There’s more to SEO than simply choosing the right keywords. Yes, keywords will help search engines such as Google, Bing and others direct searchers to your website, and position you higher in the search rankings; but that’s not all there is to it. In fact, some websites which seems to use all the right keywords still don’t feature high in the search rankings. The answers can lie elsewhere.
We have stressed many times before to not overuse a keyword. Why? Well, it may prevent the piece from flowing well and you could be accused of ‘Keyword Stuffing’ and in result you will be sent to Google prison. Okay, not quite prison but you will be penalised. In order to create a great piece of content concentrate on the quality of the piece – Will people leave the page with that extra bit of knowledge? Will people want to share it? That sort of thing. How do you create a piece without many keywords? Simply the placement. Where you put your keyword can make it easier and more prominent for a search engine to read your page and rank it.
So, where are these places?
Title Tag
This is the bit of text that shows up in search engines and on open tabs. This is a really good place to insert a keyword because it tells search engines and people what your site is about. This can also be a deciding factor on whether a person will click through to your website, so it is important to ensure you write title tags for humans but format them for search engines too.
What to do:
- Put your most important keyword at the start of the title tag
- Ensure that each title tag is different to avoid duplicated content filters
- Title tag should be 6 – 7 words long. Choose words that correspond with the content on the page but not overloaded with words that don’t make sense. Try not to use full sentence with connectives such as ‘and’ ‘or’ because this dilutes the important words.
Meta Tag
This tool is mostly for search engines to read what is on the article/page. This is why it should definitely contain 1 or 2 of the pages targeted keywords. This is why, Meta tags often do not make sense because they are filled with keywords. Meta tags are found in the HTML code between the open and closing head tags.
Meta Descriptions
This is the piece of text that is show when you search for something. They are usually 135 – 160 characters long, however recently Google has been testing longer Meta descriptions (you can read all about it here). This is just a short summary of the page it links to. Including keywords makes it easier for the search engine and the customer to understand what your page is regarding. Make sure you don’t duplicate the Meta descriptions as you can be penalised by Google.
URL
If your website’s URL is readable, descriptive and concise, and includes relevant keywords, search engine bots will rate it as trustworthy when they read your page. Another advantage of having an easy-to-read URL is that it helps the visitor to understand where they are on your website. An SEO-friendly URL structure is an immense help to both search engines and potential customers, as this helpful infographic shows:
