Let me speak from Google experience and high page ranking.
Google likes sites with bona fide content. They also like sites that are linked to by other high page ranked sites (HPR). The more sites that link to your site, the better. The more HPR sites that link to your site, even better.
As to layout, the basics apply.
Try to match keywords with content, keywords and content to page URLs and titles. Keywords themselves are nearly worthless, as it’s all about context and worthy content.
EE provides some cool flexibility that is now generating some success-- Templates names and Template Group names.
Traditionally, a page’s URL would look like this in EE:
”http://www.mysite.com/index.php/weblog/comments/this_is_the_title_of_my_entry/”, for a page Title of “This Is The Title Of My Entry.”
By changing the Template’s name and the Template Group name to match a few critical keywords, you could have a page like this:
”http://www.mysite.com/index.php/refinance_mortgage_payments/lower_my_bills/how_to_lower_my_bills/” which is much more attractive to search engines that match keywords, content, URLs, page Titles, etc.
It’s also possible to set up sub domains that add extra keywords to the domain name, too.
Just one more among many things we can do to take up all the rest of the time we don’t have much of these days.
