Web Marketing Wednesday – Using Your Keywords on Your Site
by Chris Gandolfo, April 7th, 2010 | Tags: copywriting, seo, web marketing | 1 Comment »Now that we have selected our keywords and tested them it is time to use them on your website. But where should they go? Follow along as I show you where to place them.
Target Your Pages for One Keyword
First off you should target the content on your pages for one keyword and 1-3 variations of that keyword depending upon the amount of content you have on each page. If you have 300 words of content I would use the primary keyword and one or two variations. If you have 600+ words of content then you can use 3 variations of your keyword. Make sure you stay very tightly focused on your targeted keyword. If you find yourself wandering in your content then you should probably create another page to talk about that topic and use another keyword on that page.
The Hidden Content Users Do Not See, but Search Engines Do
There are some areas of your website that your visitors do not see all that often, but the search engines use this content in their results pages. This content is called meta data. This content is found in the head of a web page and looks like this:
<head>
<title>Reno SEO Web Design, Internet Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC Advertising</title>
<meta name="description" content="Reno SEO, web design company in Reno, NV specializes in web design, SEO, email marketing, PPC advertising. Affordable Reno website design and marketing from Reno freelance web designer Chris Gandolfo." />
</head>
This meta data, called the page title and meta description should include your targeted keyword. This can be tricky because your title should only be 60 characters long and your description should be under 160 characters. You can make them longer than these values, but the search engines will only display the data in the character count listed above.
For your title, use your keyword as close to the front of the content as you possibly can. Try to make this as compelling as possible for users as well as search engines.
For your description, again use your keyword towards the front of the content and then one or two variations in the rest of the content. Try to use complete sentences here and make them compelling. When users see this content on a search engine results page you want them to be compelled to click on your listing and go to your website. This is pretty much the only time users will see this content.
Content and Links
We also want to use your keyword and the variations of it in your content. This includes the headers, paragraphs, and lists that make up the bulk of your content.
The code for headers look like this:
<h1>This is my primary page header</h1>
<h2>This is my secondary page header</h2>
I’m not going to tell you to use your keyword X number of times in your content. Just write naturally, for your users, and the keywords should place themselves. Look for generalizations of your company’s offerings and replace words like “product” or “service” with more direct phrases that include your keyword. For my site I might replace “service” with “web design service” or “SEO service”.
You should also use your keywords inside the link text that takes users to other pages on your website. These links could/should be in your content and also in navigation blocks in the sidebar or across the top of your page. If you have a page on your site that talks about Blue Widgets then your link text could be something like “View Our Blue Widgets”. This uses your keyword, but it also has a call-to-action in it. It tells users they can click on those words to view your blue widgets.
That’s the basics of creating good, search engine optimized content for your website that incorporates your keywords. You are now are your way to marketing your website! If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment below. Next time I will discuss how to target local or location specific searches.
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