We all know that including keywords in your blogs, articles and webpages can help to boost your SEO.

But, just where do they go?

Should they be in every second sentence? Should you list them five times at the end of the piece? Or maybe you should jam them in as many places as possible?

Well, the answers to those questions are no, no and no!

You should use your keywords in places where they naturally fit. Don’t stuff them in at every opportunity you can find as that can be considered keyword stuffing. And stuffing can actually hurt your rankings!

In saying that, there are some specific places that search engines will look for your keyword terms to work out what a piece is about. They are:

 

Where Should I Put My Keywords?

Google (and other search engines) are all about delivering great results for their users. That means, when someone types something into a search, Google will want to return the best possible matches.

For this reason, they have very sophisticated algorithms that crawl the wide world of the web on a regular basis. The purpose of these algorithms is to find out what each piece of web content is all about.

Search engines work quickly to generate results for their users, so they look in certain places for terms that will tell them what each piece is about. If you can make sure your Keywords are in those specific places, then it gives your content a better chance of showing up in the search results.

Here are the places that you should put your Keywords:

Page Title

Not only does your title tell your readers what to expect from your content, but it is also one of the places a search engine will look for keywords.

Your keyword should ideally appear in the title for the page.

SEO Title

Your SEO Title is the one that appears as a blue clickable link in Google searches. Again, it tells the reader what your piece is going to be about, and is also another place that search engines look for keywords.

URL

The URL for each page is another key area that your keyword should appear. The URL is the web address for each individual article or webpage on your website. You can change the wording for URL in the backend of your website.

When creating the URL, include your keyword, but also remove what are considered ‘stop words’. These are words like a, and, the, to, this… words that add no meaning to a phrase. After all, no one is going to be typing stop words into a search bar as a standalone term!

Meta Description

The meta description is the couple of lines of text that appear under the clickable blue link in Google search results. It should expand on the idea of the page title and indicate what people might learn if they click through to the piece. An obvious place to include your keyword.

Body Content

Your keywords should be woven throughout the main body of text in your article. Try to include it in the first paragraph to give people an instant indication of what the piece is about. Then, in various places throughout the rest of the body content.

There is no rule of thumb when it comes to how many times a keyword should appear in a piece. Just try to work it in naturally a handful of times.

Alt Tag

Search engines cannot see images. They don’t know if it’s a picture of a cute puppy or a blanket attached to your piece. But, they can read the alt tag of an image. 

In the backend of your website, there will be a field related to each image where you can add an alt tag. If you put your keyword in there, search engines will be able to ‘read’ your image and throw it up in relevant search results.  

Image Name

Instead of loading up IMG_597863196, it makes more sense to load an image that is named after your keyword. It makes it easier for you to find the image in your cloud storage later down the track, and it is another place to get your keyword in front of the algorithms.

 

Things To Remember

While Keywords are an important part of your On-Page SEO strategy, they need to make sense. They need to be related to the topic that you are actually writing about. There is no point optimising a piece for the keyword ‘oranges’ if it is actually about apples.

You also need to make sure that your keywords fit naturally into a sentence. Write your content for people first, then for search engines secondly. Google is all about quality, so they won’t show your blogs or webpages anywhere if they aren’t full of great value for your readers. 

 

Loved these tips and want to receive more blogging help directly to your inbox? Then, enter your details below and sign up to my weekly newsletter.