Write Your Keywords for the Front and Back of Your Web Pages

Here are a few things about search-engine optimizing copy to keep in mind:

1. When people talk about keywords, what they’re really talking about are keyword phrases.

2. Stuffing the front of your pages with your keywords willy-nilly isn’t going to work. Searchbots look at keyphrases and sequences of keywords, the proximity of keywords to each other, where they appear on the page and at synonyms that are contextually related to your keywords. Over do it, and searchbot will recognize your stuffing the page and calculate it’s all spam.

3. Over doing your keywords will also make your readers seasick. Vary your sentences and work on making your writing compelling. You can keep the reader in mind and make your Web design and blogs search-engine friendly without being boring.

Here are a few tips for keyword integration and SEO:

1. Titles

Your keywords should be on the top shelf, where are the good stuff is always displayed in liquor stores (or “packies” as we say here around Boston). Put keywords into the titles of your post but don’t forget you’re just as interested in writing compelling, descriptive titles that pull in readers as you are in feeding searchbots.

2.Headlines

Also use your keywords in headlines and put them first when you can. The head should express one complete idea or thought, which is what Sister Mary Agnus taught me in parochial school. If I didn’t think so, she’d whack me with a ruler, so it must be true.

3. Subheads

Subheads break up long blocks of copy and give readers some white space to help them scan. It’s always better to be clear than cute. I’m not always terrific at practicing what I preach, I’ll admit. Searchbots give more weight to subheads, so put your keywords there too.

4. Body copy

Put your keyword phrases toward the top of pages and in opening paragraphs. While you’re at it, anticipate the sequence of words someone might enter into a search engine and make sure those on your site match up. If your business is designing motorcycle engines for drag racers, your keywords might be: motorcycle, engines, drag racing. Now, if someone needs a fancy motor, what would they enter into a search bar? It will probably be something like “drag racing motorcycle engines.” That a keyword phrase to aim for.

Your pages should be keyword rich but not keyword dense. Searchbots tend to suspect too much of a good thing is bad. Some researchers claim keyword density should vary between 5% and 20% of the words on a page. A searchbot could interpret pages that exceed those numbers as spam and ignore them, they say. Sounds good to me.

Searchbots give more weight to bold, italic and underlined fonts. Not many writers underline copy because readers might confuse those words as links. “You pays your money and you takes your choice,” my old man says way too often.

Omit “Welcome to…” and “Our company is…” and other needless words. Get busy and start your sentences with keywords related to the products and services you sell.

Put your keywords into press releases, buyer’s guides, how-tos, instructions manuals—everything you can get your hands on. Use HTML and PDFs.

5. Numbers and bullets

As I noted the other day, readers love numbered and bulleted lists. They’re easy to scan and contain loads of information but don’t take up much real estate. Those are primo places for keywords.

6. Links

Use keywords in your links and make your links descriptive. You need more than click here and continue
links. They must say something meaningful so the reader knows exactly where that link will take them. The other reason is that should others link to your site, they’ll use the same keywording that you’ve used and that will help raise your flag a bit higher. As I mentioned the other day, links also break up blocks of copy and help the reader skim.

8. Call to Action

The profs in every ad-writing class I enrolled in in college hammered on the need to include a call to action in my copy. What do you want the reader to do? Send money to you in Nigeria? Marry your sister? Whatever it is, point them in the right direction. Reinforce your call to action with your keywords. I covered a lot of that in AIDA is an Old-School Writing Technique that Still Works in a Web World earlier in the week.

Conclusion

Keyword-rich content matters most. The trick is to use keywords to guide readers and to feed searchbots at the same. Keep in mind the reader comes first–always. If you write for the back of your pages, the front of your pages won’t work hard enough for you.

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