Keywords and What to Do with Them.
In the past few articles, I’ve spent a good amount of time discussing how to choose keywords for websites. The next logical question concerns what is to do with these keywords.
Most people focus all their energy putting the keywords within the body of the website. This is good. The body of a website is the area that human visitors see and it is indeed the place where the majority of the keywords should be used. No matter how important search engines and keywords are, a webpage must first of all be informative and easy for humans to read.
However there are other locations on the webpage where keywords should be used.
1. Page TitleThe first place for the extra keywords is in the title of each webpage. That is the text in the bar across the top of each webpage. You should not cram every keyword for your page into this small area but use keywords that correspond to the content of that page.
For the best effect, each page should have its own unique title. Search engines will not count repeating titles in a positive fashion and by having different keywords in each page title you also increase the variety of keywords used over the entire website.
The title will likely appear on search engines results pages; and if it is a crowded line of meaningless words, people will probably ignore them.
2. Alt TagsBeyond bodies and titles the next best location for placing keywords is the often ignored ALT tag. An ALT tag is a little box of text that pops up when a visitor moves the cursor over a picture or other image. Often it contains a description of the picture. That simple little box description can be also used for a keyword or phrase. Keep it short and sweet, as long tags are often ignored by humans.
3. Intra-Site LinksOne of the least thought of places for keywords intra-site links within body text. Rather than a simple using a text link that says: “Click Here” or “Lean More,” try using a link that says “Download Purchasing Software Trial Version” or “Corporate Governance Product Preview”. These can give a website additional keyword placements plus it provides more information to the viewer of the site.
4. Meta TagsThe final major area to place your keywords is in the Meta Tags. While Meta Tags have fallen out of favor because Google no longer uses the information from this area as part of it search, I do not agree with people who say that any Meta Tag information hurts your Google ranking. And, because Yahoo, Ask and other search engines still use the Meta tag information for their searches Meta Tags are important to use.
Add Meta tags for title, description and keywords to your pages. As always, make the keywords relative to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords. And you’ll be okay.
If you’re going to spend the time and energy to carefully pick your keywords, you should take the same kind of time and energy in placing those keywords on your website. Then they will work to increase the visibility of a web page in search engine results.
Technorati Tags: keywords, seo, search engines, meta, tags, titles, descriptions, alt tags
This article was first published March 27, 2009 on the Tatum Marketing blog
In the past few articles, I’ve spent a good amount of time discussing how to choose keywords for websites. The next logical question concerns what is to do with these keywords.
Most people focus all their energy putting the keywords within the body of the website. This is good. The body of a website is the area that human visitors see and it is indeed the place where the majority of the keywords should be used. No matter how important search engines and keywords are, a webpage must first of all be informative and easy for humans to read.
However there are other locations on the webpage where keywords should be used.
1. Page TitleThe first place for the extra keywords is in the title of each webpage. That is the text in the bar across the top of each webpage. You should not cram every keyword for your page into this small area but use keywords that correspond to the content of that page.
For the best effect, each page should have its own unique title. Search engines will not count repeating titles in a positive fashion and by having different keywords in each page title you also increase the variety of keywords used over the entire website.
The title will likely appear on search engines results pages; and if it is a crowded line of meaningless words, people will probably ignore them.
2. Alt TagsBeyond bodies and titles the next best location for placing keywords is the often ignored ALT tag. An ALT tag is a little box of text that pops up when a visitor moves the cursor over a picture or other image. Often it contains a description of the picture. That simple little box description can be also used for a keyword or phrase. Keep it short and sweet, as long tags are often ignored by humans.
3. Intra-Site LinksOne of the least thought of places for keywords intra-site links within body text. Rather than a simple using a text link that says: “Click Here” or “Lean More,” try using a link that says “Download Purchasing Software Trial Version” or “Corporate Governance Product Preview”. These can give a website additional keyword placements plus it provides more information to the viewer of the site.
4. Meta TagsThe final major area to place your keywords is in the Meta Tags. While Meta Tags have fallen out of favor because Google no longer uses the information from this area as part of it search, I do not agree with people who say that any Meta Tag information hurts your Google ranking. And, because Yahoo, Ask and other search engines still use the Meta tag information for their searches Meta Tags are important to use.
Add Meta tags for title, description and keywords to your pages. As always, make the keywords relative to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords. And you’ll be okay.
If you’re going to spend the time and energy to carefully pick your keywords, you should take the same kind of time and energy in placing those keywords on your website. Then they will work to increase the visibility of a web page in search engine results.
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