Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a crucial role in increasing the visibility of a website. A vital part of SEO is the process of using keywords. Keywords are a set of words or phrases that describe the content of the website. As keywords have the potential to drive organic traffic to a website, the use of keywords in different blog articles or website content is a repeatable process. A well-optimised site helps businesses to improve visitor quality, get higher conversion rates and turn visitors into potential customers.
While SEO helps in optimising the web pages for better rankings on various search engine results pages (SERPs), keywords and phrases help in describing the website content. Apart from using appropriate and highly relevant keywords in content, it is also necessary to place it strategically on the website. Strategic placement of keywords helps in improving the visitor quality and increases the conversion rate of a website. However, overuse of keywords in content can make it less informative and the website less efficient. Thus, it is essential to use the right amount of relevant keywords on a website. Below is a practical guide of the best places where you can place your keywords to boost the website SEO.
- Content
One of the most common places for keywords placement is the content body of a webpage. Content is the top SEO ranking factor and helps in deciding the fate of a webpage. If the content is informative, engaging and innovative, it will be liked by the audience and they will keep coming back to the website in search of more information. On the other hand, a duplicate and dull content stuffed with repetitive and irrelevant keywords fail in attracting authentic viewers. Thus, while creating content it is important to avoid stuffing it with innumerable keywords and phrases. To maintain the readability of your content ensure that you place your keywords strategically. It should match the flow of information and must not appear as an unsolicited phrase. Once you have placed your main keyword in the first paragraph of your content, you can further use multiple keyword variations throughout the content. As per its regulations, Google keeps a close watch at a webpage and its text. This helps Google to determine the theme of the webpage and direct users towards your website.
- Page Title
While content is the most common spot to place one or more keywords and key phrases, the page title is the most influential spots keyword placement. A page title is an HTML element and describes the core subject of a page. It shows up in the first line of search results as well as the top bar of the browser. Both Google and users pay a lot of attention towards the page title. Thus, placing a targeted keyword in the page title will greatly help a webpage in getting noticed and will improve the click-through rate. The acceptable range of page title is 100 characters, including punctuation and spacing. But only 65 will be displayed in Google search results especially in mobile SERPs. Hence, while placing a keyword or phrase in the page title, care must be taken that it is placed at the starting of the page title and not towards its end.
- Meta Description
After the page title, the meta description is another significant spot to place a keyword. A meta description is also known as a page description and appears below the URL in the second line of the search result. A meta description is placed below the page title and helps the audience in deciding whether they should click through a search result and access the website to view the full content. Thus, it is a significant place to place the relevant keywords using which the audience can exactly find the kind of content they were searching for. While a meta description is not a direct ranking factor for search engines, it can greatly help the audience in determining the relevance of content with their search queries. As the audience pay a lot of attention towards the meta description before accessing a webpage, content creators must ensure that it consists of an informative and attractive marketing message with targeted keywords.
- Subheadings
Placing keywords in subheadings is important as it will encourage visitors to stay on the page and access the entire content. When visitors see relevant keywords in the subheadings, they believe that the content is in-line with their search queries. Moreover, subheadings make content more readable and give readers’ eyes a place to pause while going through lengthy content. Nowadays, with the help of structured data, you can also make your subheading appear as an answer box or a featured snippet below the meta description on the SERP. This will give the audience a brief idea of the entire content and will increase the click-through rate of a website.
- Images
Many digital marketers consider images as the last option for keywords placement. However, not adding a keyword to your images can negatively affect your website’s SEO strategy. As images are also indexed on a search engine, it helps people in finding content relevant to their search. Before adding an image to your content, ensure that the image is not protected by copyright and is appropriate for your content. For adding keywords in images you can add it either to its alt tag or the file name. An alt tag describes the image and tells search engine crawlers about the contents of the image. For example, the alt tag of an image consisting of an LED television will be ‘LED television’. This makes it easier for the image to be found by the viewers and improves accessibility for people using screen readers or with poor vision. Whereas the file name is the actual name of the image and consists of the keyword phrase followed by the image extension. A file name appears as ‘LED television.jpg’. You can give the image a file name that is relevant to your product or content.