How to Add Keywords to Website
With 76% of the U.S. shopping online, it has never been a better time to build traffic to your site. Are you stuck, and not sure how to increase traffic?
Do you wish there was a guide to follow on SEO for your marketing strategy?
In this article, you'll discover a complete guide on where to use keywords for SEO. Not sure what SEO is or how to use it? Read on to discover where to place keywords and why they're so vital to increasing traffic!
What Is SEO?
If you're scratching your head wondering what SEO is, we'll break it down for you! SEO means search engine optimization. This is a way of getting organic (FREE) traffic to your site. That means the keyword research we use will impact the traffic we receive.
Think about it. If you sell baseball caps, are you going to use the term ballerina slippers on your site? The different terms people search for are known as keywords. If someone types in "baseball caps near me" in a search engine, and you have that keyword on your site, they can wind up on your page.
Our goal for SEO is to get your web site ranking high in search engines. The more eyes that view your page, the more likely you are to have sales. When using our content marketing strategy, we ensure that websites will be at the top of the list.
Google has more than 63,000 searches per second, so it's vital your site stands out from others! And, according to research, organic SEO is 5.66 times more successful than search ads!
How Search Engines Work
Search engines rank, index, and crawl. Crawling is where they're all over the internet searching for content. They'll take a look at the content for each URL.
Crawling is done by robots to find updated and new content online. It can be a PDF, video, image, webpage, etc.
They'll start out with a couple of web pages, and then take the links on those pages to new URLs. That's when they're able to add new content to their index.
They'll then organize and store the content they find. When a page is within the index, that's when it'll be displayed in results.
Then, your content will be ranked. It'll be decided which content best suits what a specific person is searching for. The person will receive search results from the most relevant material (1st page) to least (last page).
Search Engine Index
A search engine index is where information is stored and processed. It's a database for all of the content crawlers find, and then send out to people searching.
Search Engine Ranking
Once a search is performed, search engines will then search the index for content that's relevant to that person's needs. It's what's called ranking. When something is on page 1, it's deemed more relevant than something on page 10.
Can Crawlers Find All of My Content?
Any content that's behind login forms, crawlers can't get to. You shouldn't use videos, images, etc. to display text that you hope crawlers will find. Crawlers are better at recognizing images, but still have a ways to go.
Don't expect a crawler to use a search form to find any hidden content.
Crawlers use links to jump from page to page. If you have content that's not linked to another page, it's not going to be found. We'll go into the importance of link building later.
Avoid:
Not linking to the primary page on your site
Showing different content depending on the visitor
Navigation that's not in the HTML
Mobile navigation that's different than your desktop
Do have what's called a sitemap. A sitemap is a list of URLs on a site that they'll use to find and index your content.
How Do You Find Keywords for SEO?
Any good marketer will tell you that SEO needs to be updated over time since the algorithms are constantly changing! We understand that to stand out from the competition you'll need targeted keywords that are being searched, but aren't too competitive.
Periodically, you should be checking your keywords, and making sure they're up to date. Having an effective marketing plan will lead more visitors to your page. Along with your keywords, you should be providing great content as well. Do you stay on a site that doesn't have attention-grabbing content?
Most only read the headline, so you'll want to make sure your headline and content are both attractive to visitors.
Keyword Research
When doing lead generation strategies, you'll want to first begin keyword research. You'll want your content to focus on different keywords. Try to avoid using the same keyword multiple times. That's called keyword stuffing when you use too many keywords closely, and too often.
Next, think about your potential buyers. What will they be searching for online? Remember the baseball cap example? Think about different terms they'll be plugging into search engines, and try to find related terms.
Go to the bottom of the page results on your search engine. This will show you what else people are searching for online.
A great way to search for keywords is to use Google Ads. There are other keyword research tools you can use as well.
Where to Use Keywords for SEO?
You'll want to place keywords in plenty of places such as your meta tags, meta description, images, anchor text, content, URL, and title. Also, have keywords in your headers and subheaders as well! Headers are vital to breaking up the content someone is reading. It also makes it more easily digestible.
What Is On-Page vs Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO is what other sites are saying about a site. On-page SEO is what a site is saying to a search engine.
On-page SEO is when you optimize single webpages so they rank higher in search engines.
Off-page SEO is an external ranking, such as links.
Tips to Rank Better
When marketing for small businesses, it's vital you stand out from the crowd. If you're a plumber, you need to think of how many plumbers there are around the world, not just by you. To stand out, you can use what's called location-based keywords (if you're a local company).
If you're a plumber in Las Vegas, you don't want someone in Maryland searching for you. An example of a keyword might be plumbers in Las Vegas.
Checking Your Keyword Ranking
Once you have your keyword ranking, it's time to do a check on your keywords.
You'll first want to export your pages into a spreadsheet. Whether you use Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel is up to you. Next, choose the most visited pages.
Choose a category for each page. Have that category as a column. You can then add more columns for specific keywords. Just make sure that the keyword is relevant to the page you assign it to.
The Current Digital Marketing Strategy
Current marketing strategies are about making sure your content is strong and the title tags are correct. You never want your work to be plagiarized, and instead, have original content. Also, ensure it's grammatically correct as well.
You'll also want to have plenty of inbound links.
What Is an Inbound Link?
You might be wondering, what is an inbound link? An inbound link is where someone comes from another site to your site. Internal links are linking to something on your site whether it's a contact us, blog post, services, etc.
Outbound links are where someone goes to another site from your site. All of these links are important to your SEO-optimization.
Why Have an Inbound Link?
When you receive more inbound links, you'll be likely to rank highly in search engines. Inbound links show that your site is knowledgable on a certain subject.
It's important to have high-quality inbound links since they're all not treated the same.
Diving Deeper Into Keyword Placement
We covered where to place keywords on your site, but now we want to dive further into it. One place you'll want to have a keyword is in your page titles.
Page Titles
Your page title is the main subject of a page and is what appears in search engines. Your title can be the same as a headline on a blog post. It could also be the name of your services page.
It's best practice to use your keyword at the start of your page title. This will also help it to show up on mobile pages as well.
Subheadings
We also like to put keywords in subheadings as well. Subheadings are great to make your page more readable. If a potential buyer is looking for a specific section, they can easily scan the article for that heading.
Meta Descriptions
You'll also want a keyword in your meta descriptions. This is the second part you'll see in search results. This will help search engines decide how important your content is to people searching.
Your description can also help people decide whether it's what they're looking for. Always make sure that the keywords you use are relevant to your subject matter.
Content
Next up is your content. If you don't use keywords in your content (even though it's everywhere else) that can hurt your results. Avoid putting keywords in every other sentence.
If Google feels you're keyword stuffing, you can be penalized for it.
URLs
A great URL will be short and sweet. In the URL, you can have the keyword as well. For example, on our page we have brainito.com/free-marketing-strategy. We made it short and clear so people understand what exactly this page is bringing them to.
Be sure to not have more than 2 keywords in your URL.
Images
You can also place keywords in your image's title tags and alt text. The alt text of an image will tell a search engine what your image is about. Image title tags are found when a user places their mouse over an element. It won't be shown if an image isn't displayed.
For example: Say you have an image of kittens laying on a blanket. The worst is, of course, no keyword. A better keyword would be kittens, but the best keyword would be kittens-laying-on-a-blanket.
Avoid long keywords such as kittens-cats-calico-moo-tabby-laying-on-a-pink-and-green-blanket.
What About Social Media?
Keywords are important everywhere, not just your website. Use them on your social media pages as well! While many might downplay the role of social media, especially Facebook, they're still extremely valuable. In 2018, 7 in 10 adults say they use Facebook.
While Facebook is king, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat are catching up. Instagram has 67% of 18-29-year-olds, and Snapchat has 62%.
Once you have your audience in mind, then you can decide which platform is best for your business. Facebook has 68% of people 50-64-years-old using it, and almost half of the people 65 and older.
Place your keywords in any social media updates you make. You can also use keywords as hashtags to attract viewers to your post. When using them as hashtags, you also don't want to do keyword stuffing. You also want to make sure that they match the subject matter.
Avoiding Penalties
When doing keyword research and optimization, there are certain things you want to avoid doing so you're not penalized. As mentioned, you never want to keyword stuff. You also don't want to hide keywords.
Avoid Hiding
Avoid using the same color background for your text. Don't hide them in your CSS, or behind images.
No Forced Keywords
You also don't want to force keywords that just don't work. While SEO keywords could do well, if it'll make your content grammatically incorrect, it's best to avoid it. You also want to make sure that the keyword goes with the topic at hand. Remember, quality not quantity when it comes to keyword research.
Exploring Where to Use Keywords for SEO
After reading this article, you should have a better idea of where to use keywords for SEO.
Are you wanting to build more traffic but are feeling a bit overwhelmed? Or maybe just don't have the time to invest right now? Contact us today and we can get you started on the right foot. We'll help you build a marketing strategy that's specific to you and your needs!
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