When you’re trying to achieve high search engine rankings, search engine keyword placement is important. Keywords define the subject of your web page or blog post, and are used by the Search Engines to categorise your pages.
In order to rank well, you “must” include your keywords in the following places:
1. Your Page Title
You must include your keywords in your page title, it’s by far the most influential “on-page” optimisation tactic you can employ. The fewer words (other than your keywords) you include in your title the better, otherwise you dilute your keyword phrase importance. Where you do include other words, try and include your keywords at the beginning of your title
2. Page Header
Include your keywords in your main page header to emphasise it’s importance again. In your html code, your page header is identified by H1 tags.
3. Opening Paragraph
It is very good seo practice to include your prime keyword phrase within the opening sentence of your first paragraph. If possible you should also repeat the phrase several times further down in the body of your text, preferably without spoiling how your content reads. Finally, try and include it at the end of your content, possibly in your page summary.
4. At the Bottom of Your Page
It’s good practice to include your keywords at the bottom of your page as the last words the search engine robot sees. A lot of people add them after their copyright wordage.
5. Meta Tags
Although meta tags carry far less ranking juice these days, it’s still makes sense to include your keywords in your meta tags or as your blog post tags. In terms of meta tags, some search engines still apply some weighting to them.
6. Your Internal Links
Your keywords should appear in your internal links to your pages. For example, in your site menu, your links should be keyword rich.
7. External Inbound Links
Similar to your internal links, you should encourage other sites linking to you to use your keywords in their anchor text. Along with your page title, having keyword rich anchor text in your inbound links is the most important keyword placement you can do.
These are without doubt the most important keyword placements you can employ for high search engine rankings. How well you succeed will depend on how competitive the keyword phrase is you’re targeting. Keyword placement is important, but primarily the number of competing pages and how well they’re optimised will determine how well you rank!
In terms of analysing keyword competitiveness, your keyword research really is the “critical” part of your optimisation process. I highly recommend you read my earlier post on Keyword Competitiveness.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!