How and Where to Use Keywords In Your Content

Do you use keywords in your content? Digital marketing experts always emphasize the importance of keyword research and how it can boost your SEO… Which to be fair, is true to a large degree.

But:

Many of them never bother to explain where to put those keywords in your articles. 

You find yourself with a list of low-competition queries that you don’t even know how to use. So you place them randomly on the page hoping that they’ll magically work.

But sadly, that rarely gets you the results you deserve…

So in today’s article, you’ll learn the best ways to use SEO keywords and where to put them in your blog posts to ensure the best results. 

What Makes Proper Keyword Placement So Crucial?

When a crawling spider lands on a web page, it first needs to understand what the content is about. That’s because context is everything when it comes to indexing and ranking search results.

So:

It looks for relevant keywords and tries to arrange them in a hierarchy based on importance. 

For example, the Googlebot will identify the main keyword by looking at your page title, URL, and headlines. Then it looks for secondary keywords in your subheadings, sentences, anchor texts, etc.

Once all of that is done, the ranking process becomes easier and much more accurate. Your result will only appear in SERPs whenever a user searches for a relevant query.

How to Use Keywords In Your Content?

Readability and ease of understanding always come first whenever writing for SEO. Your writing style should be natural to make sense to the user. Or else, it will come off as forced and written for Google bots only.

For starters:

You should avoid using the same keywords repeatedly as that might become annoying to the reader. Even if there aren’t many keywords variations in your topic, there are ways you can solve this problem.

You don’t have to use exact match key phrases to rank for a single search query. Because for each keyword, there are LSI keywords, synonyms, and similar phrases that Google considers the same. 

Let’s look at this sentence:

“Looking to hire Irvine plumbing services?”

While it might seem tempting to use keywords this way, the phrase is grammatically wrong and might distract the reader.

Instead, it should be something like this:

“Looking for plumbing services in Irvine?”

If you Google both keywords, you can see that the results you get are similar, which means that Google understands their meaning in both cases.

Where Should You Use SEO Keywords in your Content?

Now that you understand why keyword placement is important and how it should be done, it’s time to learn where to put SEO keywords in your content.

You’ll discover the best way to spread keywords to provide context and compete for high-competition queries in the SERPs.

1- Page Title

Your page title is the first thing crawling spiders will come across after the URL, and the first thing most organic visitors will read.

Therefore:

The title tag must always contain your primary keyword close to the beginning of the phrase. And it should be concise, specific, and clear to appeal to both Google bots as well as human readers. 

Also:

Make sure it’s catchy and informative to boost the click-through rate and attract more visitors. 

2- Meta Descriptions

The meta description is a 160-characters paragraph that appears in the SERPs between your page title and URL. It briefly describes your content and encourages users to visit your page to read more.

An SEO-friendly meta description must contain:

• A detailed (but not too long) description of what the page is about
• Your primary keyword (at least once)
• A few secondary keywords to increase relevance
• A call to action or a value proposition to boost CTR

3- Headings & Subheadings

Headings and subheadings are HTML tags (H1, H2, H3, ..etc) that help you break down articles and segment your ideas more effectively.

While your main heading needs to contain your primary keyword, the rule with subheadings is usually the opposite. You want to only use relevant keywords in your content that describe what the next section in your article is about. 

So:

You should write descriptive subheadings that contain secondary keywords. You can include key phrases in the form of questions or exact match keywords to increase relevance. 

For example:

This is one of the best ways to rank for multiple long-tail keywords at once. And it’s also the reason why longer articles usually perform better than short-form content.

4- Page URL

Take a quick look at these two examples:

https://www.yoursite.com/article.asp?p=6546

https://www.yoursite.com/services/best-orange-county-plumbers

You don’t need to be an SEO expert to realize that example #2 is much better for SEO and user experience.

Why?

Because an SEO-friendly URL gives both users and search engines a hint about the page before it loads.

There are only a few rules to keep in mind when creating SEO URLs for your pages:

• Keep it short, and descriptive to your page
• Make sure it contains your primary keyword
• Use hyphens between words to avoid empty spaces or special characters
• Cut unnecessary words such as “the, to, a, etc”

5- Body Text

Writing your body content shouldn’t differ so much from what we’ve discussed so far. You’ll include keywords everywhere throughout your article — from start to finish.

Keep a natural language and flow in your writing to improve readability. And avoid keyword stuffing at all costs since that may get your website punished once detected. 

Here are a few tips for proper keyword placement in SEO:

• Include your main keyword in the first 150 words of your introduction
• Use your main keyword in the last few paragraphs in the conclusion
• Add LSI keywords and synonyms to diversify your keyphrases and avoid repetition
• Avoid exact match keywords when they’re grammatically incorrect

As for anchor texts:

Be sure to include your focus keywords when creating internal links between pages. For example, instead of using “click here” as an anchor for your contact page, you should use “contact us”.

6- Images

Images are an excellent way to visualize your message and engage readers with your content. They’re also good for SEO and can help your content rank better when well-optimized.

To optimize images with SEO keywords, there are two simple rules to follow:

1- Include primary or secondary keywords in your alt tags.

For example: 

2- Name your image files properly using hyphens while including keywords.

It also helps to add some keyword-rich captions to your images when needed.

Conclusion

The truth is, keyword placement isn’t everything when it comes to SEO. There are many ranking factors to consider and steps you need to take to dominate the SERPs.

However…

Learning how to use keywords strategically in your writing is a must — especially with how Google is putting more emphasis on user experience. Proper keyword placement helps your content stand out from the rest and attract the right clients to your brand. 

Want to skyrocket your business results with content marketing and learn more about how to use keywords In your cContent?

The Lorem Ipsum Company is ready to get you there! Learn more about how we can help by contacting us or give us a call at (949) 354-2574.