That is, where on your site should keywords be placed in order to optimize your results? Considering that Google’s essential goal is to find the best site to suit a specific keyword, you’ll want to put your keywords in a place that suggests your site is what searchers are looking for.
Where Not to Put Your Keywords
Yes, it’s bad news if you’re already putting your keywords in the following places, but you can’t start optimizing your site if you’re not willing to make a few changes. Here’s where to avoid putting keywords:- The keyword meta tag: it’s really been dead for a while now, and it’s likely you’ve also noticed that stuffing more keywords into the tag doesn’t enhance your results. It really enhances nothing.
- Everywhere: You want to be strategic about this; search engines in 2012 are smarter than “oh, this site has a lot of one keyword? It must be so relevant to that keyword!” So don’t put your keyword everywhere, either.
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So where should your keywords go? Let’s try these five spots:
1. Title Tag.
It’s the Internet’s window into your site, so use it well. Keep the characters in the title tag to about 60-70 maximum, and focus on one specific keyword whilst also making the title tag interesting. You want people to click through when they find you in the search results, after all.2. URL.
How can you forget the URL? Don’t load it up with a thousand keywords, but do keep them tight, simple, and focused – a URL with a keyword in it still demonstrates relevance to the most popular search engines because it shows what your individual site is really all about. |
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3. H1 tag.
Header tags suggest that the main ideas present in your content are really about the keywords they contain. In other words, if you have a heading about “sail boats,” there’s a chance that your site is about sail boats. That’s the logic search engines use, which is why you should use it, too.4. Body text.
This one’s a little trickier. You don’t want to stuff the body text with keywords, but you also want to make it clear that your site is about a specific topic. So aim for about 2-3 keywords in the body text as a general rule of thumb; you may want to increase this for larger pages.5. Image names and Alt Attributes.
You’d be surprised at what kind of traffic you can receive from image searches, so don’t forget to optimize them with proper image file names and alt attributes; you’ll instantly have an SEO marketing edge over the competition who would just as soon upload their file as IMG-001.jpg rather than sailboat.jpg. Be better than that and make optimizing your image names and alt attributes a regular habit.
Carrie ThompsonAbout the Guest Author:
Carrie Thompson is an SEO expert who enjoys giving tips to newcomers and writing articles that share some of her knowledge.