When it comes to web content, keywords are one of the most important factors you need to consider. Using keywords in the proper manner will help you create a better, busier website. Below is a basic guide for those who want to use keywords more effectively in their web content.

Research

First of all, you have to find out what keywords you should be targeting. These keywords should be the words and phrases your ideal website visitors such as shoppers, potential customers and potential email subscribers use to find the products and services you provide on your website.

You may already have a good idea what keywords people use. However, you can use a wide range of keyword research tools that will help you compile a much more comprehensive list of these keywords. The keywords that are used the most and the ones with a buying intent, are the keywords you should prioritise and target first. Then, as you add more content you can focus on keywords that are searched for less, which are known as long tail keywords.

Adding Your Keywords

Once you have created a list of keywords you are happy with, it’s time to add them to your website’s web pages. The URL of each web page should include the main keyword for that web page. For example, if you have a website about car accessories and a web page called page1.html that is about car seats, you should optimise this web page’s URL by calling it car-seats.html or something similar.

Other components of each web page that should include your main keyword include the title tag, H1 tag or heading, body text and image name and alternative text. For example, if an image is called image1.jpg, this can be optimised by changing the name to something more relevant. In the case of the car accessories website, if you had an image of a red car seat, you would change the image name to red-car-seat.jpg or something similar.

LSI Keywords

LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing involves the inclusion of keywords that are related to the main keyword of a particular web page. These often include variations of the main keyword and extensions to it, such as a place name.

Keyword Quantity

Your keywords should be used sparingly in your web content. In the past many website owners tried to find loopholes in search engine algorithms by carrying out keyword stuffing and similar practices that would artificially rank certain keywords. However, the search engines are now aware of these black hat practices and penalise and even ban websites that try to trick them. It’s more important to make you content readable and a keyword quantity of 2 to 3 % is usually recommended.

Adopting a proper keyword strategy for your content has the potential to increase website visitors, reduce the cost of acquiring new customers and increase the value of a website. Following the tips above will make this a much easier process to implement on your website.