Summary: Include your keyword in…
- Your content, using relevant natural language
- The header tags (H1, H2 etc)
- Anchor text
- First 50-100 words of the page
- URL
- Folder name (if possible)
- Alt tags
- Image names
- List items (where appropriate)
- Meta keywords and descriptions
Check our comments on keyword density below, use bold, strong and emphasis tags, and never, ever keyword stuff. Remember, keyword adjustments can help Google know what your site is about, but you should focus on creating relevant, unique and genuinely useful content.
When a user types a query into a search engine, the search engine attempts to match that query with web pages relevant to the user’s search. It looks at a number of factors to determine which pages are relevant, including the content of the web page.
So let’s say you want to rank highly for the term ‘used cars’. You might think the best way is to feature the term ‘used cars’ on the page a few hundred times. Surely then Google will think your site is the ultimate used cars resource?
No. Unfortunately it’s not quite so simple! Google is interested in finding good quality content that really deals with the user’s query. Over time, Google has got very good at sifting out sites that are ‘keyword stuffing’ – using keywords to try and manipulate its results. So how can you use keywords without being penalised for keyword stuffing?
Use relevant language
Google’s own guide to SEO advises that you include words on your page that a user might type in to find your content. So they are asking you to use keywords and these include abbreviations, slang, acronyms etc. They suggest you use Google Keyword Tool to try and identify different variations of keywords on your topic.
The key is to create your content so it is written naturally. So it features the relevant keywords but doesn’t include them so many times that a reader will actually notice them as sounding odd.
You should focus on just one keyword / phrase per page but as stated, look for variations of that keyword / phrase.
Put your keyword / phrase in the H1 tag
Your page should have just one H1 tag and the search engines are going to pay a lot of attention to what goes in there. So make sure your keyword is in there. Many SEO experts believe that the keyword should be the first one of your H1 header.
Try and secure links to your page with the keyword in the anchor text
If people are linking to you (or you’re linking from another site, blog etc) try and get the link text to be your keyword rather than ‘click here’ (read more about anchor text).
Ensure your keyword appears in the first 50-100 words of the page
Put your keyword early on in the page. This isn’t just the text of the page – you need to look at the HTML too – in other words if you have absolutely hundreds of lines of code in your header, it’s going to take a while for the search engine spider to find your content! You need your keyword to appear as early on in the page text as possible, and factor in how much you have in the header.
Put your keyword in your URL
Example: www.yoursite.com/foldername/usedcars.html
You’ll see in Google’s results that Google does actually look at the URL and puts the keyword in bold if it’s in the URL, flagging the match – so it’s likely to be something that Google does pay attention to!
Put your keyword in your folder name
If your site is split up into folders, ensure your keyword is part of the folder name as far as possible. Example: www.yoursite.com/usedcars/usedcars.html
Don’t sacrifice a well organised site for this one though – it’s not as important as other factors.
Use your keyword in other heading tags
Example: H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. Remember, you have one H1 per page. Different experts have ideas about the balance of other header tags on the page. My belief is that you should have one H1, one H2 and the rest are H3 – H6, and they go in order on the page so you don’t put H4 before H3.
Use your keyword in image ALT tags
Example: <img src=”http://www.yourdomain.com/images/used-honda-1986.gif” width=”280″ height=”318″ alt=”Used Honda 1986″ />
Giving images alt tags is good practice anyway but if it’s appropriate, put your keyword in there. Don’t put your keyword in there if your keyword has nothing to do with the image (that’s keyword stuffing!).
Use your keyword in image names
Example: used-honda-1986.gif rather than DSC00001.gif.
Only do this if it’s actually relevant to the image.
Use <b> or <strong> tags around your keyword
Avoid doing this right the way through the page – just use bold or strong where it’s actually appropriate to emphasise your keyword. Some experts recommend you use the <em> emphasis tag too.
Check your keyword density.. but don’t focus on it.
Is keyword density still important? In the 80s and 90s, SEO experts would have told you it was very important. Nowadays it’s not so important, at least as far as Google is concerned. However, if you don’t use your targetted key word or phrase a few times on the page, how will Google know your page is about that particular theme? You need to use relevant language that a search engine user would choose if they were looking for content like yours. Analysing your keyword density is just a guide to whether you’ve done that properly – above all you should focus on providing informative, relevant, good quality and genuinely useful content
There are loads of online tools that will analyse your keyword density, i.e. the percentage in comparison with other words on the page. But always make sure your content is high quality and reads naturally. Google can detect keyword stuffing and it won’t help your SEO. If you create unique, high value content, people will link to this content and that will help your SEO far more than any keyword density adjustments.
Use keywords in list items
E.g. <li> – only do this if it’s actually relevant though. So if your keyword is ‘balloons’ you could legitimately create a list like this:
- Foil balloons
- Helium balloons
- PVC balloons
- Miscellaneous balloons
This looks fine (you wouldn’t have to write balloons on for users to get what the link was about but you should do, for the sake of the keywords).
A list like this would not, however, be right (more like keyword stuffing):
- Used cars – Honda
- Used cars – Vauxhall
- Used cars – Volvos
- Used cars – Peugeots
Use your keyword in the meta description tag
<meta name=”description” content=”Make sure your keyword appears in here – early on if poss” />
Some SEO experts will tell you this isn’t necessary because Google doesn’t pay much attention to descriptions. Is that really true? If you log in to Google’s Webmaster Tools, they advise you if you have many duplicate descriptions and suggest that these are made unique. Other search engines do pay attention to the descriptions. So for this reason, we’d recommend creating a unique, relevant description and including your keyword in there.
Use your keyword in the meta keywords tag
<meta name=”keywords” content=”include your keyword here” />
Most experts agree this isn’t really important but remember, Google may ignore keywords but other search engines may look at them. There’s certainly no harm in putting your keyword first in the keyword list.
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