Where Do I Put My SEO Keywords?
Keywords are at the foundation of any SEO campaign. People search using keywords and the purpose of SEO is to ensure that your website matches these search queries in order to generate organic search engine traffic from target audience members. To determine how target audience members are searching, the first step of an SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research. Once you have determined which keywords to target, the next step is to incorporate them into your website content. So, what exactly does that mean? Where do your keywords go? Here is a guide to the most prominent places you’ll need to naturally incorporate your keywords for SEO gains:
Title tags
The title tag is arguably the most important SEO element on each page of your website which is why it’s critically important to include keywords, preferably at the beginning of the page title. Not only do the search engines pay attention to the title tag for ranking purposes, but it’s also the first thing that searchers see on the SERP and it can influence click through rate. The search engines only show a certain amount of text in the title tag, which is why it’s best practice to keep it under 55 characters (including spaces). If you go over that character limit the dreaded “…” might cut off the end of the title tag, which isn’t very attractive or professional and can result in lost clicks.
Description
The meta description doesn’t hold direct SEO value but it can encourage click throughs which indirectly impacts rank (the search engines pay attention to which sites are generating the most clicks from their results pages and favor them accordingly). Think of the description as the sales pitch for the page. Use language that includes keywords and encourages the click. Search terms included in the description will be bolded search results, telling the searcher that the page is relevant to their needs. The character limit for the description is 150 characters.
Headings
Heading tags not only separate content into sections, making the page more reader-friendly, they also carry more weight than other text on the page for SEO purposes. Include keywords in H tags as it makes sense to do so.
The rest of the on-page content
Website owners should always be reading through their content with an “SEO eye” – on the lookout for any spot to incorporate a targeted keyword naturally. For example, if you’re mentioning “our clients” add a keyword to make it “our [service offered] clients.” This gets the keyword in there for SEO purposes but doesn’t disrupt the flow of the content. Don’t worry about keyword density, that’s a thing of the past. Instead, look for natural opportunities.
URLs
It’s important to have clean URLs not only for SEO purposes, but also to contribute to a positive user experience. URLs of interior pages shouldn’t be messy and they should include keyword terms that are related to the content on the page. For example, if a company sells accounting software, its main accounting software page should be “domain.com/accounting-software”
At the onset of an SEO campaign you’ll want to go through the entire existing site to make these SEO changes, but don’t forget – SEO is ongoing. You’ll want to incorporate these steps for every new page of content you create too.
Categorized in: SEO
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