SEO'izing the site

Now that I have my initial keywords in order, it's time to infuse the site with SEO goodness. Based on the various best practices I've gathered (referenced at the bottom of this post), I've come up with following rules of thumb:

Title

• "The title tag has consistently been the most important on-page SEO factor for the past few years"
• Should contain your main keywords
• 10-12 words in title tags
• No more then 65-70 characters
• Different title for each page
• Needs to sound good since that's what users will see in the search engine results page
• Differentiate from the other links, make people want to click it

Meta Keywords

• Not important for Google, but Yahoo and MSN still use them
• 10 to 20 keywords at most
• Don't stuff with keywords that you don't have on the page, this is bad for your rankings

Meta description

• Not overly important for rankings
• Could be used in the description of your site in search engine results
• No more then 160 characters

H1

• Help ranking if it contains your main keywords
• Can't trick Google by making an H1 tag tiny and hidden

URL

• Try to add keywords to the URL path (not necessarily the domain)
• Keywords in the domain aren't very important
  
• To more then 2 query parameters in the URL
  
• Use http://www.mysite.com/ (not mysite.com)
• No spaces or underscores

Misc

• Inbound links, not only help with your PageRank but also the keywords in the links
• Keywords in the beginning of a document are much more powerful then anywhere else
  
• Keywords in img alt tag are important
• Try to keep your keywords to 3-7% of your content, otherwise it looks spammy to search engines

Putting the advice to use

Now that I have the keywords, and the best practices (above), it's finally time to update the site. As the site is very simple, with only two pages, I'll focus on the two pages separately.

empiphany
You'll notice that I end up sacrificing a lot of keyword juice and instead focus on making the site sound appealing. After playing around with a number of variations, I came to realize that my best chance at success will lie not in trying to optimize the SEO at every turn, but instead by making the site memorable, remarkable, and fun. The last thing I want to do is make the site sound spammy, and focusing on SEO exclusively will very quickly accomplish this.

It's sad to see that after all of that hard work coming up with the perfect keywords, I end up barely using them. However, I wouldn't say it was at all wasted effort. I still use the most important keywords, and I have no doubt that work will be extremely valuable through the process. Plus, at least I know what I should be using when the opportunity arises.
epiphany

Front page title

• Was: "How to call internationally - Country calling codes made easy"
• Now: "Insanely Simple Country Codes for International Calling"

Front page meta keywords

• Was: None
• Now: "country codes, international calling, country code, international dialing codes, telephone country codes"
  

Front page meta description

• Was: None
• Now: "The quickest way to get the international calling codes you need, without the hassle. Simple enter which country you're calling, and we tell you what you need to know."

Front page H1

• Was: "Country Codes for International Calling"
• Now: "International Country Codes, made simple"

Rest of the content...unchanged.

Results page title

• Was: "How to call X from Y - International calling codes"
• Now: "How to call X from Y - International country codes made simple"

Results page meta keywords

• Was: None
• Now: "country codes, international calling, country code, {{ from }}, {{ to }}, international dialing codes, telephone country codes"

Results page meta description

• Was: None
• Now: "Country codes for calling internationally from {{ from }} to {{ to }}. International country codes made insanely simple."

Results page H1

• Was: "To call X from Y, dial:"
• Now: Unchanged

Other thoughts

During this process, in coming to the decision that I want to focus on branding more then I want to focus on optimizing SEO, I began thinking about a new domain name for the site. "howtodialinternationally.com" doesn't have much of a ring to it. It's a great domain, and I'll certainly use it, but I'm not thinking about focusing on "simplecountrycodes.com" as the primary domain. I'm going to let this roll around for a couple days, and see if it sticks.


Great list of SEO references that I used in this process:

• http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet
• http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php
• http://www.highrankings.com/allabouttitles
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/best-practices-for-title-tags
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/making-the-most-of-meta-description-tags
• http://www.highrankings.com/metakeyword
• http://tools.seobook.com/meta-medic/