10 Basic Rules for Where to Place Your Keywords
Here
are the simple rules for where to place your keywords and keyword
phrases. Most people follow only a few of these rules. Follow
all of them and you will be way ahead of the pack.
First of all, Google and most other search engines do
NOT look at the META keyword tag. Many people say not to bother with
it, but I use the META keyword tag and I place my keyword phrases in
it. Here’s why.
I use this tag to help me remember what keyword phrases
I am optimizing the page for. You’ll find this to be a big help
later when you have a lot of pages and have forgotten what keyword phrases
you were trying to optimize the page for in the first place.
For
the META description tag, keep your most important keyword phrase
near the beginning of the sentence and make this tag a full sentence.
Do
NOT use bold or italic keyword phrases
in the first sentence on the page, but DO use your most
important keyword phrase in the first sentence, but not the first
word.
By
all means, use your keyword phrases in your headings, (H1, H2
and H3).
Start
putting keyword phrases in bold in the second paragraph.
Put
your keywords or keyword phrases in italics a few times AFTER
the first usage of the keyword. Never let the first usage of your
keyword phrases be in Italics.
Use
keywords in ALT tags.
It’s
very important to get other sites to use your most important keyword
phase for your page in any inbound links. Of course, you are not
in control of how other sites link to you, but work hard to get
them to use your keyword phrase. Most sites will link to your
home page, so give them the most important keyword phrase you
are optimizing your home page for.
When
you are linking from any page back to your home page, use your
most important keyword phrase in the link. When your home page
is linking to any other page, use the keyword phrase in that link
that the other page is being optimized for.
Don’t
plan on getting much (if any) help by putting keywords or keyword
phrases in your left Nav panel. Google likes keywords in full
sentences. Putting the sentence in a paragraph is even better.
By the way, a sentence according to Google is three or more words
starting with a capital letter and ending with a period or other
punctuation. Stop words such as: “I,” “a,”
“the,” and “of” do NOT count as one of
your three words.
Follow
these rules and your Web site will make a big jump in its relevancy
for your keyword phrases. Following these rules will NOT boost
your PageRank.
To
be #1 or even in the top 10 on the search engines your relevance
for a given keyword phrase is much more important than your PageRank.
For
example, you could have a PageRank of 10 and still not show up
in the top 100 sites when someone is searching for “peanut
butter sandwiches” unless of course, your page is optimized
for (and has a high relevance for) the phrase “peanut butter
sandwiches."
One
final point: Use your keyword phrase in an H1, H2 or H3 headline
followed by a keyword-rich paragraph and then repeat this with
another H1, H2 or H3 headline and another keyword-rich paragraph.
And of course repeat this again.
Use
this format in addition following the 10 rules above and you will
have a page with a high relevance for your keyword phrases.
Don’t
try to optimize a page for more that two or three keyword phrases
and always optimize for keyword phrases and NOT keywords. After
all, the keyword is included within the keyword phrase. Most people
don't search for just one word any more anyway.
I
have seen pages rank #1 with keyword densities form 1% to 20%,
but I usually try to have a keyword phrase density of between
2% to 6%. Sometimes I go up to 10%.
Jerry Minchey
Copyright 2003 - 2004
Jerry Minchey is a long time student and practitioner
of search engine optimization and is the editor of the website, www.SearchEngineU.com
which is dedicated to showing search engine beginners how to achieve
high rankings on Google and other search engines using website optimization
techniques.
