So, armed with your keyword list, here’s what you need to do to best utilize them.
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 6:56 am
Every organization wants their website to appear on page one for a search. We get it. We also try to educate our clients – especially those in competitive industries – that search engine optimization (SEO) takes time. It’s a long-term endeavor and expectations need to be established at the outset. One of our clients recently said it was “like pushing Jell-O uphill.” Love it!
That said, there are SEO best kazakhstan whatsapp number practices that most agencies follow (or organizations if you’re going it alone) to give their client websites the best possible opportunity to rank and appear in the SERPs.
You’ll want to start with keywords. I’m not going to get into a lot of detail here as I outlined some good tips on building a keyword list at this blog recently. That said you’ll want to make sure you have a well thought out list of keywords that are not too competitive, generate some decent monthly searches, and are not all ‘head’ keywords. In other words, be sure to have long tail keywords as part of your list. More than ever, people are using three, four, and more keywords when conducting a Google search.
8 SEO Best Practices for Using Keywords
1. Update your Meta title tags. If you hover over a browser tab what displays in the title tag for that web page. It’s also what search engine’s display when providing search results, as shown below.8 SEO Best Practices for Using Keywords - Puppies SERPIn this example above, the title (in purple) contains a keyword – “pug puppies for sale.” It can also contain a secondary keyword as well if there’s available space. After the vertical slash (|) the name of the company is displayed. Many companies like to lead with their brand name, but’s best to lead with the non-branded keyword. Be sure to make sure you do not have any duplicate Meta titles across your site, as that is frowned upon. The optimum length of the title should be between 65 and 68 characters. Any more than that and Google will truncate it.
2. Update your Meta descriptions. In the above example, the Meta description is below the rating. Be sure to use your main keyword, and possibly another variant for the page, in the description. You’ll see in the example that “pug puppies for sale” is in bold. Like with Meta titles, descriptions should be unique across the site, so avoid duplicates. As far as length is concerned, Google raised the character length to 320 in December, but it seems that they are back to truncating them at 160 – 170 characters once again.
One note here… Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor according to Google. However, they have a direct impact on your organic listing’s click-through-rate (CTR) and bounce rate. Therefore, it’s imperative to give them the attention they deserve.
3. Update your image tags. Alt tags and image titles should be updated to include the primary keyword for the page where that image resides. The Alt text you assign for an image let’s the search engine know what the image is – since it can’t see images themselves. If you ever visit a site and the image is not rendering the Alt tag is usually what you see inside the X-ed out spot the image would have appeared. The image title is a pop up that is displayed when you hover over an image with your mouse.
4. Update your website heading tags. The H1, H2, H3, etc. heading tags of your site should contain keywords. There can be multiple H2, H3 tags but only one H1 tag for each website page on your site. Use your main keyword in the H1 tag and variants for that page in the H2, H3, etc. tags. While it’s important to use keywords in the heading tags you will need to use caution, as some CSS can handle only certain length tags before they wrap or otherwise break the look and feel of the page. Be sure to work with your developer to implement these recommendations.
That said, there are SEO best kazakhstan whatsapp number practices that most agencies follow (or organizations if you’re going it alone) to give their client websites the best possible opportunity to rank and appear in the SERPs.
You’ll want to start with keywords. I’m not going to get into a lot of detail here as I outlined some good tips on building a keyword list at this blog recently. That said you’ll want to make sure you have a well thought out list of keywords that are not too competitive, generate some decent monthly searches, and are not all ‘head’ keywords. In other words, be sure to have long tail keywords as part of your list. More than ever, people are using three, four, and more keywords when conducting a Google search.
8 SEO Best Practices for Using Keywords
1. Update your Meta title tags. If you hover over a browser tab what displays in the title tag for that web page. It’s also what search engine’s display when providing search results, as shown below.8 SEO Best Practices for Using Keywords - Puppies SERPIn this example above, the title (in purple) contains a keyword – “pug puppies for sale.” It can also contain a secondary keyword as well if there’s available space. After the vertical slash (|) the name of the company is displayed. Many companies like to lead with their brand name, but’s best to lead with the non-branded keyword. Be sure to make sure you do not have any duplicate Meta titles across your site, as that is frowned upon. The optimum length of the title should be between 65 and 68 characters. Any more than that and Google will truncate it.
2. Update your Meta descriptions. In the above example, the Meta description is below the rating. Be sure to use your main keyword, and possibly another variant for the page, in the description. You’ll see in the example that “pug puppies for sale” is in bold. Like with Meta titles, descriptions should be unique across the site, so avoid duplicates. As far as length is concerned, Google raised the character length to 320 in December, but it seems that they are back to truncating them at 160 – 170 characters once again.
One note here… Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor according to Google. However, they have a direct impact on your organic listing’s click-through-rate (CTR) and bounce rate. Therefore, it’s imperative to give them the attention they deserve.
3. Update your image tags. Alt tags and image titles should be updated to include the primary keyword for the page where that image resides. The Alt text you assign for an image let’s the search engine know what the image is – since it can’t see images themselves. If you ever visit a site and the image is not rendering the Alt tag is usually what you see inside the X-ed out spot the image would have appeared. The image title is a pop up that is displayed when you hover over an image with your mouse.
4. Update your website heading tags. The H1, H2, H3, etc. heading tags of your site should contain keywords. There can be multiple H2, H3 tags but only one H1 tag for each website page on your site. Use your main keyword in the H1 tag and variants for that page in the H2, H3, etc. tags. While it’s important to use keywords in the heading tags you will need to use caution, as some CSS can handle only certain length tags before they wrap or otherwise break the look and feel of the page. Be sure to work with your developer to implement these recommendations.