Once you have settled on a combination of keywords that you would like to optimise your site for, it is important to ensure that these keywords are represented in different areas on your home page.
Your keywords should appear in the following places:
1. In your domain name, if possible (eg. www.cheap-hotels.com.au) - this is not always possible if you are working with an established domain, but it can help if you are contemplating a new website.
2. In the page URL – if you are trying to optimise a page for ‘canberra hotels’, then you should try and include these terms in the URL: http://www.getaroom.com.au/Canberra-hotels-list.htm
3. In your page TITLE tag – this is the text that appears at the very top left of the web browser when you view a web page – it is considered one of the most important factors in your search engine optimisation efforts, because this is normally the text that appears as the title of your page in the search engine listings.
4. In your page meta DESCRIPTION tag – hidden to the viewer, but important, as this is often the text that appears in the site description in the search engine listings.
5. In your page meta KEYWORDS tag – hidden to the viewer, not overly important, but worth reviewing.
6. In page headings – H1 (and H2, H3 etc.) headline texts are the texts that are written between the <h1>…</h1> tags in the HTML code of a web page. Some search engines give extra relevance to search terms that appear in the headline texts.
7. In the page body text (preferably in the first sentence of the body text and also consider bolding the keywords, if appropriate, as some search engines give greater weight to bold text)
8. In image ALT tags – this is text that is displayed on a website when the image fails to load or if the browser has turned off the view images function. They are also displayed as a mouseover effect when scrolling over images in Microsoft Internet Explorer. These tags can have some bearing on search engine listings
9. In on-site links anchor text - this is the anchor text that is used in a hyperlink to point to another page on your own site. For example, if I had a page on ‘Canberra Hotels’ and I wanted to optimise for those keywords, I would use Canberra Hotels as my anchor text on another page of my website to link to that page.
10. In on-site links URLs – this is the text contained within a URL that points to another page on your own site. For example, if I had a page on ‘Canberra Hotels’ and I wanted to optimise for those keywords, I would use http://www.getaroom.com.au/canberra-hotels-list.htm as the URL on my website to link to that page.
11. In outbound links anchor text / URL text - whilst less important, some credence is given to anchor text and URL text that links to other websites, although this seems to be a relatively minor factor, and I wouldn’t be providing links to your competitors!
12. In HTML comments – HTML comment tags are “hidden comments” in the HTML code of your web page. They are not visible to the user.
You should ensure that you follow these guidelines when tweaking your on-site keywords:
- CRITICAL – be careful not to include too many instances of the keywords words, as many search engines look unfavourably on sites with high keyword density – they see this as a deliberate strategy to dupe search engines
- Don’t add keywords to headings and body text if they serve to distort the meaning of the page/section – the keywords need to appear naturally in the text, particularly as this text is read by your site visitors.
I often come across websites on the internet that have the same page title for every page on the site. In effect, these sites are telling Google and the other search engines that every page is about the same topic, even though every page is different. Bad move.
