How Can One Make Best Use of Keywords for SEO?

It is true that keywords act as the fuel for SEO. It doesn’t matter how many efforts have been put in to fine-tune the website, it will not achieve the top search engine ranking until targeted keywords are not included in it. What contributes to the higher ranking of a website is the use of the most relevant and important keywords in the content of the site. Most of us don’t know that there is a particular keyword inclusion pattern that should be followed so that relevant words are spread in several portions of the website. Apart from this, you should know that search engines give higher relevance of certain areas of the HTML documents and this could improve the ranking of your site.

Any SEO campaign is not complete without the selection of the right keyword. It is the first and foremost step of the process. Here are some of the best practices on how to use the right keywords:

Anchor Text

Anchor text along with a relevant keyword is an important external link factor. If your site gets inbound links, these will be considered positive for the site and keywords as well.

Heading

Placing a keyword in H1 heading is an important factor but make sure that the keyword should be relevant to the actual text. Ensure that the heading is precise (around 7-10 words). You can include the keyword as the first word of the heading, as it a common issue and one of the best optimization practices.

Domain Name

Use of right keywords in the domain name plays a crucial part in SEO.

Title Tag

You must have seen that search results on any search engine show title tags as the page title. Make sure that the title is short and precise, usually between 6-12 words. Although, you can use the keyword anywhere in the tag but it would be better to put it in the beginning.

URL

A URL helps a lot in higher ranking of the site but make sure that the keyword you are using in the URL should be present in other parts of the page (mainly content). One common mistake we all do is stuffing the keyword that is not only unethical, but you might also end up paying a penalty for this.

Alt Tags

You should label the images on the page with <alt>/<title> tag and do remember to put some keywords into them because spiders love to scroll on these tags to look for relevant keywords.

Beginning the Document

Having a keyword in the first 25-50 words helps in better ranking of the site. Whether it is a table or a paragraph, try to include the keyword in the beginning of the document.

Meta Tags

Search engines like Yahoo and Bing rely on them, while Google does not. If you will properly fill these tags with keywords, it will do no harm to the site but might contribute in its higher ranking.

Other Headlines

Including keywords in other headlines is also a good practice.

Density

Checking density is always better for writing relevant content. Ideally, one should keep the keyword density to less than 10%. The 2-3 targeted keywords can have up to 7-8% density, whereas secondary keywords should have 1-2% density.

Proximity

Proximity here means closeness between 2 or more keywords. If the keywords are closer, they will contribute to a higher ranking. It is always beneficial to have keywords one after another, which means there should be no words between them.

Image Names

Have keywords in the images names.

Synonyms

Search Engines have particular algorithms that also consider synonyms for the keyword match and ranking purpose. This mostly happens in the English language. So, include a synonym of a keyword and see the difference. You should include a synonym for the relevant keyword but don’t work hard to optimize it.

Secondary Keywords

Secondary keywords often called as LSIs can be beneficial for site optimization because they have less competition in comparison to other popular keywords.

Worst Practices

There are some bad or you can say worst practices followed by search engine optimizers just to get a higher ranking for their website. But this ultimately lands up in getting the site spammed by search engines. So, one must avoid taking the below mentioned steps:

• Spelling Mistakes Spelling mistakes leave a bad impression on the visitors. In case the targeted keywords are misspelled and you want to optimize the page for them, use these keywords in Meta tags.
• Keyword Stuffing If the keyword density in your site is more than 10%, then it will called as keyword stuffing. There is a risk of your site getting banned because of such an unethical practice.
• Dilution Excessive inclusion of unrelated keywords for optimization will directly affect the performance of relevant keywords. This will act as a negative point for your website.

It is right that a well deployed keyword will help in bringing qualified and potential traffic to your site that would lead to higher sales. Therefore, you must have a focus and target on specific search terms that are related to the nature of your business.