Having a website doesn’t mean your target audience can find you. There are countless websites on the internet that get no traffic – at all. Zero. So, how do you add keywords to your website?
Placing keywords into your website is easy. The hard part is determining what keywords to add and where to add them.
I will show you how to strategically place keywords in your content, to unlock increased visibility, organic traffic, and higher search engine rankings.
First, let’s delve into keywords: identifying your target keywords and determining the optimal locations within your blog content to place them, maximizing their impact for SEO purposes.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Understanding Keywords
Understanding keywords is crucial to the success of your website or blog. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to search for information online.
By incorporating relevant keywords into your website or blog content, you can improve your search engine rankings and attract more traffic to your site.
Keywords can be a combination of words
Keywords can be a single word or a combination of words that describe the topic or content of a webpage.
For example, if you have a blog about healthy eating, some relevant keywords would be:
- healthy recipes
- nutrition tips
- meal planning
Why are Keywords Important?
Keywords help search engines understand what your website or blog is about. When someone types a search query into Google a complex algorithm determines which webpages are most relevant to that query.
By including relevant keywords in your blog articles, you increase the chances of ranking your content for that query.
Identifying Target Keywords
Before we discuss the main topic of placing keywords on your website let’s briefly go over how to identify target keywords for your articles.
Consider search intent
What is the searcher trying to achieve? What is their intention when searching. That is what we mean by search intent.
There are basically four types of search intent:
- Informational
- Navigational
- Commercial
- Transactional
It’s important to understand this before writing an article otherwise you will not be able to answer the query successfully.
Read more about search intent here: A guide to search intent for bloggers
Study your competitors
Your competitors, especially if they are more established than you, may have already discovered numerous keywords that you could target.
Of course, you need to write a higher quality article to outrank their content.
Furthermore, avoid duplicating their content. Instead, draw inspiration from it and create something that is more helpful, informative, and valuable.
Below is a widget for conducting competitor research. I rely on this keyword discovery tool whenever I want to research my competitors. Give it a go by simply typing the domain or a specific competitor’s page into the widget, and voila, the report is generated!
Use a keyword research tool
Randomly thinking up keywords to target is not a successful strategy.
A keyword research tool will give you the following information about a keyword:
- monthly search volume
- difficulty (how difficult it is to rank for that keyword)
- competition (how competitive the keyword is)
- search intent
- historical search volume
And many other metrics you can use to decide what keywords to target.
For beginners it is better to target low competition keywords that have low difficulty and little competition.
Placing Keywords on Your Website
Where are some of the locations within a blog article you should place keywords?
Here is a helpful table listing locations, reasons to add a keyword there and some notes for each location:
| Location | Reason to Add Keyword | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Blog Post Title | Improve SEO and attract reader’s attention | Keep it concise and relevant to the content |
| Heading Tags (H1, H2, etc.) | Signal keyword importance and structure | Use relevant headings for better organization |
| URL | Optimize URL structure and improve SEO | Make it concise, descriptive, and keyword-rich |
| Meta Description | Increase click-through rates and SEO | Keep it compelling and within character limit |
| Introduction Paragraph | Engage readers and signal topic relevance | Include the keyword naturally within content |
| Subheadings | Enhance readability and keyword prominence | Use subheadings to break down the content |
| Image Alt Text | Optimize for search engines and accessibility | Describe the image using relevant keywords |
| Anchor Text | Improve internal linking and SEO | Use descriptive anchor text with keywords |
| Conclusion Paragraph | Reinforce key points and keyword relevance | Summarize the main ideas with keyword inclusion |
| Call-to-Action (CTA) | Encourage reader engagement and conversions | Incorporate keywords within persuasive CTAs |
Creating High-Quality Content with Keywords
It’s important you write people-first content. That is, the primary purpose of your content is to be helpful, informative and relevant for your audience. After that you can optimize for search engines.
Natural integration of keywords
Add keywords naturally to your content. Don’t try to force a keyword phrase into a sentence or heading if it doesn’t make sense or is grammatically incorrect.
Use synonyms and related keywords.
Target one or two keywords per article
Your articles lose focus when you target too many keywords. The smart move is to concentrate on 1-2 keyword phrases. If you have other related keywords, you can create additional articles and link them back to your main article.
Read more about how many keywords to add to a page: For SEO how many keywords should I use?
Avoid keyword stuffing – adding a keyword multiple times in unnatural ways or out of context. It violates Google’s spam policies.
Optimizing Other Website Elements with Keywords
Blog articles are not the only place you can add keywords. Let’s examine some other locations where you can benefit from adding keywords to your website.
Again, the location, reason to add keywords and any additional notes are shown:
| Location | Reason to Add Keywords | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Page Titles | Improve relevance and SEO visibility | Page titles are an important ranking factor and appear in search engine results. |
| Headings (H1, H2, etc.) | Highlight key content | Headings structure the page and give emphasis to important information, aiding both users and search engines. |
| URL Structure | Optimize for search engine readability | Including relevant keywords in the URL helps search engines understand the page topic and improves user experience. |
| Navigation Menus | Enhance site structure and user experience | Incorporating keywords in menu labels aids navigation and signals relevance to search engines. |
| Footer and Copyright Text | Reinforce website theme and niche | Including keywords in the footer and copyright text can further reinforce the website’s relevance to search engines. |
| URL Slugs | Optimize URLs for readability and SEO | Keywords in URL slugs provide clarity to users and help search engines comprehend the page’s content. |
Final Thoughts
I hoped you found this article informative and helpful.
A quick recap:
- keywords are words or phrases people use to search for content online
- strategically placing keywords into your content can boost your online visibility
- target 1-2 keywords per article, write supplementary articles for related keywords
- identify target keywords by search intent, keyword research and competitor research
- place keywords in the locations described in this article
- add keywords naturally and avoid keyword stuffing
- write high quality, relevant and helpful content (use a people-first strategy)
If you are looking for a keyword research tool I can recommend SE Ranking. It’s the keyword research tool I use and is a great tool that’s cheaper than some of the premium research tools on the market.
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