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When it comes to enhancing your Search Engine Optimization, keywords are one of the most important yet difficult aspects of blog formatting to achieve (SEO).
Keywords can help you enhance online traffic to your site if you know how to use them correctly. Misusing keywords, on the other hand, can have a serious effect on both your Google ranking and the quality of your content.
How to know if you are using keywords effectively.
Let's get started!
How Does Overuse of Keywords Affect Your Website?
Using a keyword too often, believe it or not, might actually harm your Google ranking. Overusing keywords as a shortcut to increase your Google results might have serious implications.
What Causes This To Happen?
Google is focused on providing their visitors with content that is useful, cohesive, and well-informed. If you flood your posts with keywords with the goal of improving your position, Google will take notice.
Your work may be viewed as spam. As a result, they will not rank your website higher in their browser.
How Many Keywords Should Use On A Page?
When it relates to how many keywords to focus on a page, the answer is dependent on the keywords you want to add, how relevant they are to one another, and if they help push the content's message forward.
However, with the correct keyword research, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a list of 5-10 keywords. Therefore, this does not imply that you should work on all 10!
Let's start with the rules of keyword hierarchy. There are three sorts of keywords used in SEO:
- Primary Keyword
- Secondary Keywords
- Additional Keywords
The title and following content should represent your major keyword, which should be the main focus of the entire article. Because it is impossible to compose a strong piece of content about two distinct topics. Only one primary keyword should be utilized to drive the substance of the content forward.
Secondary keywords are similar to primary keywords, but with minor differences. Because a core issue usually has 3-5 main talking points, using a few of those secondary keywords makes sense.
Additional keywords are any additional related keywords that are written or spelt differently than the first two but mean the same thing as the first two.
This is a catch-all net for many variations of your core keywords in order to rank for one (or all) of them. Long-tail keywords are typically included in this category.
Most of the case, the keyword would be 3-8 words, depending on the length of the text. This is divided into one major keyword, one to three secondary keywords, and one to four extra keywords.
This provides you with a fighting chance to start ranking for one of them, and later on, you can even reoptimize your content based on where it is currently ranking.
Where Should You Put SEO Keywords?
There are some guidelines and best practices to follow when adding keywords to a website that can make your SEO efforts considerably more effective.
You should use the following steps to add keywords into your article writing:
- Use Keywords in Your Meta Description
This is one of the most fundamental steps for adding keywords for SEO, but it is sometimes missed. The meta description serves as a basic overview of the content, therefore include the term in this summary helps Google better filter your results.
It's a powerful technique to have one or two of your most critical keywords attached to the area of your website that search engines directly serve up.
- Insert Keywords in Your SEO Title Tag
This title tag is similar to the meta description in that it is the name of the page that visitors will see when they search a keyword phrase on search engine results pages (SERPs). This title will be clickable in the SERPs and will direct the user to your page.
When creating your SEO title tag, you just have a few characters (around 50-60) to work with, similar to meta descriptions. As a result, you should usually limit your title tag to just your major keyword and your company name. This is the most concise, user-friendly, and SEO-friendly strategy.
- Use Keywords in Your Article Title
Put the term in the title of your article if at all possible. Because Google uses this title header in connection with your meta description to construct a picture of what your content is about, having the keyword in the title is extremely beneficial as long as it can be used naturally.
If the keyword cannot be applied organically in the title, consider a variant that conveys the message of the piece while incorporating some of the important phrases from the keyword phrase. It's better to have a little than nothing at all!
- Use Keywords Within the First 200 Words
Many experts believe that Google prioritizes the first 200 words of your article. The reason for this is that the first 100-200 words of an article are typically where a content writer establishes the context for what will be covered.
Because most readers will only read on if the opening is strong, it comes to reason that it could be a ranking component as well.
- Insert Keywords Naturally Throughout the Article
In an apparently SEO-driven digital world, it's easy to forget that the reader comes first. Because of improper keyword placement, you should never risk your reader's chance to be engaged, informed, and enlightened by your content.
- Use Keywords in the Last 200 Words
Similar to how an article's intro is crucial for keyword rankings since it establishes the structure for the content, it could be argued that the conclusion (or last 200 words) is just as, if not more, important. As a result, attempt to add your core keyword again near the end or second to the last paragraph, and if possible, incorporate a secondary keyword.
It's common practice for articles to include a call-to-action (or CTA) in the very last paragraph, so if you can fit the core keyword there, that's excellent! If not, put it in the second to last paragraph.
- Use Keywords in Headings (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc)
Headings are a type of formatting feature that most text editors include to assist you to break up your text. They are a must-have from a simple aesthetic sense. Huge chunks of paragraph text with no end in sight are terrifying and are commonly skipped.
Using headings to split up text allows you to visually guide the reader along to the most important or interesting areas.
- Use Keywords in Anchor Text Links
When you utilize a term as an anchor text link in your content, it indicates that there is a site where you can learn more about that word. This helps to emphasize the term and its relevance to the content to which it is connected.
The use of keywords as anchor text links in your articles can benefit other pages on your site. This is also known as building an internal link structure that shows Google where the most relevant articles for specific keyword phrases are.
- Use Keywords in Image Alt-tags
Alt text (alternative text), also known as “alt attributes”, “alt descriptions”, or “alt tags”, is a phrase or sentence that describes an image’s contents or function on a webpage.
There are three significant advantages to using alt text. First, it has an SEO benefit. When keywords are used in the alt-text, the webpage can rank higher for that keyword (as long as it isn't "stuffed" or overused).
Second, alt text gives a quick description of an image when a bad connection prevents the page from loading properly.
Finally, alt text can help visually impaired readers navigate your website.
- Use Keywords in URL
Last but not least, when it comes to adding keywords to your website, you should always attempt to include your core keyword in the article's main page URL. If you followed the steps above and included your core keyword in the title of your article, it should appear in the URL when you go to publish it.
Even if your title is similar to the core keyword but does not exactly include it, you should modify your page URL to add it after the fact.
Final Thoughts
Last but not least, remember that you may go back and re-optimize your content. Give your article roughly 3 months before making any significant revisions, then go and check what keywords it is ranking for and what has acquired traction, and optimize from there.
Just be careful not to make any drastic adjustments, or you may end up capsizing the entire boat. Make little tweaks to optimize keywords and check whether the results are positive.
Repeat this process several times, and you'll have a highly refined content marketing strategy on your hands.