Using keywords for Google ranking

16 Nov 2015

Hi, I'm Laura from Digital Marketing B&T Ltd. I'm the author of this blog, nice to meet you!

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Choosing keywords for your website content to help your Google ranking is essential for good search-­engine-optimisation (SEO).

 

And a good content strategy, which uses the right keywords, will ensure your website ranks well in Google and attracts the type of visitors you want. Attracting the right type of visitors means a higher chance of visitors buying a service or product.

 

Using keywords in your content that are highly searched for yet not targeted by others and that are relevant to your content goes a long way to winning top placements in Google searches.

What are keywords and how do they relate to Google?

Keywords can be single words or phrases. In terms of Google, they are single words or phrases that people use to find content when they are searching in Google. For the purposes of this article we are going to follow the journeys of several people on Google, searching for things to make with feijoas:

Sally searches in Google for things to do with feijoas. She uses the following search term: 'feijoa recipes'. Feijoa recipes is the keyword in this example.

Jane types into Google 'feijoa cake recipes'. Feijoa cake recipes is the keyword in this example.

Bob enters 'feijoas' into the Google search field. Feijoas is the keyword in this example.

So keywords can be single or several words. The 'right' keywords for your content will be highly searched for in Google that are not already being targeted by too many other websites, that are also highly relevant to your content. For example: Your content might be a feijoa cake recipe. The 'right' keywords for this piece of content to attract people like Sally, Jane and Bob and everyone else searching for feijoa cake recipes might include: feijoa, feijoas, feijoa cake, feijoa cake recipe, feijoa dessert, cooking with feijoas, feijoa recipes, recipes for feijoas, etc. These keywords would all be highly relevant to your content. Keywords less relevant to your content might be: feijoa jam, feijoa chutney recipe, roast lamb and feijoas. So the 'right' keywords for your website content are highly-searched-for words or phrases in Google that are highly relevant to your content that are not being targeted by too many other websites.

How to choose good keywords to optimise your content for Google

Identifying the most highly-searched-for keywords will be covered in a future blog post but in the meantime there are several links at the bottom of this article with more helpful information.

How to apply keywords to optimise your site for Google

There are ways to use keywords for your website content to help your Google ranking for those particular keywords. There are also some helpful (and free tools) that can help you check you have applied them in the right way.  For the purposes of this article we are going to use the keyword feijoa cake recipe (please note this has not been identified by this author as the 'right' keyword for this type of content but we are just using it for the example below):

highly-searched-for keywords or phrases

In your page title, e.g. Delicious Feijoa Cake Recipe. If you are checking the code behind your content (which Google recognises so it's important to ensure it is represented within the code), it will look like:

Delicious Feijoa Cake Recipe

in the URL of your content, e.g. www.yourwebsite.co.nz/delicious-feijoa-cake-recipe/ or if you want a shorter URL: www.yourwebsite.co.nz/feijoa-cake-recipe/

in a heading within your content, e.g. The History Of This Feijoa Cake Recipe. The code behind this content will look like:

Delicious Feijoa Cake Recipe

3 to 4 times within your content (but no more than this as otherwise Google may think your content is spam and won't rank it at all). Ensure your content still reads naturally and doesn't seem too robotic or stilted.

use your keyword in your meta description. This is a short summary (130-160 ish charactors) of your content that appears on Google (more info on this in the linked article below)

use your keyword in the name of your image or embedded video file. To do this you need to go to the file in your media library and change its name to include the keyword, e.g. feijoa-cake-recipe.png.

while still in the image file of your website's media library, ensure you include the keyword in the alt text and the title of your image file you want to optimise for the keyword (more on this in another Yoast article below).

Similarly if you are uploading a video to Youtube and embedding it into your content, include the keyword in its name before you upload it, e.g. feijoa-cake-recipe.mov

Other things to note:

A tool I find super useful is 'Yoast For SEO' which is a plugin for WordPress sites. This plugin is reliable and widely used and helps you by providing windows in which to place your text and tips for how to optimise each post or page even further

Keywords on your website should vary in your pages and/or posts to help optimise your entire website for many different types of people searching with different keywords to find content like yours.

If you would like help optimising your website, please don't hesitate to get in touch - we'd love to help.

More helpful info:

Using keywords on your website from SEOMark.co.uk
How to optimise your web pages and keep Google happy from Wordtracker.com
Yoast For SEO WordPress plugin
'How to create the right meta description' from Yoast.com
'Optimising images for SEO, from Yoast.com