IMPORTANT - A search engine optimizer should remember:'Spiders' Love POT's. Search engine spiders love to see pots ( plain old text ). They can't see graphics, banners, animations, content in flash movies or applets. So all the nice visuals in a layout provided to a human visitor, are of no interest to the 'spider' and have little value for the search engine optimizer. In fact this type of web page layout frequently acts as a barrier to getting a good ranking. A web page layout must therefore be designed from two viewpoints, first what the 'spiders' want to see and secondly what the human visitor wants to see. Most web pages are designed for the human viewer not for SE spiders. It's the wrong way around !
If your web layout focuses on the human viewer first and the 'spiders' second or not at all, the chances are that your new web page layout will never be seen by more than a few humans. It's highly likely that your web page layout will never rank high enough with most engine's for a human to find. Since as a search engine optimizer you want your web page layout to rank well, your priority is: Firstly, a web page layout for search engine visitors
Secondly, a web page layout for human visitors The priority is ........... I hope by now you can fill in the blanks ;-)
As I'm a software guru who likes to use software to make my life easier (and yours), I'll tell you a little later something about the software I use to do optimization. I mention it here so you'll know tools are available to help in the process so it doesn't sound like too much work. Whilst the software does some of the work, like evaluating your web page layout to show possible improvements, it's still a good idea to know how to design a web page layout yourself. You still need to decide whether to make changes the software suggests. To do that it's a good idea to understand a little about what it's advising and why. Sometimes the software will suggest changes to the web page layout that would not be right for your site. The software doesn't have the complete overview, it's just looking at one web page layout, not your whole site.
Before starting on each web page layout, complete your web site layout plan and do keyword phrase research covered under the keyword sections on this site. From this planning & research you'll have different keyword phrases on each web page layout, or group of pages. You may even have a title and a draft description of what the web page will be about. If so, that's all the better. Next: Web page layout for the search engine visitor | 
