3. Use Keywords in Your Article Title (H1)
If possible, put the keyword in the title of your page. Since Google pairs this title header with your meta description to paint a picture of what your content is about, having the keyword in the title is very helpful as long as it can be used naturally.
If the keyword can’t be used naturally in the title, use a variation that still gets the point of the article across while hitting some of the main words from your keyword phrase. A little is better than nothing!
Pro SEO Tip: Your page title is also commonly referred to as your page’s H1. Heading structures can be an incredible optimization opportunity when it comes to your website’s SEO real estate and should be used! That being said, from an on-page SEO perspective, you should NOT Be using more than one H1 on your page/blog/article.
After your title, you should be using H2s, H3s, and H4s to help organize additional headings in your article (see more on that below). While Google has a history of publicly downplaying organic ranking factors like headings, the truth is that they matter. We’ve tested hundreds of blogs across sites where the only change made to an existing piece of content was optimizing headings and we’ve seen rankings rise. It makes sense. HTML tags help Google to index a site quickly, and since headings should summarize the content to follow, they hold more weight than paragraph text in a piece of content.
4. Use Keywords Within the First 200 Words
Many experts believe that Google gives more weight to the first 200 words in your content. The reason why is because usually the first 100-200 words of an article are where a content writer sets up the introduction of what will be discussed. Since most readers only continue on in an article if the introduction is good, it stands to reason that it could be a ranking factor as well.
Where to Use Keywords in an Article Introduction
Knowing that Google scrutinizes the first 200 words of a blog post, it’s very important to make sure that you put your primary keyword within the first sentence or paragraph, if at all possible, without sacrificing the quality of the content. Similarly, you should try to use at least one secondary keyword in the first 200 words as well (though not in the first sentence).
Keep in mind that Google is trying to get an overall picture of what the article is all about, and the way you outline your content really matters. You have to be careful to lead Google to the keywords you want it to focus on and not confuse it when optimizing content for keywords. This means your primary keyword should live in all the most important places, your secondary keywords next, and then any other additional keywords after that. Think of it as a pyramid of usage, with primary keywords at the top.
The focus of the article (and introduction) would be the top of the primary, filled in by secondary and lastly additional keywords to make up an entire keyword structure and strategy for that piece.
5. Insert Keywords Naturally Throughout the Article
In a seemingly SEO-centered digital world, it’s easy to forget that the reader actually comes first. You should never compromise your reader’s ability to be engaged, informed and enlightened by your content because of bad keyword placement. But believe me, it happens all the time. Here is one solution to help you write your keywords more naturally in your content.
Use Stop Words in Awkward Keyword Phrases
One way to help you write keywords more naturally is to utilize “Stop Words” in your keyword writing. These are words that can be added within keyword phrases to help them read more naturally without decreasing their ranking value. Search engines like Google recognize these words as fillers and allow for them without hurting your SEO optimization.
For instance, if you had a keyword phrase you were targeting that reads “plumbing Salt Lake City“, there is literally no way you can insert it into your content exactly as-is without it either looking like a typo or a blatant keyword insertion. The better way to add keywords for SEO is to use a stop word in that phrase. Adding the stop word “in”, would now have it read “plumbing in Salt Lake City”, which can much more easily be inserted into natural writing. Try it out!
You can easily find a list of commonly used stop words you can utilize when adding keywords to your website.
How Many Keywords Should You Put in Your Content?
While we covered total # of individual keywords you may want to insert throughout your article, this question is referring specifically to how many times you put each of those keyword in an article. This is a great question that’s often discussed and argued about among SEOs. The real answer is that it completely depends on the types of keywords you have and the length of your content.
The general rule, however, is you should try to include your primary keyword (or a variation of it) about once every 100-150 words. So if you’re writing a 1000 word article, inserting the primary keyword around 5-7 times would be appropriate. Also keep in mind that you want to fairly distribute these instances of the keyword throughout the article. You don’t want all 7 instances of your primary keyword in the same 200 word section or you lose the flow of a consistent keyword theme throughout.
Secondary and Additional keywords, however, shouldn’t be in the article more than your primary keyword. Whatever your baseline is for using your primary keyword in your content, decrease by about 25-50% for secondary and another 25% for additional keywords for SEO. Then you can keep a healthy keyword structure that Google crawlers should easily be able to follow.
6. Use Keywords in the Last 200 Words
Similar to how an introduction of an article is important to keyword rankings because it sets the framework for the content, it could be argued that the conclusion (or last 200 words) is just as important, if not more important. For this reason, try to include your primary keyword again near the last or second-to-last paragraph and include a secondary keyword if possible.
For blog posts, it’s usually good practice to include a call-to-action (or CTA) in the very last paragraph, so if you can fit the primary keyword there, great! If not, get it in that second-to-last paragraph as we talked about above.
7. Use Keywords in Headings (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc)
We mentioned this briefly above, but headings are a formatting tool that most text editors offer to allow you to help break up your text. From a purely visual standpoint, they are a must-have. Huge chunks of paragraph content with no end in sight are intimidating and often skipped completely. Using headings to break up content allows you to visually move the reader along to the most important points, or the ones they are most interested in.
From an SEO standpoint, headings might be even more important. The HTML tags used to identify H1s, H2s, H3s, etc are also ranking signals for Google to know what’s most important in the content. Adding keywords to headings in content may be the single best way to try and rank for multiple keywords. The more content you have, the more headings you have. Depending on the intent of the keyword phrase longer content may rank better than shorter content, or vice versa.
When a keyword is used in headings, it brings more emphasis to the meaning and importance of the keywords. This helps the search engines to know how relevant those keywords are to your content. Here’s an example of where to find heading formats in a text editor:
How to Add Keywords to Heading 1s (H1s)
Heading 1s, or H1s, are typically reserved just for the main title of the article. If you use multiple H1s in your content, you’re basically asking Google to get confused. Instead, just stick to a single H1 as your article title with your primary keyword included.
How to Use Keywords in Heading 2s (H2s)
Heading 2s, or H2s, are where you can do the bulk of inserting important keywords. H2s are the headings that break up the main sections of your content and usually come into play every couple hundred words. For a 1000 word article, you can plan on around 3-5 of these H2s. this is where you’d want to include the primary keyword again in one of them and reserve the rest for secondary keywords you are targeting.
How to Insert Keywords to Heading 3s (H3s)
Heading 3s, or H3s, are used to help break up and list individual points in the main sections. You might find H3s in the form of numbered lists or clarifying sections to an H2 heading. This is another good place for an instance of the primary, but probably a better spot for secondary keywords and any additional keywords you have.
8. Use Keywords in Anchor Text Links (Although Not the Ones You’d Think)
When a keyword is used as an anchor text link in your content, it implies that there is a place to find even more information regarding that word. This helps to place added emphasis on the keyword and the relevance it has to the content it’s being linked to. So how does that apply to the article you’re currently writing?
Well, it doesn’t. Not exactly. Using keywords as anchor text links in your articles can help OTHER pages on your site. This is also known as creating an internal link structure showing Google where the most important articles are for exact keyword phrases. If you can plan your content accordingly, you know you can use anchor text links of certain keyword phrases to drive the authority of other “pillar” pieces.
SEO Pro Tip: Do NOT use your primary keyword (or variation of it) in anchor text that is linking to another page unless you’ve completely given up hope of ranking for that keyword on that page. Doing this basically tells Google to ignore that keyword on the page you’re working on and to look for it in the page you’re linking to. This is a common mistake that a lot of content marketers make. Instead, find a related topic within your article with an associated keyword that you can link to another page to help improve it’s authority for that keyword. For any of the main keywords you hope to rank for on the page you’re working on, DO NOT LINK out to other pages using them as the anchor text.
I won’t get too much more into the specifics of link structures in this article, but if you’re interested then check out what Neil Patel has to say.
9. Use Keywords in Image Alt-tags
First of all, if you aren’t using images in your content writing then PLEASE do so! I can’t overemphasize how many opportunities you’re missing out on if you aren’t using some kind of visual cue to help educate, engage and inform your readers and prospective clients. Images and content writing (and videos for that matter) are a perfect marriage when it comes to user engagement.
Second, alt-text on images is an incredibly simple way to get another keyword variation on your page without it looking spammy. While there is debate about how much this will move the needle, when you’re creating content on a world wide web with trillions of pages of content on it already, any little thing you can do to stand out is worth it IMO.
How to Use SEO Keywords in Alt Tags
In terms of keyword usage, using your keywords in an image alt-tag can help it to be shown during image searches. This can help users to be led to your content in a round-about way.
Not only do images help break up the text and give it color, personality and sex appeal, they also can be a great opportunity for you to add keywords for SEO to your website. Take advantage of putting images in your articles and the blessed alt-text you’re allowed to manipulate.
SEO Pro-Tip: In an effort to make sure all your efforts are white-hat and still provide value to a reader for accessibility reasons, make sure that your keyword variation you use in an image’s alt-text still explains something about the image. If the picture is of a puppy, please don’t put in the alt-text “SEO Keyword Guide”. Try and be creative to find a way to still include a couple of descriptive words about the text along with a variation of the keyword. Ideally you’ve chose images that directly relate to the topic of your article so this shouldn’t be too tough to do.
10. Use Keywords in URL
Last, but not least, when it comes to adding keywords to your website to maximize your onsite SEO, you should always try to put your primary keyword in the main page URL of the article you’ve written. If you’ve done the steps above and put your primary keyword in the title of your article, it should be in the URL automatically when you go to publish it. But even if your title is similar to the main keyword but doesn’t include it completely, you should tweak your page URL to include it after the fact. Here is an example:
There has often been talk among SEOs and content marketers of whether or not it’s necessary to put your primary keyword into your page URL and if it affects rankings. Based on a study we did here at BKA Content, analyzing around 60 posts over a 6 month period, the posts we had with a keyword as a part of the page URL were overwhelmingly ranking for that exact keyword, where posts that didn’t have the targeted keyword in the URL did not. That’s enough evidence for me that it IS effective to include the keyword in the page URL.
SEO Pro Tip: During that same content marketing study we did here at BKA Content, there were some concerns that changing the URL after the fact might hurt any existing rankings we had for that page and that the page might not recover. After changing the URL after the fact (while always including a redirect from the original URL), there was always an immediate drop in tracked rankings in our keyword tracking tool, but it never affected our actual site traffic. In fact, almost every page that had the URL adjusted ended up rebounding in about 3-4 weeks in our keyword tracking tools to rank for more keywords than they were originally.
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