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If you have testimonials for your product, include ones that contain your keywords near top of your page. Obviously you shouldn't re-write a testimonial but if you have a couple that do actually contain your keywords, make them prominent. Prominent, from a search engine perspective, is as high up your page as possible.
Bold Text: Things such as bold text and use of italics can have some effect on how well search engines rank your page. It won't have a huge effect but in this situation we are trying to optimize everything that we can. Sales letters are often filled with bold text, italics, different colors and so on. It's important that you make important points stand out on your page.
Now, you can make important points stand out for search engines also. Try to be sparing with your use of bold text and try, where possible, to only use it to highlight points that include your keywords. As I said, only do this where possible - don't go through changing your whole sales letter.
These are just a few little things that you can do to optimize your sales letter. Don't forget to also get links pointing to your sales letter and, where possible, use keywords in anchor text. For example, my book is called Rankings Revealed but I try to get links to my sales page to say "Search Engine Rankings Revealed".
Don't Optimize Your Letter
As I said earlier, this is approach that I prefer. I don't optimize sales letters at all. I use other pages to try to draw traffic from search engines. These pages establish my credentials and I then forward them to sales letter.
You should compile a list of relevant keywords and phrases and then write some informative articles that focus on each of these. Now, articles offer a much easier way to get your keywords into important places - headline, first few paragraphs and so on. Optimize these articles as much as possible using Title tags, Headings, Bold text and so on.
Add these to your site and link to them from wherever you can. Make sure that link text uses keywords.
Each article should have a few prominent links to sales letter for your product. These could be in actual text of article or you could just provide a link from end of article.
You can also add these articles to all of article directories online. The benefits of this are twofold. The article itself can draw search engine traffic - even if it is on another site. Then, people follow link to your sales letter. Also, this link to sales letter will increase it's link popularity.
Please Note: If you are going to submit article to other sites, you shouldn't really have links to your sales letter in body of article. Just link to it from your bio box at bottom.
You should never compromise quality of your sales letter in order to get traffic from search engines. Obviously traffic from search engines is very important - largely because you don't need to pay anyone a commission to get a sale. However, if you look for other ways to get good rankings you'll find options are there. This may not be a direct approach but it will work.
There you have a couple of ways to get traffic from search engines to your sales page. Again, second option works much better for me because it allows a much greater degree of flexibility and allows me to target a much wider range of keywords. This approach may not work for you and you may find that you can optimize your sales letter page without harming your conversion rate.
Do some testing and you'll soon find which is more suitable for your situation.
Sean Burns has over six years experience in setting up, maintaining and profiting from websites from the comfort of his home. Sean is also the author of Rankings Revealed which shows you how easy it is to achieve top 10 rankings on the major search engines - http://www.webmastersreference.com/.