In my last post Google Ad Words are a big fat waste of money. I talked about what you need to know before you start by creating a list of keywords and phrases that help define your business.
Today I want to talk about how you can start using those keywords correctly to maximize your on page search engine optimization efforts. If you still need to work on your keyword list or just need a little help choosing the right key words for your business you should check out these links.
The Perfect Key Word & Phrase
So you found the perfect set of words and phrases that help describe your business, the next logical step would be to start using them in your post and pages. Add a few here, add a few there and watch the conversions roll in right? Not so fast!
If you want to do this correctly we need to start at the beginning so lets start from the top of the page and work our way down. Following these tips will help with your on page search engine optimization efforts and help you rank better in the search engins.
The title tag.
This is very important and often overlooked. The title of you page appears in the tab at the top of the browser page, browser history list, book mark title and the link in the search results page. Title tags should be no longer than 70 characters. Be creative!
The description
The description under the title is your chance to encourage people to click to your site; think about the description as your sales pitch. Keep in mind that keywords and phrases near the front of your title or description hold more weight and mojo than words near the end.
If you use the word in your title tag don’t forget to also use it in your description and throughout the page as well. Make sure you remove all fluff or filler words since your description will be approximately 160 characters.
Page Content
The content on your page is valuable real estate so make your page customer friendly and use words that your customers use when they search for your product or service. If you want to include links on your page and I recommend that you do, the anchor text is a great place for a key word or phrase. Stay away from click here, be specific!
Links
Google places a lot of importance on internal links (links to content within your site) and external links a.k.a back links (links pointing to your site) again make sure your internal links contain keywords this is very important. Links show importance. A good rule of thumb is one link per 150 words.
Images alt text
The search engine can not read images so it is important to have an alt text which describes the image. The alt text is a great place to use a keyword or phrase. Remember images get indexed just as content does and most people forget to add content here.
Remember rule number 1 when deciding to use the keywords and phrases on your web site or blog is make sure that the content on your site easily flows and sounds conversational! Not like a sales brochure created in a marketing department.
Keyword density
This is the percentage of times a word or phrase appears on a web page compared the total amount of words on the page. A good rule of thumb is to keep the density of a word between 1 and 3 percent of the total words on your page.
I hope this helps. Remember keywords and phrases tells a search engine like Bing and Google what your page is about. If used corrected the tips provided on this page will help in your efforts to rank better and more importantly be a contender when someone searches for your product or service. I look forward to hearing your thoughts below.
Marc,
This information is exactly what I need right now. Thank you so much for what you’re doing to make it so much easier for us!
Renee