3.5 Making the first On-page Optimization Report

Option 1: Find out best on–page practices, by hand

Come on, do it right now. Just use your competitors′ techniques for your own advantage. I′ ve done the same thing, a thousand times, so what do you think, why I insist on it?

Right here, I could put a story telling you:

I started "spying" on my competition in the year of ..., and ... year ago, I used software for that purpose for the first time. All in all, this analysis saved me ... hours that is ... years of life, and it helped me make $.........

But I′ m not telling you all this stuff, because:
1) it′ s just impossible to count;
2) figures don′ t matter here.

This is what matters: It′ s just stupid not to spy!

Now I′ ll tell you how this competitive analysis is done by hand. Try to do what I say, as soon as you′ re reading it. But don′ t rush to count anything you can. Stick to my instructions only.

All right. Say, let′ s count the overall text length and keyword density of a competitor′ s page. Take your major keyword, for example, wedding ideas, and make a search for it in the Search Engine where you want to rank first. Say, Google.

You′ ll see your #1 competition.

Google results for wedding ideas

Just click their link to get to the page. As soon as the page is loaded, copy all its text into a new MS Word document. Now in the menu choose Tools –> Word Count to see statistics. Check how many words the page contains, total.

Word document statistics

Look at the screenshot. On http://www.weddingideasmag.com/, there are 924 words.

Now click Ctrl+F to search for your term in the Word document (I search for wedding ideas). Select Reading highlight and Find in "Main document", and click "Find next" to see how many times the given phrase is encountered in the document.

Statistics for the words found in the document

In the picture, you see "Word found 8 items matching this criteria"

Indeed, the page http://www.weddingideasmag.com/ uses the keyphrase wedding ideas 8 times.

Let′ s count keyword density for wedding ideas:br 8/924*100% = 0.86%

The same way, you need to check each word from the phrase, like I did. Look at the table:

Believe me, even this small table is of great value. You know why? Hmmm... Let′ s read it!

What the table says:

"Your top competition is fine with as small as 0.86% keyword density for wedding ideas, but they have pretty high density for the word wedding. So to outrank http://www.weddingideasmag.com/ for the keyword wedding ideas you need to make approximately as much text on the page (1000 — 1200 words) and maintain approximately the same 0.86% keyword density for the whole keyphrase wedding ideas. But try to make density for the keyword wedding as high as 5.8%, and for ideas 0.8%."

And, just like you calculate keyword density for all the site′ s contents, you′ ll need to check it for titles, H tags, alt texts, internal and external links, bold–written sections and other elements.

To calculate keyword density in any element of the webpage, you take the number of keywords present in the element you need, divide it by the total number of words in that element and multiply by 100%.

DO IT NOW! Count overall keyword density of your #1 competitor′ s page.

However, there′ s another way to go.

Alongside many online tools that will calculate keyword density for you, like http://tool.motoricerca.info/keyword–density.phtml or a SEO Quake add–on for Firefox, there is software that makes things so much easier!

You know what? I′ ve spent eight years, each day on the Web, losing and winning, figuring out how it all works — to be as bad–ass as I am now and to make the SEO money I have. And you′ ve got this 8–year–worth knowledge right here, right now, and can see how it works, in real time. I even envy you...Honestly! No try–and–error or endless studying, just confidently doing SEO — and raising paychecks. What could be nicer? And these SEO tools...where they all were 8 years ago??? And here′ s the greatest thing for me to know: you′ ve got your best opportunities today to make real money on the Web, much faster than I did, and I′ m happy to point your chances out to you!

Now read what I tell you next, and find out what′ll make your life over a thousand times easier!

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Next: Option 2: Grab WebSite Auditor and X-ray your competition