Please Correct This on-site SEO strategy w/ respect to all the updates

[BobGW]

Hello,

I believe my on-site SEO process that I used to use a couple of years ago is not working well anymore for a couple of my sites, including this one.

I'll tell you the old strategy as well as my new strategy and I'm wondering if you can give me pointers that will help us rank where we should rank with our PA and DA instead of getting moved down because of what could be our old on-site SEO.

OLD ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY:

Title tags usually match the page, but title tags occasionally on this site don't match the pages exactly. There's not many of them, but they do still exist in a couple of places. Title tags are either

1. A phrase describing the page

2. Keywords 1, Keyword 2

3. Keyword 1 | Keyword 2

4. Keywords 1, Keyword 2, branding

The keywords are in the h1 and h2 of each main page, at the very top of the page. The h1 and h2 do not exactly copy the title tag, but are a longer phrase with the keywords appearing in their exact word order or in word variations. See this page for an example.

Keywords occur 3-4 times in the body of the main pages (the pages with a menu link). Right now some of the pages have the exact phrases 3 or 4 times and no variation.

meta description tags have exact keyword phrases once per keyword. Meta description tag are a short paragraph describing the page.

No meta keyword tags, but a couple haven't been deleted yet.

FUTURE ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY:

I'm going to change all of the page titles to make sure they match the content they're on exactly. If the title is a phrase describing a page, I'm going to make sure a variation of that phrase occurs at least three times in the content, and once in the meta description tag.

Title tags will be either

a. Short phrase exactly matching page

b. Keyword 1, Keyword 2 | branding

c. Keyword 1 | branding

2. I'm thinking about taking out the H1 and H2 and replacing them with one tag that is a phrase describing the page that I'll sometimes put the keyword phrase in, only a variation in it and not the exact keyword phrase - unless it just makes total sense to use the keyword phrase exactly.

**I'm thinking of only using the keyword phrase in it's exact words once on the page unless it occurs more naturally, and to include the keyword phrase in word variations two more times. So once (in non-exact word order) in the at the top, once (exact word order) in the text, and two more times (varied word orders) somewhere in the text. All this will be different if the keywords show up naturally in the text.

**3. I'll delete all meta keyword tags, and still use exact keyword phrases in meta description tag, though I'll change the meta description tags to always very closely match what the page is about.

Do you think my new strategy will make a difference? Your thoughts on any of this?****

[Felip3]

HI Bob,

• I wouldn't replace the H1 and H2 for  strong.
• I think is good idea to use exactly matching in the Title.
• You can check the "perfectly Opimized page" in this image by Rand: http://dc8hdnsmzapvm.cloudfront.net/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/perfectly-optimized-page3.gif

[Nick_Ker]

For your on-page strategy that you have described, ask yourself how each part of that benefits the reader. If it really doesn't benefit the reader and you are only doing it because you believe it might help SEO, then skip it. 
Put keywords in the back of your mind, not the front when writing titles. Sometimes, that means not having the keywords at the front of the title as well.

I looked at the example page you gave and the title looks a bit repetitive: "NLP Practitioner Training, NLP Practitioner Certification" To a searcher, that doesn't look very appealing in the SERPs. The repetition of "NLP Practitioner" could even keep the page from ranking as well as it could. Try something a bit more human, like "New NLP Practitioner Training Locations in California & Utah". That's more people-friendly, and if I gathered correctly from a quick skimming of the article, is a better description of what is on the page than simply two keywords stuck together.

So think firstly about what a person will think when they read that title in the SERPs, THEN worry about where you can fit your keywords into it.  Really, this is how you should think about ALL of your content, too.  Write about the topic, and make it your priority to convey your message well to readers.  If you write about it effectively, you will probably use your keyword enough times. The idea is that instead of worrying so much about one or two keywords, you will be able to to get more visitors who were searching for a variety of things related to your topic, in addition to ranking better for that keyword. Not to mention you will run less of a risk of over-optimizing. If you haven't seen the Blueprint yet, do check it out: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank 
The part about "Dream Your Theme" goes into more detail about the way optimizing for a theme or topic works.  I have also touched on this idea in a few different articles: http://kercommunications.com/tags/topical-optimization/