Adding Keywords to Your Website

In order to rank for your chosen keywords on Google (and similar search engines) you have to demonstrate what each page of your site is about. By integrating the primary keyword for each page in the correct way, the Google “Bots” or “crawlers” will be able to understand each page correctly and index them for the relevant keyword.

You will ONLY rank highly for that keyword, if you integrate that keyword in a number of places.

(Note; keyword is the same as key phrase, regardless on whether it contains 1 or more words)

There are 7 places you need to add your keywords:-

• Page Title
• Meta Description
• Headings & Sub Headings
• Content
• Image Alt Tags
• URLs
• Link Anchor Text

(this guide will take you through a each one, step by step)

You will be told my many experts on SEO about all the latest trends regarding how to “boost” your rankings on search engines. There are indeed a lot of advanced techniques and new “tricks” to give you the edge over your competitors. BUT within the tourism industry, we have found that MANY businesses have little to no understanding of the basic practices of SEO… and even fewer have implemented them.

Without having 1 keyword in the 6 places this document describes, it will be nigh on impossible to rank for any relevant terms.

If you NOT doing these basics…
the other techniques will NOT be effective!

A page title describes the main subject of your page and shows up as the first line of a search results entry. It lets both Google and searchers know exactly what the page is about.

At the back end of your website or in your Content Management System (CMS) you’ll be able to see where to enter your page title. Simply add in your exact keyword there. The best practice when writing page titles is to use your target SEO keyword or at the start of the page title. This ensures that it’s seen by Google as the most relevant part. Also, more practically, your page title won’t get cut off in mobile SERPs, which can happen on small screens.

You can use SEO software like Yoast SEO to tweak the SEO title to improve search ranking potential.

The next important area for the use of keywords for SEO is the meta description. This is the second part of a search result on Google.

It’s important that you use the exact keyword once as well as a slight variation of it somewhere in a short paragraph, no more than 155 characters in total.

Be sure to use it as close to the beginning of your first sentence as possible so again google reads it as being important.

If you have left the “Meta Description” box on your CMS blank, Google will simply pull a sentence of text from that page. Usually the first line of content. This is not ideal as it may not be relevant/ logical and almost certainly won’t include your exact keyword.

As well as being relevant to SEO, the meta description also helps searchers to decide whether to click through from a search result to see the full content on your website.

That’s why it’s so important to use the right keywords here, meaning relevant to the content that searchers will find when they click through (thereby minimizing “bounce” or them leaving the site immediately).

Headings are a lot like billboards for search engines. They are one of the best ways to show them what your main subject is for that page and whether it is a relevant match to the keywords being searched.

It is important that you include your exact keyword, letter for letter in your main heading on that page. In your CMS this may be referred to as H1.

Subheadings, called H2 (H3, H4 etc) help make your content scannable by the human reader, giving their eyes somewhere to pause while reading the page. As we know that Google is increasingly favouring the “readability and usability” of a page, if you don’t use your keyword in the sub-header then you’ll be missing out.

Subheadings may help visitors decide about the relevance of content to their needs. They may also appear as part of a featured snippet or answer box.

BUT so as to not make the reading too clunky, only use your keywords in a couple of your subheadings and vary them from the exact phrasing.

One of the most important places to optimize your use of SEO keywords in is in your content text in the main body of each page, as content is one of the top SEO ranking factors.

When writing the text content for your website page, you should try to include your exact keyword and a few variations of your keyword a number of times.

Remember that it has to be read in a natural way and search engines will actually penalise you if your writing seems unnatural or if you are stuffing to many keywords in to the text. What I usually do is write naturally for the reader at first ignoring the keyword…. And then reverse engineer the keyword into the text afterwards. Otherwise it can seem a little forced.

So our advice would be firstly to use your exact keyword in the first sentence of your content, or at least within the first couple of sentences.

Then, use the exact keyword and variations of it, throughout the content 3 or 4 times, depending on the length of the text.

While it important to include the exact phrase and a variation early on in the text, the essential thing is to write for humans first, making sure that content is readable and understandable.

Images not only make your web pages attractive, they also help Google to rank you because images are indexed as well. BUT they can only be indexed only if you tell Google what the images are of… by adding Alt tags.

This is the label that you assign to each image so that search engines can read it. If you don’t use Alt tags, then search engines will simply not see them.

So again in your CMS system you’ll see where to add Alt Tags/ Picture Tags.

The recommendation is to label it the exact keyword for that page. They appear on the page as the white text box when you hover your mouse over an image.

Also it is recommended to change the name of the actual filename you’ve saved it as on your computer to that keyword… every little helps!

URL stands for “Uniform Resource Locator” and the addresses for individual pages on the web. Like title tags and meta descriptions, search engines display URLs on the google search results, so the way you name and format your URL can impact both your ranking and your click-through rates.

The best URLs give human searchers and Google a clue about what’s on the page, so you want to make them descriptive. And that means using your exact SEO keyword in the URL as well.

The following suggested structure is a useful guide to creating your URLs:

The best practice is to keep URLs short, and include no more than one or two keywords in a way that makes the URL make sense to people who are visiting.

As before, avoid keyword stuffing (including too much keyword repetition), as in the example below from Moz.

Instead, a simple structure with 1 clear keyword is perfect:

Links are one of the top three SEO ranking factors, so you absolutely have to optimize these for SEO.

Link Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink, often blue and underlined… and is one of the top 3 ranking factors for SEO at the moment for Google. The advice is to use the keyword of the page you are linking TO (to from) but he golden rule is; vary your anchor text.

If you use the same anchor text for every internal link (links within your own website, between pages) or inbound link (links from other external websites to your site), that’s a red flag for Google, and it might get you penalised. Instead, use a variations of your keywords in your anchor text.

And that’s it!

Now you know the basics of how to add keywords to a website! We know it can look daunting, but once you work your way through these recommendations systematically, you’ll find it’s not quite as scary as it seems!

These tactics can bring you more traffic to your website, and help qualify your website leads. That means no wasted visits and ideally more customers for your business.

The following page show’s an example of a “Perfectly” optimized web page, as advised by Moz.

Source:

https://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization