to the category on your main menu, which is included on every page, is the most you can do. But if you can't do that you can still add as many cross links between categories as you can. Also, breadcrumb navigation is a good way to add a link back to your category page from your content or product pages.
You should also focus on gaining incoming links for these pages as well. Many people focus only on incoming links for the homepage when you can submit category pages to directories and or use them for link exchanges.
You're still linking back to your homepage on every page of your site, for usability reasons, but by adding more internal links to and among the category pages you are spreading your available weight around more and thus your homepage will have less than if you minimized internal links and used a highly hierarchical, as opposed to mesh, linking structure. So while you can do both, you can't do both equally well.
3. Content/Product Page Optimization
The page you are viewing right now is a content page, a product page, using the shoe store example again, would be a specific pair of boots.
Sites should have more content pages than any other type of page, so with enough content pages you should be able to target a wide variety of keywords and the traffic potential can be enormous. I sometimes refer to this as brute force SEO. With enough pages you're bound to rank well on some terms, and decently on others, so you'll receive a good deal of traffic purely as a result of the amount of content you offer.
Content pages in general are deep in a site's structure and so they are often harder to focus PageRank on. You can do it though. On my ecommerce site I link to my most popular individual products on the left menu. I want (and have) #1 rankings for these product names so I focus as much PageRank as possible on them by linking to them from every page of the site. You can do this with any site though. The new article listing on this site's homepage is focusing PR on the new content to get it established. An ecommerce site can do the same with a new product listing. Some ecommerce sites (mine included) also have a most popular product listing which reinforces the popularity of those products.
Just as with category pages, you basically want to add more links to the products you want to promote. Also as with category pages the more links to products you add the less weight you're sending to your homepage or category pages and so they suffer a little bit.
The on-page optimization stays mostly the same. You want keyword rich anchor text, usually the product or article title. You also want one page keywords, keywords in the title tag, and keywords in headings. Multi-page articles can be an issue though. You should not use generic words like "Next Page" when sending people to the next page of a multi-page article. Instead use a keyword rich phrase of some sort. Also, if the article is particularly long and you want to make sure to promote even the last pages of it well you should include a keyword rich table of contents at the beginning of it, otherwise PageRank is heavily diluted by the time it reaches the last page.
Conclusion
You don't need to pick one type of optimization, you can use a mix. If there is a particular product or category that is much more popular than the rest (according to your keyword research) feel free to give that one special attention, as I do. Just be sure you aren't wasting all your energy on optimizing the wrong part of your site.
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