A primary goal of any ‘rank modification’ is not to flag your site as ‘suspicious’ to Google’s algorithms or their web spam team.

I would recommend you forget about tricks like links in H1 tags etc. or linking to the same page 3 times with different anchor text on one page.

Forget about ‘which is best’ when considering things you shouldn’t be wasting your time with.

Every element on a page is a benefit to you until you spam it.

Put a keyword in every tag and you will flag your site as ‘trying too hard’ if you haven’t got the link trust to cut it – and Google’s algorithms will go to work.

Spamming Google is often counter-productive over the long term.

So:

• Don’t spam your anchor text link titles with the same keyword.
• Don’t spam your ALT Tags or any other tags either.
• Add your keywords intelligently.
• Try and make the site mostly for humans, not just search engines.

On Page SEO is not as simple as a checklist any more of keyword here, keyword there. Optimisers are up against lots of smart folk at the Googleplex – and they purposely make this practice difficult.

For those who need a checklist, this is the sort of one that gets me results;

1. Do keyword research
2. Identify valuable searcher intent opportunities
3. Identify the audience & the reason for your page
4. Write utilitarian copy – be useful. Use related terms in your content. Use plurals. Use words with searcher intent like buy, compare. I like to get a keyword or related term in every paragraph.
5. Use emphasis sparingly to emphasise the important points in the page whether they are your keywords are not
6. Pick an intelligent Page Title with your keyword in it
7. Write an intelligent meta description, repeating it on the page
8. Add an image with user-centric ALT attribute text
9. Link to related pages on your site within the text
10. Link to related pages on other sites
11. Your page should have a simple Google friendly URL
12. Keep it simple
13. Share it and pimp it

You can forget about just about everything else.