Given the search engines favor the simplest Web pages, informational pages should be designed to contain only the bare minimum of HTML. Frames should be avoided at all cost, as should tables, though often tables are necessary to match the look and feel of the Web site in question. You can custom tailor the META tags, body copy, and everything else on the informational pages to gain an advantage for individual targeted keywords in any particular search engine. This is your chance to compose body copy that is about a particular topic and expand on that topic in such a way as to create a Web page that contains a good weight for that targeted keyword.

Try to fit other keywords into your sentences, but keep the primary emphasis of the page on a single topic. You will want to add links from that informational page to other pages of your Web site that discuss that topic, keyword, or phrase.

Generally speaking, without targeting a specific search engine, an informational page should include:

1) Between 250 to 1,000 words of legitimate body copy and/or navigational instructions

2) A Title tag that contains at least once occurrence of the targeted keyword or phrase

3) A description META tag that includes at least once occurrence of the targeted keyword or phrase

4) A headline that contains at least one occurrence of the targeted keyword or phrase

5) A keyword in an activated link

An informational page that your Web site hosts internally, or even one that is hosted externally should have links to it from the main Web site. The mistake many make when building informational pages is to make them exist as islands: Nothing links to them. They only link to destination pages. Remember, all of the major search engines now consider link popularity as a component of their ranking algorithm. If a Web site has links to resources but not from other sites, it is unlikely to attain a high ranking on any competitive keyword. If your informational page is devoid of valuable content, nobody will want to link to it. If your informational page is rich with interesting and relevant content, others will establish links to the page and your ranking will rise. Link popularity is as important as tweaking those page variables.

Simply building a Web page containing all the elements listed above is no guarantee that your informational page will be a winner. The page must have very simple HTML and certain keyword concentrations,or weight values, of your different targeted keywords in order to ace the rankings. Informational page evolve over time and respond to the different ranking algorithms at each search engines. A winner today may not rank well in a few months. It may also decline in ranking for a month or two, only to rise again when a particular search engine tweaks its algorithm.