The When and Where of the Importance of Your Keywords

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Keywords have been discussed many times before and will continue to be discussed well into the future. It is critical that your content is written for the right reasons. The keywords must be strategically placed at the most appropriate time.

If you don’t pay careful attention to your keywords and how you use them in your content, you may miss the mark and the consequence may be that your search engine rankings are not as high as you would like them to be. Your rankings should be as high as possible on the page and they should definitely appear on the first page. The subject of your content should be absolutely clear to the search engines so that your rankings are high. You may be wondering exactly what you need to do to ensure that your content appears high in the search engine rankings because of the keywords. Keyword placement will make all of the difference when it comes to the success of your business.

The importance of title tags

The most critical factor when it comes to your search engine rankings is the title tag. If you want to allow people to find you based on a specific keyword or key phrase, you need to make sure that it is in the title. Additionally, you need to make sure that the exact place on your website where you want people to go has those keywords or key phrases so that there can be a match and the people will land exactly where you want them to land. This is of benefit to your audience and it is of benefit to you. This will give an extremely clear idea about what your business and your offerings are all about to the people seeking the information and, at the same time, it will satisfy the search engines’ need to know exactly what you do so that they can rank your business appropriately.

It is possible with certain Content Management Systems (such as WordPress, for example) to put in a title tag that is different than the actual title of your article. Another tool that may help you in this regard is one of the many SEO plugins. You can download them and these tools allow you to adjust your meta-data (title tags included) for everything that you post and all of your website pages. This is great because you can write an effective headline that may draw your audience members and may attract the search engines for high rankings at the same time.

URL slugs

It is important to include keywords in your URL slug (a slug is a part of the URL that identifies a page using human-readable keywords) of a new page that you are writing and posting. If you have keywords in your URL slug, it will help your page to get noticed in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The correct use of your keywords  will really allow people to find you.

Description meta-tags

Description meta-tags are the the words that search engines commonly display under your page’s search result blurb directly under the title tag. description meta-tags don’t really  have any effect on the search engine rankings; however, they are important. The description meta-tag is a short pitch (160 characters) whose purpose is to attract a person who is searching the web to click on your page instead of someone else’s page. The reason that the keywords are important in your description meta-tags is that it makes your page look more appealing and people will feel more compelled to click on it. The more precise you are with your meta-tags, the more inclined people will be to clicking on your page.

Keyword and content density

Mixing your keywords with the rest of your content on your pages will definitely have an effect on the search engine rankings. The reason for that is that it is powerful information that communicates to the search engines exactly what the page is trying to say. Of course, you need to be careful not to abuse the use of your keywords. Your keyword density must be pretty exact. There are different schools of thought when it comes to keyword density. Some people feel that putting in a keyword once every one hundred words is appropriate and others feel that either once a paragraph is a good amount. Make sure not to become more concerned with keyword density than satisfying the needs of your audience.

Links and anchor text

The text of your links is anchor text. Anchor text is essential because it tells the search engines what your page is about. The concept is very important. If you use anchor text that is rich in keywords, you are letting the search engines know exactly what your pages are about and how the pages should be organized on the search engine pages. You should never have multiple pages on your website that compete for the same keywords. Sometimes, the repetition of keywords is inevitable, depending on how much content you are producing.

Conclusion

It is well established that keywords are critical to your business when it comes to search engine optimization. If you pay attention to the information in this article, you will achieve rankings that will allow the members of your target audience to find you and to begin to interact with you. You need to let them find you easily so that you can start to establish relationships.  Once you have done that, you will need to reach out and interact with them so that your relationship with them has a strong and fruitful foundation that will last for a very long time.

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Author

  • Michael Cohn

    Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has decades of experience in IT and web technologies. Michael founded CompuKol Communications to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their visibility and reputation. CompuKol consults, creates, and implements communication strategies for small businesses to monopolize their markets with a unique business voice, vision, and visibility. Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

1 Response

  1. Alan says:

    Michael,
    A very informative post.
    I am a web content writer with a fairly decent of SEO. It is my understanding that the Panda and Farmer updates to Google's algorithms penalize key word stuffing, somehow reward content and love media other than text as they rely sole on tags for things the robots do not understand.
    Links in are important too.
    What is your understanding of these updates and your recommendations to bloggers and site content writers to stay atop the game?