Nail your website keywords to improve SEO & website clicks

Adding website keywords is vital to your marketing strategy and in helping your ideal clients find you online. You’ve seen and heard all the experts talking about how important it is. Actually doing it right though can be easier said than done if you don’t have a guide.

Don’t worry though, nailing this isn’t as difficult as you think. Like many things, there’s a formula; once you have that, things get much simpler. All you have to do is follow it, and watch your results improve!

In this article, I’ve set out, step-by-step how to implement your website keywords in a simple checklist. When you’re done, you can finally get more, higher-quality leads landing on your website.

First, let’s quickly cover the terminology:

Website Keywords: These are a word or phrase that tell search engines what the content on your website is about. It also refers to what people pop into search engines. If what they’re searching for matches the keywords used on your site, that’s how you show up in the search results. Your position in the results (ranking) depends on a number of factors. Getting your website keywords right is a very important one in your overall SEO strategy.

Focus keyword: You may have several keywords that you want your content to rank for, especially if your content is long. The focus keyword, however, is the primary keyword or phrase you want to rank for. It is used in your title, URL, meta description, text and images.

Long-tail keywords: These contain 3 or more words and are really effective in targeting a very specific market. For example, “Life Coach” is a very broad keyphrase and would have a tonne of competition. Therefore, it would be difficult to rank well for it. A long-tail keyword though such as “Melbourne Self Esteem Coach” is more specific, making it easier to rank as well as reach a more targeted audience.

SEO: Simply put, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a combination of practices put in place to improve your appearance and ranking in search engine results. It includes things like keywords, using headings correctly, image alt tags, appropriate linking and more. As this article is focused on optimising your website keywords, we’ll just stick to that.

First, choose which website keywords to use

You need to find which search terms your target market is entering into search engines. Don’t just assume you know them. For best results, take the time to do some research. You might be surprised and even uncover some interesting and useful results.

For example, say you’re a relationship coach who offers support to those going through a divorce. Terms your potential clients might search for could include “How to cope with divorce”, or “dealing with divorce.” If you’ve written an article on these specific topics and optimised your keywords, you not only increase your chances of ranking higher (and getting more clicks!) but also increase your chances of reaching a very targeted audience and your ideal clients.

The point here is that you know your business inside out. So, your mindset of what you would search for online will vary from the mindset of your target market. Take the example above again. Some people may not even be aware of coaches that specialise in helping people through a divorce. So, they’re unlikely to search for your services specifically (e.g. “Divorce Coach”). After using the above search terms though, they could come across your website and find a really helpful article, initiating their customer journey with you. ?

Some tools to help you with your website keywords research:

• AnswerThePublic – get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of your customers. You can search 3 keywords per day for free.
• Google – pop in a keyword and look through the results for inspiration for more. Plus, down the bottom, Google even generates a list of “Related Searches”
• Google’s Keyword Planner – Find the right keywords with their research tool.
• Google Trends – This is a handy tool that analyses the popularity of search queries and compares search volume
• Ubersuggest is great for helping you discover new keywords. You can get a lot of data with the free option.

Once you have your keywords and have determined your focus keyword for your page, post, product etc. It’s time to optimise them. Here’s how…

1. The Title Tag

This is the blue link in Google search result pages that users click to go to your website. It is propagated either from your content or whatever you input into your SEO plugin or app (for WordPress users I recommend Yoast or RankMath).

Tips:

• Your focus keyword should be within the title and for best results, place it right at the beginning
• Your page title should be a H1 heading and there should only be one H1 heading, the rest should be sub-headings; H2-H6)
• Always try to include emotional words, power words or numbers (try Coschedules headline analyser for more info… and to make your titles more engaging!)
• It should be no more than 55-60 characters in length to ensure the whole title is visible (on desktops and mobile devices)
• You should always have unique title tags, don’t duplicate the same title tags on more than one page of your website

Example:

Focus Keyword: coping with divorce
Title Tag: Coping with Divorce: An essential guide to heal and move forward

2. The Meta Description

This is the snippet of text that appears below your Title Tag in search result pages. If the keywords being searched for are within your meta description, search engines will also make them bold, making them more visible and increasing your chances of click-throughs.

Tips:

• Include your focus keyword in the meta description. There isn’t an ideal location, just as long as it’s in there. Also, be sure to accurately summarise your page’s content, and make it engaging.
• It should be no more than 155-160 characters in length to ensure the whole snippet is visible (on desktops and mobile devices)
• As with title tags, you should always have unique meta descriptions, don’t duplicate them on more than one page of your website

Example:

Focus Keyword: coping with divorce
Meta Description: Coping with divorce can be intensely painful, causing substantial grief & stress. Our tips will help you process your emotions, heal & start to move on

4. URL

This is your page link. For example, www.yoursite.com

Tips:

• Remove less powerful words or stop words (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.) to make it simple and precise, just make sure your focus keyword is still in there and that it makes sense.
• Shorter URLs have been shown to have a better chance of ranking higher than long URLs. There’s no hard and fast rule for the length, but aim to keep it as close to 75 characters or less. See our examples below.
• Use all lowercase letters and separate each word with a hyphen (-), don’t use underscores (_)
• They should be easily readable both by humans and search engines. In this URL for example, www.mysite.com/post?ID77&kw=coping+divorce – you can guess what the page’s content will include but it isn’t as clear as it could be
• Avoid using dynamic URLs when possible. This is a URL where the content for the page is pulled from the database. You can usually spot them as they include characters like: ? + &. They look messy and aren’t SEO friendly
• Don’t keyword stuff, your focus keyword should only be in the URL once.

Example:

URL from the title:
www.yoursite.com/coping-with-divorce-an-essential-guide-to-heal-and-move-forward/
URL shortened and stop words removed:
www.yoursite.com/coping-with-divorce-guide-move-forward/
URL with focus keyphrase only:
www.yoursite.com/coping-with-divorce/

5. Keyphrase in Introduction

Your focus keyphrase should also be at the very beginning of your content. This reinforces what your content is about and also reassures site visitors that what they have clicked through to is what they are looking for (i.e. it’s not clickbait!)

Tips:

• Different plugins/apps will give different guidelines, such as it being within the first 10% of the content or within the first 100 words. A good rule of thumb is to make sure it is included within the first sentence
• This first sentence should be SEO optimised, but also still needs to make sense and sound natural. Another rule of thumb; write for your site visitors first and Google second

5. Sub-Headings and page content

We’ve already discussed including your focus keyphrase in your title (which if your website is set up properly should be a H1 tag). You should also include it in your sub-headings, i.e. H2, H3, etc. and body content (paragraphs).

Tips:

• Google pays the most attention to your H1 and H2 headings. However, the others are not ignored and should also be considered in your website keywords strategy.
• Many site visitors scan content, that’s why it’s also important to include your keywords in your headings to help grab their attention
• Seeing as the focus keywords should be related to the topic of the post, including them within your content (paragraphs, not just headings) should happen naturally, just ensure you don’t overdo it. Not only does it get irritating for readers to see the same words over and over again, but including them too many times can lead you to be penalised by Google if they see it as keyword stuffing
• There is no set rule for how many times your keyword should appear in your content, especially as the amount of content each page/post has can vary significantly. As a guide, aim for a density of 1-1.5%. What this means is for every 100 words, the keyword should appear 1 to 1.5 times.
• If in doubt, you are better off having a low keyword density than one that is too high. Keep your language natural; if the search engines don’t penalise you for it, your site visitors definitely will!

6. Image Name & ALT tags

An ALT tag specifies an alternate text for an image and improves accessibility for people who either can’t see the images or if they failed to load. Furthermore, they help search engines better understand not only what the image is about, but what your page’s subject matter is. They are also useful as anchor text should the image be used as a link.

Tips:

• Make the ALT text useful, informative and use keywords appropriately
• Avoid filling all image ALT tags with the same keywords over and over (this is also keyword stuffing)
• Don’t forget the image file name: Name it appropriately with hyphens separating each word, no funny characters, and all lowercase
• Naming your image and using appropriate ALT tags will also help in having your image show up in Google Image search results

Here’s a handy article on how to add ALT tags for your WordPress website as well as some more best practice guidelines.

And voilà, that’s it! ?

On a final note, I fully appreciate that for many people, optimising your website keywords isn’t as much fun as other aspects of your business. Some put it off altogether because it’s boring, or they don’t think they will get it right. But even some SEO is still far better than none. So, have a crack and do the best you can. Give yourself time to get better at it and before you know it, it will just be part of the routine that you barely notice each time you create new content.

The whole point of this article is to help improve your chances of getting more eyes on your website, more leads and more conversions. Yep, this stuff isn’t glamorous. But, it’s a vital tool in making the above happen. Again, it may be tedious and individually each item on the checklist probably doesn’t seem that consequential. Remember though, “A waterfall begins from only one drop of water. Look what comes from that…”