Todays post is about placing your keyphrase or keyword on your page.

There are certain places and locations in your page that you should place the keyphrase you are optimising for. What I am about to tell you is a bit of secret, so you are blessed my fellow reader :D

Of course, I am not going to tell you all my secrets - otherwise I would be out of a job . I work for an SEO + SEM firm as well as my usual CSS/XHTML/PHP/SQL stuff, so I know what I am talking about. Anyway…here it goes….

On Page Search Engine Optimisation

There are 11 ideal places to place your keyphrases on the page in order for search engines to pick up that page for it to rank reasonably well. The below lists is all about on page SEO.

  1. The title tag. Your title tag should contain your keyword and your site name. Preferably in the format such as:

    Your Keyword | Your Site
    Keyword @ Site
    Keyphrase :: Site Name

  2. The domain name. Search engines give huge weight to the keyphrase in the domain name and they usually rank far above competitors, for example - the following domain name would be good for ‘my keyword and phrase’ keyphrase. It is a good idea to separate keywords with a hyphen character (-).

    my-keyword-and-phrase.com

  3. The filename. Search engines also like the keyword in the filename of the page. Again, based on the keyphrase ‘my keyword and phrase’, the following would be a good filename and/or URL;

    my-keyword-and-phrase.html
    my-keyphrase.com/my-kewyword-and-phrase.html

  4. The anchor tag. The anchor tag is an additional way of getting your keyphrase in the URL if you cant get it in the filename or domain. Make this anchor tag available as a link in your page copy. Separate keywords by hypens.

    my-keyword-and-phrase.html#this-is-my-keyword

  5. The bold tag. It is common practise to place the keyword you are optimising for in a bold tag. Do it without making it look like spam. Just once is enough - any more you are spamming. Do this in the main content area of your page copy.
  6. First paragraph. Put the keyphrase in the first paragraph of your landing page copy. Just mention it once, without bold or posh formatting - just put it as normal page copy text.
  7. Last paragraph. Like the first paragraph, in your concluding paragraph of your landing page copy mention the keyphrase. You can use this paragraph as a good opportunity to link to an anchor tag in the page (as previously mentioned).
  8. Heading one tag. Simple one this one. Put the keyphrase you are optimising for in the <h1> tag of your site. Only use one <h1> tag. For other keyword variations, use <h2> and <h3>. Dont use any more lower heading tags.
  9. Meta description. A meta description is displayed in SERP’s. Put your keyphrase in here, it will also help for ranking in organic search results.
  10. Meta keyword. Meta keyword and meta description are the two meta tags that should be used. Yes sure, they may not carry massive weight on page, but it doesnt matter. All these factors add up and your meta keyword tag should contain the keyphrase you are optimising for.
  11. Image alt tag. One image on your page should contain a keyphrase or keyword as its alternate text. Again, not much weight is carried here, but it does help organic search engine ranking results.

Conclusion

Ideally, you should only really target 1 keyphrase per page. However you can focus on 2/3 per page, but then optimising a page for each of those keywords become very difficult. Thats it for now. Good luck optimising!