Let us recap what the much-hyped word Search Engine Optimization (SEO) actually means. According to Wiki, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.
In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users, and these visitors can be converted into customers.
SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.”
Adding keywords to your website helps search engines understand what your website can offer someone searching, and ultimately bring you more qualified traffic.
Without Keywords on your website pages, there is no way for a search engine to categorize your website and show it to the right people searching via search engines. So, you must find accurate keywords for your website or web page and need research on keywords.
Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and research actual search terms that people enter into search engines. The better the keywords, the better rankings you will achieve in search engines. “Keyword Stuffing” is obsolete
In the earlier stages of SEO, search engines were used to rank web pages higher which were filled with “Keywords”. So, people started to fill their websites and/or articles with keywords (also known as “Keyword Stuffing”). This method of ranking is now history.
To cope with this ugly practice, Google introduces two new algorithms in February 2011 and April 2012, named, Panda and Penguin. These two algorithms no longer value Meta Keywords data.
So, if you tend to stuff your webpages with “meta keywords”, please put a period. This does not work. Remove those keywords from each page if you want a better ranking on your website.
Getting the right keywords is not all you should depend on, you need to know how and where to put your keywords for attaining maximum SEO benefits. Let us dive into the discussion.
In the Header Section
1. Title and URL
Search engines will scan various parts of your web page among which the title is one of the most important parts, ’cause it will appear on the search result page that the viewers will see first and decide to browse by title that strikes their mind. You should emphasize to insert your keywords in the title, so make sure that the title tag on each page uses your most important keywords.
They will use the title tag as a primary means of identification and navigation, which is why it needs to be written well enough to please both parties.
So, putting your keywords in the title is your best bet. It will provide SEO and conversion advantages.
URL
After the title tag, most of the searchers glance at the URL of the results. They also value the closest match of the URL along the title. Most Content Management Systems automatically format the title and make SEO-friendly URLs on the fly when articles are saved by the authors of the articles.
Check the screenshot above (Photo 1) and look at the title and URL of the results. Viewers notice the keywords in the URL and will tend to click on the title and navigate to their desired web page. So, URLs can provide you with more conversions and provide you with quality traffic to your website.
2. META description tag
Generally, authors of the website write carefully curated META description from the administration part of the CMS along an article and searchers can see the META description tag that search engines generally show just underneath the URL link. When writing your META description tag, it’s extremely important to be as concise as possible. Google generally picks first few words from your META description, so it’s crucial for your webpage to incorporate your keywords right up front in your description.
In the body text
3. Heading and Sub-heading tag
After landing on a web page, a searcher generally looks at the attractive part of the page, it may be a bold headline, an illustration, a photo, etc., and decide which part of the page to start reading from. Not everyone gets to read the whole page and will merely scan the page through the headline and/or sub-headline, judge the content value and get an idea about the content of the page. Search engines happen to think in the same way. So, putting your keyword on the heading tag with an h2 or h3 tag is important.
4. Body Content
Content is king. The content of your page constitutes most of the part of the page, it’s the backbone of a website’s page. Content is the thing that attracts your searchers most and it makes a once-visitor a regular visitor.
So, pay attention when you plan your page content and put your keywords at an appropriate density. Do not overdo it. Do not make your content look horrible to your readers, rather make it sugar to them.
Otherwise, it can make a bad impression and mostly likely decrease the chance of making a conversion. In SEO lingo, it’s called “bounce”. Bounce rate can affect the ranking of your website.
Keep the keyword density less than 3-5%.
Don’t use the same keywords again and again, it makes your content monotonous. Consider using their synonym or something related.
5. Image Alt Tag and Image Name
The image filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Try to make your filename a good description of the subject matter of the image and make them all lower case. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG. Descriptive filenames can also be useful to users: If search engines are unable to find suitable text in the page on which they found the image, they’ll use the filename as the image’s snippet in their respective search results.
In general, practice, use the web page title as the image’s ALT tag.
6. Internal Links
Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. They are commonly used in the main navigation. These types of links are useful for three reasons:
- They allow users to navigate a website.
- They help establish an information hierarchy for the given website.
- They help spread link juice (ranking power) around websites.
Link juice is a colloquial term in the SEO world that refers to the power or equity passed to a site via links from external or internal sources. This power is interpreted as a vote of recommendation toward your site and is one of the most important factors in determining your site’s search ranking (and PageRank). So, having keywords in the anchor text of internal links helps to maximize SEO advantage.
7. File Names
If your website offers visitors to download, share, or show any file, make sure that the filename contains the keyword you target for that page.
Other recommended places
8. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs offer easier navigation for viewers for your website, they can help people pinpoint where they are on your website, as well as how to get back to steps backward into browser history. Breadcrumbs includes your whole title of the page among other useful information. Most CMSes offer to include breadcrumbs in your website in a few clicks. So, the usage of breadcrumbs is beneficial to SEO reach.
In this discussion, the basics of how to add keywords to a website are discussed. It seems to look daunting at first sight, but planning your keywords and researching them before you start writing your article, this half your work in ahead.
Now you know the basics of including keywords in a website. These tactics are based on best practices and will, hopefully, bring you more traffic to your website, and help qualify your website leads.
Thus, your website will not suffer from a “Bounce rate” and draw more qualified traffic to your website with more change of conversion to business.
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