If you ask someone the question, what would be the best way to attract new customers to your site, most of the answers would be: content. There are vast ways to promote your website on the Internet, but one of the most popular and effective ways to do that is with content marketing. As a vital element of promotional activities in search engines, it is a technique of creating and distributing content to attract targeted groups of users. If you like it or not, Google set such rules and if you want to be found by new customers you need to craft content that will meet their standards.
In order to shine brightly in the top of search engine rankings, you ought to create content that is not only unique and valuable, but also keyword-rich. Probably you’re familiar with keyword research for SEO. Let’s put your keywords to work for your website’s rank.
Technical aspects of keyword optimization
It is not necessary to do on-page SEO manually each time you publish new content. If you mainly use your blog to publish it, probably you’re equipped with a modern content management system. Such software need to be configured once and is SEO friendly, which means you can focus mostly on content, not on technical issues.
If you’re developing a separate website for promotional purposes, be sure to prepare it properly before putting it on the Internet. You can read more about this in our article
on 10 tips how to optimize a website.
Keywords in content’s title and address
Try to put your keywords in the content’s title. It will not only show the users what your content is about, but also inform the search engines that it is relevant to the search query you want your website to be ranked for. As a result it will be easier to find. Remember to use unique title tags each time fresh content is created.
Modern CMS will use the title of your post as a page title and a html filename.
Your title should:
Not exceed the 60 character limit (including spaces)
Search engines show only a certain amount of text in the SERPs. Try to be brief and accurate while describing your content.
Do not duplicate a title text in a H1 tag text
Although the title tag could be similar and contain the most important keywords, try not to use the same string of text in each one of them. It is the top level text specifying the structure of the document and hierarchy of sections. Take advantage of h1 tag – unlikely the page’s title it can include links.
Keywords in the first part of the content
Try to put your keywords in the first sentence or the first paragraph of your text. Why is this important?
Google doesn’t rely on description meta tags anymore while calculating your website’s rank. Still, it is used by search engines. It often appears with your organic search listing on SERPs.
If you’re producing content that is managed by CMS, the first few terms that you used in the beginning of your content would appear instead of a description meta tag in search engines.
If you have done your web content writing properly, you should see the result like the one below. As an example, let’s use our blog post about a new feature we released recently.
Keywords in the content’s body
The body of the text is the place where the keywords blend with the content. There’s no pattern on how often the keywords should be used on the page. The best way is to use them whenever you think it’s necessary. The good on-page optimization is more about where you use your keywords, not how often you use them.
Make your content consistent with your keywords
Keywords in your content should be topic oriented. Try to focus on specific keywords throughout the text.
Use your keyword at least 5 times in the whole text.
Try to add other keywords and their variations to diversify your content.
Keywords in headings and bolded text
Try to use your keywords in headings and bolded text. This will give your readers, as well as search engines, a hint about the text’s structure – topic oriented sections and most important elements.
It’s necessary to say, that at this point you should avoid messing your text with lots of other keywords. You want to create well optimized content, not another spam field and get your website downgraded, don’t you?
Keywords in image file names and alt attributes
Search engines are a clever piece of software, but even they aren’t perfect. It’s easy for us to say what is on the picture. For Google, Bing and Yahoo it would be easy as well, if you would describe the picture neatly.
Use keywords in a filename and try not to use generic names for a picture file.
Describe your image in “alt” text.
Keywords in an anchor text
Use keywords in an anchor text on your web page linking to topic related content. For example:
Your role model search engine optimized content should look like the example below. Try to optimize your content for keywords every time you create it and you will be on a good path to better overall SEO performance and higher positions in search engine rankings.