Most of the mistakes in page composition fall into not satisfying the "What's in this page for me?" objective.
In last week's article I touched on how Richard's site does nto answer this question immediately.

Here is the opening paragraph from Richard's site:
CareerHotList.com has partnered with CareerBuilder.com to simplify your employment search. You will find a variety of career tools that can offer you the perfect solution for job searching, resume writing, interview tips and more. Search over 1.9 million jobs to find the employment opportunity of a lifetime. If you are looking to hire someone, click here.

Now looking at his keywords, "job,jobs,job search,employment,job bank,job center,state jobs city jobs,job service,career,careers,career change,work,job listing,job listings,employment opportunity" it seems that his primary keyword prhase, (People search more by phrase than they do by single words), it would be "job search", followed by employment search, then job bank, etc.. actual popularity would have to be determined by keyword research.

But lets assume that it is Job Search.

The rewritten text would read: (Links are faked. )
Job opportunities for seekers and employers.
Doing a Job Search?
Looking for a new employment opportunity in your city or state? (Link to regional search)
Search over 1.9 million jobs to find the employment opportunity of a lifetime. (Link to general search)

Looking to hire?
Post your requirements or search our resumes database. Try it free. (This should lead to the form but does not as the site is in frames.)
Job posting packs available from $419.00

That is it. Short, simple and to the point.
Instead of putting the info about your sites merging in the first paragraph, put the news into an article. (Press release as well?)
It is too soon to get technical, people are looking for jobs, and they are more concerned with what they need than what you are doing.

Text composition.

Font selection.
This has more to do with usability than with SEO. Search engines do not care what font you are using, people do as some are more easily read than others.
The above is in Verdana 10 point.
Below in Ariel 10 point.
This has more to do with usability than with SEO. Search engines do not care what font you are using, people do as some are more easily read than others.

Verdana and Ariel belong to the same font family but Verdana was designed to be read on a computer screen.

Use one font for the whole site.
Exceptions would be to use a different font for quoted or highlighted text to separate it visually.

Keep to the main font families.
Using a font that is not a standard, can result in the site's spacing being off as if the visitor does not have the font on their computer, one they have will be substituted.

The first text you show on your page should be in the header.
This is the fist place both the visitor and the search engines read and should include your primary keyword phrase as determined by your keyword research.
Put this in the h1 tag.
Putting text in you logo graphic serves no purpose.
Visitors will tend to scan and not read it and it will not be seen by the search engines.

When composing text for your pages, include the primary headings in header tags, < h1 > text < /h1 >, then the sub category headings in < h2 > and emphasized copy in < h3 >
Control the size in your CSS.

Using H tags tells the search engine the importance of your copy.
Use your keywords in the h tags, starting with the most important being in the h1 tag.
Do not skip a tag. Do not go from a h1 to a h3 tag omitting h2.
This will render the search engines appraisal useless.
Do not use the h1 tag more than once.

If you do not want to use h tags due to formatting/spacing considerations use the strong tag. < strong > text < /strong > or bold < b > text < /b >
Note: Tag examples have extra spaces after <, and before >, so that the code may show here.

In the above example of the new opening paragraph the Job opportunities for seekers and employers. Would be h2
Doing a Job Search? and Looking to hire? in h3 with the header keywords in h1.

Length and focus of copy.
Focusing on one keyword phrase per page works best.
My research shows that the absolute maximum per page is about 6.

Short pages rank better than long.
People don't like to scroll.
Keep the page copy to 150 to about 300 words.
Keep the display "Above the fold".
Link to sub-pages using descriptive text.

Do not over use your keyword phrases.
In a page of 150/300 words use them about three times.

• Once in the header.
• Once in the body text.
• Once as an "Anchor Link".
  An anchor link is descriptive text linking to something like an inside page.
  More credit is given for a link phrased with your keyword included than for a link phrased as "Click here" or a straight URL. (EG: www.mypage.com)

Next, Week 5 - Behind the scenes. Code tweaks, meta tags.