On page optimisation: Good for the users and engines?

[madsurfer]

I would like to rank for words as:
windsurfing equipment
windsurfing news
windsurfing sails
windsurfing boards etc.

Now am I wondering if I should use exact those words in the navigation/titles/descriptions because it seems not user friendly. The whole website is about windsurfing thus naming it just “equipement” instead of “windsurfing equipment” would be clear to a visitor that I am talking about that windsurfing related topic.

Here is an example: http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/competitions-events/
I can even change the URL to http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/windsurfing-competitions-events/

What would be the best way of choosing the naming/descriptions when I do on-page optimisation which is good for the engines and for the users and who would you do in my case?

[Julich]

Check SEOMoz's term target tool. It will provide you with great feedbacks on what (and how) to optimize on your page : http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new

[Dan-Petrovic]

I disagree with your view that "windsurfing equipment" is a bad thing for the users. Consider the fact that they will arrive through results to your site. If the phrase "windsurfing equipment" is in the TITLE of your page that will display as a clickable element in search results and also assure the user they're clicking on the right thing.

As far as SEO goes, having an exact phrase somewhere in the title is an advantage to having a partial title (e.g. only "equipment").

[madsurfer]

Thanks for the response. I did that off course and I am scoring an A grade on the on-page optimastion side. That says nothing about how the users will view it and if a human review of google will flag it as spammy.

[Julich]

You're right. However, as far as I can see, I don't think the kind of keywords your have in your titles, etc. are not user-friendly. As Dejan says, they look like perfectly OK to me. Don't worry too much

[madsurfer]

Even if you look at the home page and the nav menu will have the word "windsurfing" in front of each menu item?

[CPU]

Hi Madsurfer

I would use the exact phrases in the name of the page, the page titles, alt text, anchor text etc, etc but wouldn't use them in the navigation and would go for equipment, news, sails, boats etc as the navigation labels as this will be more scannable by a user then having windsurfing before everything.

Presumably as you will have a page for each of these categories then it is that page that you will be optimising for that keyword and hoping ranks at number one when someone searches.

One thing I would do before naming all the pages is write a list of my products and the related phrases and enter them into the Google keyword tool and see whether there are similar suggestions that would still match the content of my page but with considerably higher estimated search volume. I would then optimise for that term.

Hope this helps..

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Dan-Petrovic]

See potential users don't see your homepage yet. You're bidding for their click among 9 other organic results on that page