Ok, I've Got My Keywords. Now What?

There are many articles about how to find keywords for your site. I’ve written a few myself. However once you have them, how do you use them on your web pages so that the search engines will find your pages when people search on those keywords.

In short there are a number of important places on any web page where you need to include your keywords for that page.

Title tag
This is an extremely important tag and it certainly should include your keywords. I've lost count of how many home pages I have seen with the Title of "home page".

The title is also what appears when your page is listed by the search engines and so it needs to be compelling to the human eye as well as include your keywords for the search engines.

Ideally the title should be no more than 100 characters including spaces. Google displays unto 66 characters, Yahoo much more.

Also, get your main keyword in early in the title text. For example, on a web page aimed at offering web optimising advice to small businesses and the keyword for the page is “web optimising” I might use the following Title:

Web Optimising for Small Businesses

Alternatively if my keyword for the page is “small businesses” I might switch the Title to be:

Small Business Web Optimising

Description Tag

Some search engines check the description tag to get a good understanding of what the web page is about. So you must include your keywords in this tag. It's important to remember that your description tag is frequently the test displayed when your web page is listed by the search engines. So again it needs to be compelling for your potential visitors.

Headings

The heading tags (ie: h1, h2, etc) are considered of importance by the search engines and therefore you should include your keywords in these headings whenever you can. You should certainly make sure the main heading of the page (ie: the H1 tag) contains your keyword.

Content

The main copy of your web page should also use your keywords. However it is important to remember that the copy is there to convert your customer to do something once they have arrived at the web page. If the copy does not guide them to taking the action you want them to take then getting your customer to the page has all been for nothing. So, write the page with the purpose in mind and try to work the keywords in naturally into the content.

Incidentally some pundits state that you should include your keywords near the top of the page as this effects the rating the search engines apply to your page. I’m not sure if that is true, however if I were a visitor to your site that found you through keywords on a search engine I would find it welcoming to find those keywords early in my reading of your page.

Links

Use your keywords in any links to your page from within your own web site and ideally where you can on links from external web sites. Search engines following these links will pick up on these keywords as being relevant to your page.

Alt tag

On all your images, use the alt tag and include your keywords in the text. Obviously the text needs to be relevant to the image. Using the alt tag is important for addressing web site accessibility which is now a legal requirement in many countries. Also, search engines read this text and use it for indexing your site.

Follow the guidelines in this article on how to use keywords to optimise your web site and I’m sure you will soon see increased traffic to your site.