An Experiment in Optimizing Web Pages for Search Engines (Not Optimized)

Does it really make a difference whether or not you optimize your web pages for search engines? Do you really need to bother with finding good keywords, filling in your meta tags, or creating human-readable URLs?

It's easy to do a simple experiment to see if a little optimization helps bring people to your web site. In fact, let's do that experiment right here, right now!

This web page comes in two flavours, one that has been optimized for search engines and one that has not.

You are currently reading the optimized version.  To find the other version, use a search engine! Read more about search engine optimization.

How I optimized my web page

For the page that has been optimized, I have made the changes noted below. (Not all the changes are visible, you may need to inspect the page source to see them all.)

1. The page URL has been made human-readable.
2. Description and Keywords meta tags have been added to the page.
3. The image has a human-readable filename.
4. The image has an Alt tag containing relevant keywords.
5. Some of the main keywords in the text have been rendered in bold.
6. The subtitle has been made into a proper level 2 heading.
7. Some extra keyword combinations have been added into the text.
8. Users are allowed to add comments to the optimized page.

Well, did this web page optimization pay dividends? The following table shows the total number of times the two different pages have been read in total: