Keywords, Do You Really Know How to Use them for SEO?

Keywords are the SEO juice that fuels your website. In simplest terms, a keyword phrase is that MAGICAL combination of words that an individual types into the little Google search space right before they hit ‘enter.’ These magical words are a vital element in your Google indexing strategy. Why? Well, it’s like this… If you sell the highest powered, best tasting energy drink on the planet but the keywords that you use on your website never match anything that the average person types into a search (such as ‘best energy drink’ or ‘fast working energy drink’) no one will ever find your site. Essentially, all the efforts put in to tweak  your site for top rankings on Search Engines will bring zero results if the targeted keyword phrases are not right.

The key here is to use the most relevant keywords and keyword phrases naturally throughout the different parts of your website, instead of using all the keywords in one article at one time.  Higher relevance is given to certain areas of the HTML documents by various search engines, so you’ve got to spread that keyword mojo all throughout your site.

Choosing the best keywords and keyword phrases is step one for your SEO campaign. It is the most critical step and you’ve got to get it right.

Here are specific instructions that clearly lay out the Best Practices for correctly using your keywords:

1. In the <title> tag – Search results always show the title tag as your page title. Best Practice: Keep the title short (5-10 words). The keyword should appear in the tag/title. Near the beginning of the title is best practice.
2. In anchor text – Best Practice: Use anchor text with keyword focus from external links. Inbound links are like double-shock power…great for the site and for revving up the keyword credibility as well.
3. In headings – Keys: The keywords in the heading (in H1) are important, but only if the page contains actual content relevant to the keyword. Keep the heading precise (5-10 words)
4. Using the keyword as the first word of the heading…Priceless
5. In the URL – Careful, careful…This helps to rank but keyword should be found throughout the article or post or you may be penalized.
6. Proper density – Best Practice: Keep keyword density under 10%. Use 7-8% for targeted keywords and keyword phrases. Not more than 3. Stick to 1-2% for secondary keywords on the page.
7. Grand entrance – Best Practice: The keyword should appear within the first 50 words of the content.
8. In images – Label images with <alt>/<title> tag filled with some keywords. Spiders read these tags.
9. In H2 – H6 headlines….More good ideas
10. In Meta Tags? – Well, okay. Yahoo and Bing use this. Google doesn’t. It won’t hurt anything so go ahead.
11. Proximity – What’s that? It’s the closeness between keywords. Keyword phrases without words in between is best practice, but sometime can’t be placed naturally. Close proximity keywords will still rank.
12. Synonyms: Search engines have algorithms that take synonyms into consideration, so they do rank.

That’s the bottom line of proper and improper use of keywords for search engine optimization. Following these practices will bring qualified traffic to your site, and that’s what you are looking for!

Tagged as: keyword use