Keyword Placement – Where do I put my keywords

Yesterday was the first day I actually taught a section in our SEO Training Class. Usually I’m just the teachers assistant.  The section I covered was about keyword placement.  Since it’s all fresh in my mind I figured I would share it with you too.  Lets take a look at where the keywords go on your web pages and even your blog for that matter.

• Title Tag – You should know that if your keyword isn’t in your title tag than you will have a hard time ranking for it.  Your keyword should be at the front of the title tag since the SERP’s (search engine results page)  are only going to show 65 characters.  You should feature your keyword and then a clicking trigger which is your feature and benefit.
• Description tag – Again, your keyword needs to be close to the front of the tag.  Only 165 characters show in the SERP’s.  Don’t stuff a whole bunch of keywords in either the description or title tag.  Give a compelling description that describes the content on the page. Give them a reason to want to read more.  You can feature your UPS’s here (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Keyword Meta tag – Even though Google has lowered the importance of this tag due to abuse it’s still an important element you don’t want to skip.  Only use 10 to 15 keywords in this meta tag and make sure they are focused on the content of that page.
• H1 tag – You should only have one H1 tag per page. It’s the most important content on the page.  The heading or H1 tag should be like a news paper headline. It should make your visitor want to read more.  Oh yea, make sure your keyword is in it.
• Link Text – Make sure your keywords are in your link text within your content.  If your linking from one page to another within your site or blog use your keyphrase to do it.  The link text within your content has more relevance to the search engine spiders.  Inner linking your pages can dramatically raise your rankings so make sure your doing it.  Use the Automatic SEO links plugin if you have a wordpress blog.
• Content - Be sure and lightly sprinkle the keywords through out the text content of your pages.  Your keyword presence on page should be no more than 2 -4% of the content.  Anything more could be considered spammy and keyword stuffing.  Let me just say that there is a delicate balance of writing for the search engines and writing for the human reader.  It’s probably a good idea to have it make sense from the human standpoint.  As far as I know there has never been a case where a search engine bought something from someone online.
• Navigation – Be sure to use your keywords in your text navigation. If you have a flash or Java Script navigation add a text navigation at the bottom of your pages with your keywords in them
• Call to Action – Each of your pages should have a Call To Action or something that tells the viewer what to do next.  A strong call to action above and below the fold that links to a contact or order page will help your pages convert better.  Making sure your keywords are in the call to action makes it that much better.

Of course there is a lot more to keyword placement and on site optimization as a whole.  Stay tuned for more great SEO tips to help you build a successful foundation for your website.