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Fifteen places you must put your Keyword Phrase and the why behind it…

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Welcome to another direct, to the point and content rich edition of The Keyword Informer.

In this issue, we’re going to look at the various places you want to utilize and place your preferred keyword phrases.

I have already conveyed a number of the points that will follow in different articles, discussions, and especially in the weekly NicheBOT Quick Fix Clinic and Live Q&A Show. However, I was looking to create a combined list (a sort of checklist) that one can easily reference to make sure they are not missing any hotspots. ;)

And rather than include a simple quick list of all the places to put your keyword phrases, I’ve included a short discussion as to the why behind it so you have the proper foundation in the placement of your keyword phrases.


Some of the following places are obvious, some of them may not be. Either way, I’ve included visual aids within this article as well for the next time you approach your next website renovation or promotional project.

Let’s get started.

1. Keyword phrases in your domain names - some may initially think this is for some huge SEO (search engine optimization) benefit to have the keyword phrase in your domain name. Wrongo!

As most of NicheBOT subscribers know, offpage factors that entail getting backlinks to a site can heavily outweigh any type of SEO benefit from having the keyword phrase in the domain name.

The main reason to have a keyword phrase in the domain name is that the 4th line of your search engine listing shows your domain name. Having a keyword phrase as part of your domain name can have a very big psychological pull on web surfers.

Sure — if you’ve got some good brand awareness like NicheBOT.com — it’s not all that necessary. But if you’re building out targeted travel sites for a specific region, then having a targeted domain name with specific geographic regions in the domain name can get the click at the search engine listing level before another domain name does.

Here’s a snapshot for the search engine listing for “dog toys”

Domain name snapshot

2. Keyword phrases in the URL of your website pages – when creating a name for your web pages, rather than naming them with some number or some weird funky name, put your main keyword phrase in the URL, sort of like this…
Keyword phrase in the site URL

There are two main benefits:

a. Once again, the fourth line in your search engine listing is your websites URL and there’s a psychological tug on the web surfer when they see the keyword phrase they typed into the search engine and then subsequently see the URL in your search engine listing.

Remember, you are competing against nine other sites on the search engine listings page as well as multiple Pay-Per-Click ads on either of the big search engines.

Having the keyword phrase in your URL provides additional relevance that your search engine listing is what the web surfer is looking for.

b. Should you submit an article to article directories, there are some that do not happen to allow keyword phrases to act as anchor text in a hyperlink back to your site. What they end up doing is using the URL back to your site as the hyperlink. Since you have the main keyword phrase in your URL which gets turned into a hyperlink, you will get credit for that keyword phrase in the backlink to your site.

In the screenshot sample above, NicheBOT would get credit for the term “market research.” Oh, and you want to make sure and place a hyphen “-” between the words in your keyword phrase of your URL.

3. Keyword phrases in the <title> tags of your web pages – this is probably the most important place on your web page to place your keyword phrase and secondary keyword phrases. Why?

a. It’s the top line of your search engine listing and what sets the tone of your search engine listing.

b. This is a primary indicator to the search engines that you are optimizing this specific web page for the keywords in the title tag.

Some like to stuff keywords into the title tag. I like to create the title tag as if it’s a headline in my copy for the web page. Naturally, it’s the top line of the search engine listing and most likely the first thing the web surfer will read.

The main thrust of your search engine listing should be geared toward getting the click. That’s it. Here’s a sample…

keyword phrase in the title tag

All your title tags should different from web page to web page, just as each web page varies in its keyword focus.

In order to optimize the clickthrough rate of your search engine listing, you can test your title tag by changing it and checking your logs (or Google Analytics account) to see how many more or less clicks you get.

When you decide to test your title tag, be sure to look daily at when the top line of your search engine listing changes so you can log the date to begin your testing and refer to your website’s traffic logs.

4. Keyword phrase in the meta description tag – when a visitor enters a keyword into a search engine and gets results back, search engines tend to highlight the keyword phrases to mark relevance to the visitor’s search.

The meta description tag on each of web page ends up being the 2nd and 3rd line of your search engine listing (or, alternatively, the first sentence extracted from the actual web page). Any relevant keywords in this tag will also get highlighted for a web surfer in your search engine listing.

keyword phrase in the meta description tag

This is yet another psychological component of your search engine listing and using keywords in the tag could impact your visitor clicking on your listing rather than the others located on the page.

In the meta tag description, I usually construct a more descriptive sentence using the main keyword phrase that flows from the title tag and gives a little more detail to the visitor needed to get them to click over and check out the target web page.

The meta tag description is expressed like this in your web page:

<meta name=”description” content=”Keyword rich descriptive content here”>

You may want to make some convincing statements in this meta description tag. I’ve seen some people that even use their phone number and a strong price guarantee.

5. Keyword phrase in the first sentence of the first paragraph of your page – another great way to optimize each web page for a search engine besides including the keyword phrase in your <title> tag and meta description tag would be to include your keyword phrase in the first sentence of your first paragraph.

keyword phrase in the first sentence of the first paragraph of body copy

6. Keyword phrases sprinkled throughout the body of copy on a web page – you want to have a conservative sprinkling of the main keyword you are focusing on throughout the web page and use other related keyword phrases that may be naturally occurring when discussing the topic of your main keyword phrase.

This is a great time to use NicheBOT’s 1-Click LSI tool that will find a number of related keyword phrass that may be worthy to bring up in a particular web page.

I believe it’s safe to stay within a keyword density range of 1%-3%. That is, how many times your keyword phrase appears throughout the body of copy. One percent keyword density would mean that the keyword phrase would show up once for every 100 words on a web page.

However, I personally put more focus on writing the page first for the web visitor in mind. I then go back and put focus on making sure the web page is optimized for the keyword without overdoing the sprinkling of keyword phrases throughout the entire copy on the page. ;)

7. Keyword Phrases in your site’s Navigation – there are still so many websites I come across that use the word “Home” in the hyperlink that is part of their site’s navigation back to the home page.

Just as you would use a keyword phrase in an external hyperlink pointing toward your website that would count as a backlink, why not use a keyword rich link in your website’s navigation pointing to an interior page? This helps tell the search engines what that interior page, or home page, is about.

Keyword phrase in the navigation

You’ll notice on NicheBOT’s home page that instead of using just the word “Home” for the link back to the home page, we preface the word “Home” with the keyword phrase “Keyword Research” to make it “Keyword Research Home.” This tells the search engines that the home page is relevant to “keyword research” and not just the word “home.”

Make an audit of your navigation and find a way, if possible, to place a one or two word phrase that gives the web page the link is pointing to more relevance. And if you happen to be using images that are part of your sites navigation, it may be time to consider a site redesign or find a way to turn those images into text using CSS (cascading style sheets).

8. Keyword phrases used in hyperlinks in the body of your copy pointing to internal pages of your site – similarly discussed in the point number 7, if you have a web page on your site focused around a keyword phrase and you want to reference another internal web page somewhere in the body of your copy, use a keyword phrase in the hyperlink pointing to that internal web page.

In fact, use a keyword phrase that is relevant to the focus of the web page you are pointing that internal hyperlink to. The keyword phrase you choose to use in that hyperlink pointing to the internal page will give that page more relevance in the eyes of the search engines.

9. Keyword phrases in the links pointing back from your articles – this is an obvious one for some, but I still look through Ezine Articles and still see a lot of authors just using their site URLs with no keyword phrases in their hyperlinks pointing back to their sites. What a shame! Why not get credit for a backlink, ya know?

I also see a lot of hyperlinks that point in toward the home page and the home page only. Another mistake!

As you can see from the screenshot below, I like to use at least two links to two different pages. And since I know that I have plenty of links pointing at NicheBOT’s home page, both the links on the screenshot below are pointing to internal pages.

keyword phrases in the article directories

What I also like to do is rotate a whole variety of keyword phrases in the hyperlinks (resource box) shown above. This gives some keyword phrase variation when submitting one article to a number of different directories.

I always talk about alleviating patterns where possible. Search engines look for commonly recurring patterns. And an easy pattern to catch would be using the same keyword phrase over and over in the same article submitted to many article directories.

Some article directories even allow you to place HTML hyperlinks with anchor text (keyword phrases) right in the body of the article, but you should check on the rules of each individual article directory if that’s allowed.

I just recently received notice from Ezine Articles that they will soon be allowing authors to submit articles with just two self-serving links within each article, rather than four.

The optimum way to submit articles and make sure they stick through duplicate content filters is to find software that allows you to re-write certain portions of an article. I have found one such site called SubmitYourArticle.com.

10. Keyword phrases in the links pointing back from your press releases – another great place to use keyword phrases and a way to get some keyword rich inbound links to your site is using press release distribution.

keyword phrase used in a press release

If you can spare the extra expense, and it’s well worth it, you’ll want to use the SEO enhanced submission that PR Web Direct allows you to use. They allow you to use 1 keyword rich hyperlink for every 100 words in your press release.

So if you have a 900 word press release, you can easily get 9 keyword rich hyperlinks pointing back to 9 different pages on your website using your preferred keyword phrases.

That’s powerful if you ask me and since PR Web is a highly spidered web site and they have great distribution channels, you’ll get a good number of inbound links from just one distributed press release.

Besides that, whoever ends up viewing your press release online can jump directly from your press release through one of those keyword rich hyperlinks directly to the relevant page of interest to them. Talk about instant gratification!

11. Keyword phrases used in your blog commenting efforts – another great way to place keyword phrases and get inbound links to your site(s) that get you credit in the search engines is commenting on blogs that are designated as “do follow.”

“Do follow” blogs are blogs that do not use “no follow” tags. “No follow” tags do not give you credit for a backlink to your site, but you can still receive indirect website traffic from the blog itself.

When commenting on a blog, you’ll fill out the “Name,” “URL,” “Email” and “Comment” portion of the form on a blog. When entering your name, you’ll use your first name with a dash and a keyword phrase. In other words, something like this:

Name: Jim – keyword research

Whatever URL you enter in the URL field, the”Name” field will turn into the keyword rich hyperlinked text.

Some blog commenters end up using a hyperlink within the body of their comment, and that may be the wrong etiquette to use when commenting on a blog. So the best thing to do would be to see how other commenters are allowed to hyperlink to their site and proceed accordingly.

12. Keyword phrases in your forum signature file – another great way to use your keyword phrases and gain inbound links from your helpfulness on forums is to have keyword rich hyperlinks pointing to your sites from your signature file. Like so…

keyword phrase in sig file of forum posts

Not only is it a great way to promote your site, but the search engines will follow your keyword rich hyperlinks and give you credit for the backlink.

By having more identities in more forums and using various keyword phrases, you’ll gain more search engine power from your keyword rich hyperlinks.

Of course, if you use a tracking URL that redirects visitors to the target web page so you can track how many clicks you get from a forum, then you will not get credit for a backlink from the search engines. However, you can just as easily track clicks from forums by looking at your website’s traffic logs or by using Google Analytics.

13. Keyword phrases in your Pay-Per-Click ads – another place to have your keyword phrases show up is in your PPC ad campaigns. This is usually done by what’s called “phrase matching.”

keyword phrases in your PPC ads.

This is another hypnotic element that can trigger a web surfer to click on your Pay-Per-Click ad versus another ad on the page.

Prior to drawing any conclusions, the best way to measure the true validity of this is to test it for yourself.

14. Keyword phrases in the titles and tags of your Video Submissions – much like the title tag of your site which becomes the first line of your search engine listing, the Title of your video will become the first line of your search engine listing. So you definitely want to get your keyword phrase and a secondary keyword phrase in there like so:

keyword phrase in video submissions
In the video submission form of the site you submit to, you’ll also have a chance to put keywords in as tags that will allow your video to be categorized for it’s specific genre.

Without a doubt, the most important place to put your keyword phrase is in the title of your video.

15. Keyword phrases in your bookmarked URLs – and last but not of least importance is making sure to include a keyword phrase when bookmarking your own URLs to social bookmarking sites such as digg.com and others.

keyword phrases in social bookmarked items

Social bookmarking can give some really quick search engine benefits and increased rankings in the immediate future. So you’ll want to use your primary keyword phrase in the title of your bookmarked items.

While there may be “no follow” tags in place at a good number of the social bookmark sites, there is still evidence that indicates that search engines do follow the links and this helps for fast indexing of web sites.

Should you write some really sticky content that gets bookmarked a lot — you can easily climb in the rankings of the actual site’s internal search structure that can bring you a flood of website traffic. This is also known as the “digg effect.” As a side note, these social bookmarking sites are great for research on popular articles and the keywords being used.

Places NOT to use your Keyword Phrases

You’ll notice that through out this article, I did not mention anything about using your keyword phrases in your meta keyword tags as well as alt text in your images. Here’s why.

Meta keyword tags are pretty much worthless to the large search engines. While they are still used in very minor search engines, this does not warrant the time or effort to focus your energies on this aspect of your web page. Furthermore, when you use your keyword phrases in your meta tags, this allows other webmasters to conduct keyword research right from your own site as they use site scrapers that pull keywords right from your meta tags.

Alt text in images tend to be a place that webmasters stuff keywords repetitively and search engines nowadays frown upon this. Why take the chance in getting your web page penalized for over-stuffing keywords when there are so many places noted above to put your keyword phrase? It’s probably best to use various alt text in your images that relate to exactly what the image is about. This begs you not to use the same keyword phrase over and over again just to try and improve your search engine rankings.

Now that you’ve got the full scoop of where to place your keyword phrases and where not to, it’s time to put this to good use. In fact, print this out.

You may perhaps even want to go over your future plans for articles, press releases, blog commenting and also go back over your web pages and re-optimize them accordingly.

As I discover more and more places to properly put your keyword phrases, I’ll continually update this article as a central depository. However, I believe I got the main ones.

If you feel I’ve missed some hotspots, please let me know by leaving your comment below and we’ll add to it.

Even if you feel I’ve covered the most important ones, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article below.

Thanks so much for reading through the end and make sure to tell a friend. ;)

See you on the next issue.

Best of success,

Jim Morris, Founder

NicheBOT – “Finds exactly what people search for.”

Posted by The NicheBOT Guy on Friday, May 16, 2008 at 12:30 am 
Filed under keyword research · Tagged with

  • I have to agree with SEO Birmingham. Having the exact keyword in the domain name helps.
  • Good list, but not all are equally important - if you do a little less of X then you just add for Y.
  • This is vauble and good advice, it starts off with some wuite simple pointer but really becomes very advances towards the end. I esspecially like the sectrion on where NOT to put your keywords - great informative reading that we can all learn from.

    Oh and just for the record I dont think Key words in your domains are a bad thing, but i dont think they are a massive benift. Its more a benifit for the user rather than the SE in my book.

    Jon
  • If I am honest I have to say I am confused, i was always under the impression that keywords domain were very important. Then again, perhaps Google would consider domain names from LSA point of view?

    Now that would be interesting.
  • To the point and well written, I will be check back to this site again and again now i have found it.

    I am not so sure if the keyword domains have a massive advantage these days in terms of Search Engine Optimisation - but what the hey!

    Thanks for the useful advice and discussion, much love.
  • You make a good point about having a key phrase in your domain name or URL, in the fact that some websites do not allow you to add anchor text to your links, so this helps not only if you are trying to build back links yourself or if people are naturally linking to your website.

    regards

    WDM
  • Keyword phrases in your domain names - some may initially think this is for some huge SEO (search engine optimization) benefit to have the keyword phrase in your domain name. Wrongo - I have so many key word domains and they seem to rank well for the search term - I think I have to disagree with you on this one.

    Rice
  • Great article, Really very interesting. I would say I have learned many of the points you mention and it was good to have them reinforced on your site. this is the first time I really can see the relative weight of each keyword placement, as usual, you have a gift for cutting to the chase on explaining these things, without going short on details.

    Thanks Much.

    Clare
  • Wow, Jim, this IS a doozie. Looks like you have covered all of the ones we normally try to take care of. Wish I had an article like this to guide me when I started out! Thanks. It's good to have a list to check that you are not missing anything
  • Cool! Very informative and in the right sequence...look forward to see more from you :-)

    JP
  • Nice article Jim, a great roundup on best keyword practices, I enjoyed the read and the reminder on basic SEO.
  • Great article. I also hear that you should put your keywords toward the bottom of you page. In the last paragraph of you content is good place. Don't forget to add into your H1 headers as well. Don't overdo the alt=keyword tag as that will just kill your rankings dead.
  • Great and simple advice about seo. But I still think it's better to spend time on linkbuilding :-)
  • I haven't seen this many good suggestions in some of the paid ebooks I currently own. I've been online marketing for over a dozen years and I found this blog today - and plan to visit often.

    Thanks Jim! Very much.
  • Opal
    Thanks Jim
    This article is going to be most valuable when setting up my websites.
    Opal
  • This is really good site and rich with content.
  • Hi was just trying to descripe the idea of using keywords to a frind. Showing him your post made it a bit more clear, thanks
  • Great post, I've bookmarked this page so I can refer to it often. I like the idea of using different page URI's in the Author box.

    Thanks,
    Luca
  • Hey Jim
    Great article. I would say I have learned many of the points you mention, but its the first time I really can see the relative weight of each keyword placement, as usual, you have a gift for cutting to the chase on explaining these things, without going short on details.

    Thanks Much.

    Dan
  • Great Article - and thanks to Google Translate ;)
  • This is such a great information rich story. There is just way too much to remember so bookmarking this page, and this whole site is pretty much essential.

    Well done Jim on a good site and thanks for the images, it helps to understand what your writing about. A picture tells a thousand words.
  • Hi there,
    Very nice article and well explained. I have read through many such articles but the way you have explained with screen shots is very nice - a picture is worth thousand words.

    I have a question for you: how do search engine spiders react to keyword phrases within quote marks within my website content? I believe bold, underline, italic, linked etc. are rated higher, but does this apply to phrases within quote marks? Your thoughts on this would be very much appreciated.
  • Hi Jim, Good article. I think having a Keyword in your domain name is very effective because when folks give you a back link you are not always in control of what they use. If you have the main keyword in your URL they automatically give you the good link text. Am I wrong on this?
    Rolf
  • Great information. I'm getting ready to forward it to several people. I thought it very interesting that most of the people commenting didn't implement your suggestion #11.
  • Tammy
    Jim,

    Great article as always.

    Thanks.

    I am so glad I'm a member
    of NICHEBOT!!!

    You give some awesome info.

    Thanks again,
    Tammy
  • Now that information

    - the 4th line of your search engine listing shows your domain name -

    gave me even more reason to focus on domains with keyword in the url.

    Thanks for the tip
  • Well, now that you've let the cat out of the bag, I guess it's alright to finally admit to keeping a template just like the 15 places here. Too bad. It was a nice way to get onto the radar while designing a site.

    BTW, I came over here because of a link from your bud's blog roll. findhotniches?

    Not my site, and I can't click back because I closed the window too soon.
  • Hey Jim & you guys above ... great reading excellent thread ... the internet is like a great big information note book and the pages keep turning every day “even if we don’t want it too” … with better information that most folks who dip into this book every day trying to solve there current wishes to find the latest greatest secret to wealth and prosperity and usually miss the point of the greatest secret is … ACTION … by taking ACTION on information learned comes out as knowledge learned so success can turn to WISDOM once that knowledge is implemented with strategies to the desired outcome ...

    Remembering that old saying by Benjamin Franklin “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different Results" I for one didn't understand the saying the first time I heard it, so it wasn't effective on me as it was intended to be. But I expect if my more successful friends keep quoting it, and quoting it, and quoting it, eventually, I might catch on and find the Truth that Lies Deep Within this Wise Saying.

    All my best to you and your Keywords vs. Tactics
    Phillip Skinner
  • Excellent info! Google definitely pays more attention to your title and description than your domain name. However, Yahoo seems to rank keyword rich domain names pretty high. Go to Yahoo.com and enter the term 'home based travel business' for the search, and a domain with that term pops up first. Do the same search on Google, and that domain won't show up for five pages or so.
  • Thank you for this information. It was so clear. I went to my website and took at look at the headings at the top and found that they only say smartwebsecurity/leawagner/product?code 100(or 200 etc)....This can't be good if I'm reading your info properly since the product codes are merely how I put them into the Admin so they will show up in their categories. My website was built by a local company, and my webmaster built it. Am I looking in the right place? I have had no one come to my site since I opened it in January 2008 (was supposed to be up in October 2007) and I've signed a 1 year contract for the web hosting. I'm going to meet with him soon and ask all of the questions that were brought up by your information, meanwhile I'm bleeding money....arrgh. Anyway THANKS, THANKS, THANKS!
  • Hi Jim,
    Thanks for the great article. I have read many articles on the same subject but it's always good to hear/read someone else's take on this.
    I believe it is also helpful to include your keyword at the end of you page, I mean in the page footer just like you have it in the first paragraph. What do you think?

    Thanks again
    Robert
  • Hey Jim,

    Great article. The comments and replies from you are just as good as the original article. I'll definitely look into some of these suggestions.

    Tao
  • I think when writing either site content and/or articles...the use of LSI words to maintain a 'theme' is an excellent method. Google is now counting themed words in it's ranking.

    Another tip may be to use your keywords in your navbar if possible. And don't forget to bold a keyword or two.

    Stepper
    reservationsfor2.com
  • Hi Jim,

    Great advise as usual,

    Although I am a bit ify on the "name - keyword Phrase" scenario as I know most A-List Bloggers view this as a SPAM comments.

    Cheers,
  • Fantastic article there Jim!

    A definite keeper. There's some stuff here that even I didn't know.

    A very useful resource for everyone.

    Kudos to you. :)
  • Thanks for your thoughts NichBOT Guy. Since then I have managed to reduce the higher density keywords and also rise some of the missing ones to more respectable levels. Now Im wondering how this might change everything for me in terms of placements up or down.

    In recent weeks I have seen sharp rises (and,. actually one sharp fall) across some keyword phrases so something must be working for me.

    I think the next issue that naturally follows on from this topic is about synonyms. Since this is becoming increasingly important to manage synonyms of your market keywords its not a case of a single dimension anymore.

    We need to work through each of our keywords and understand the synonyms and then make sure these are included as well....

    what do you think?
  • KD said:

    "Hi Jim,
    Just curious about using keyword phrases in the 'H' tags?

    Thanks for the article, very good actionable advice.
    kd"

    Keyword phrases placed in H1, H2, H3 and H4 tags (even the headline) is not that big of an appreciable difference.

    A higher priority would be to have the keyword phrase in the first sentence of the first paragraph of the body of the document.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Pedro said:

    "I thought overall this article offers some pretty solid advice.

    I disagree with the author's take on alt tags, as I have found these to be quite useful as it pertains to image search results. Sure, keyword-stuffing won't help you in this day and age, but use of the alt tag as it was intended to be used does have its benefits."

    I am not at all discounting alt tags on images altogether or that they don't work, but to caution on the side overusing the same keyword throughout each image to try and have an overall impact on ranking for the keyword phrase of the web page. But in the overall scheme of things, there has to be a line drawn on how many things can be focused on in the page. And when it comes down to it -- I think that inbound links are THE most important aspect to getting individual web pages to rank and a skill much more necessary to hone than worrying about alt tags on images.

    As I stated up above, it's a matter of time management and and making a conscious decision to focus on those things that make a big difference, not a small splash in the pond.

    If you're running an educational or graphical type of site, then I guess visitor value may be high for image search results. Otherwise, I would love to see what the percentage of conversion is for visitors coming in from image search results.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Dr. Steve said:

    "Very useful information. So, in reference to #11, does this blog give a search engine friendly link in the comment section?"

    Yes, Dr. Steve, this blog does have follow tags that will allow search engines to follow the links and give backlink credit. ;)

    Best,

    Jim
  • Marg said:

    "This was useful, but not as useful as it could be. It would be better if you started with the keywords and showed a real life example of how you picked them, explained why, and then showed step-by-step how you programmed your page/set up the tags and what the results."

    I totally agree with you Marg. The only thing is there are different keyword projects for different aspects of website promotion.

    I've got a case study for this that I can share about setting up a page and then doing some article marketing and how I picked the keywords. That may work -- but again -- there are so many various ways to go about things that it's hard for one study or even multiple ones to cover the whole gamut.

    I'll share the story with the one web page that got some good effects.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Alan said:

    "Jim I have a question,

    Recently I discovered that by using just a couple of words in my images I am getting a good amount of traffic from Google images based on the keyword.

    Unfortunately it's the wrong traffic, these people searching are typing in the word "office people" which is what I named the picture, but those are not the people I want coming to my website.

    Should I just get rid of the picture all together?

    Gotta be careful with stuff like that. You might be getting traffic but they are the wrong ones."

    With images -- sometimes I see individuals using them in the wrong way -- as it's the words that sell. That's not to excuse bad website design or graphical elements of a web page.

    If the image serves the purpose of carrying across meaning of the text it is near -- then leave it.

    What I would do is just rename the alt text on the image with some relevant keywords.

    The problem comes in when each picture on a web page has the consistently same keyword for various pictures. It's fine to use alt text on images -- just make them independently different.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Mally said:

    "Here's a question. On my Magazine Subscription website, for each product I've go the magazine name in the as well as the term Magazine Subscription.

    e.g

    Billboard Magazine - Magazine Subscription

    Would you recommend this approach?

    thanks

    Mally"

    It sounds like you're trying to get every page with a magazine name to rank for Magazine Subscription which I imagine is a pretty competitive keyword.

    I would try to get each page to focus on one primary and a secondary keyword. I would then try to get one of the web pages on your site to primarily focus on ranking for "magazine subscriptions" -- acquiring inbound links to that web for other various keywords 3 or 4 word phrases that contain "magazine subscriptions" as the primary root keyword.

    I would also finds ways to include hyperlinks on other various pages in your site that point to that one web page attempting to rank for "magazine subscriptions" using that keyword in the anchor text.

    In other words, I'm attempting to have you focus your efforts on getting one of your web pages focused in on "magazine subscriptions" rather than trying to get every page to rank for the term.

    Hope that helps.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Chuck said:

    "Your not exactly wrong Jim, but your not accurate either. The total "effect" of the URL on ranking has always hovered around 20%. That includes the total length of the URL - long being bad - the keywords found there - matching being good - and the placement in the url - root being better.

    All the factors add up and if you don't have keywords in the URL, it's too long, and it has too many numbers, then you have to make up that shortfall in other ways.

    None of the ranking factors are "Make or Break". Some sites rank well while missing part of the equation by making up for it in other ways."

    I appreciate you giving some relevance to the URL having an impact when including keywords.

    I wasn't completely discounting that there is an effect with keywords in the URL -- just that the overall impact could be overridden with inbound links and become a small part of the equation.

    If a page has nothing much going for it (meaning, no inbound links) and has keywords in the URL, then yeah, the overall effect will be higher (at or around the number you quote).

    I would like to impart and stress to others the importance of getting those inbound links to various pages on one's website. I would rather someone focus on that rather than hinging upon the impact of keywords in the URL.

    I think it's important to have a healthy mix of everything discussed above and integrating it into the whole picture.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Kate said:

    "Great work guys! You give the right kind of break down for quick and dirty lessons in keyword usage. Are people really still keyword stuffing?? I thought that died 4 years ago."

    Thanks for the compliments Kate.

    Funny thing is -- about keyword stuffing -- I still come across websites that are keyword stuffing with hidden text or fainted text that blends into the background and doing things that IF they get caught or reported, could get their site zapped right out of the index of major search engines.

    So while it may have died out 4 years ago for you -- people still do it and think they are being slick about it. One day, it could backfire to their discontent and things could go up in smoke.

    I always say -- if you're gonna do things that are risky, you might as well be risky all the way, but don't risk losing an authority site you've built up for years and years. And make sure you do it on a server or hosting account that doesn't have your completely legit (white hat) stuff on it.

    If you're gonna keep your white hat clean, keep it spot white and bleach out any dark (black) spots so you keep your site bearing the fruits of ongoing perpetual traffic.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Gerrit said:

    "1) If you have a "Link-to-Us" page (whether reciprocal or not) do not just include your homepage URL... Direct clicks to a folder/file on your site with you keyword embedded. Have this code rotate on your page displaying each new visitor a different URL code snippet they can add to their website... each snippet has a different keyword-rich URL.

    Absolutely great point Gerrit!

    If anyone visits our Add Link page here:

    http://www.nichebot.com/resources/admin/add_link.php

    You'll see that every time you refresh that page -- there's a NEW piece of text that webmasters grab to put up on their page when doing a link exchange with us. ;)

    You'll also notice that there are different links that point to different pages -- not just the home page, just like Gerrit is suggesting.

    Once again -- great point Gerrit.

    "2) Sometimes you can name your products in a keyword-rich way. Some affiliate program links passes LinkLove (PR) from each affiliates' URL to your site. WHen your product name is embedded into this affiliate URL, your target keyword ranks on hundreds on webpages, making it virtually impossible for your competition to control this keyword"

    Another excellent point, Gerrit. And that beckons the readers here to make sure when they are looking for a script to run their affiliate program, they want to make sure the URL the affiliate program produces is search engine friendly as affiliates start spreading the word and using keyword phrases in the anchor text.

    This is a great lazy way for affiliates to do viral inbound link promotion for you without having to do any extra work (other than motivating your affiliates to put link text on their web pages). ;)

    Great points -- and so noted!

    Best,

    Jim
  • Music Guy said:

    "One thing that concerns me about my site is that it is not particularly wordy, I have a landing page for each genre of ambient relaxation music so what happens is that the descriptions of the products and the categories (genres) make up a larger percentage of my total word count.

    Of course.. this means that my keyword density is rather high, which I think is only natural for a music site, but will I get penalised for it?

    I'm not sure if I am or not. My keyword density today is:

    music 7.64%
    mp 6.33%
    ambient 5.68%
    meditation 4.15%
    relaxation 3.93%
    cart 2.84%
    album 2.4%"

    If you have landing pages for each genre with product descriptions on them, I think it would be natural to have a higher occurring keyword density.

    I honestly don't think you'll get penalized at the level you're quoting above. If keyword density went into double digits, then maybe I'd start worrying.

    As long as the page doesn't APPEAR (to the human eye) to be overstuffed with keywords that don't naturally occur within the context of your descriptions, I think you'll be good.

    Of course, if you continue to worry, you can add in some more introductory language to the page to get your website prospects warmed up to what the genre pages are about.

    Nonetheless, if you want something to worry about, I would make sure to get some hearty inbound links to those genre pages -- because you could literally have NO text on the page and be able to rank for keywords with the right inbound links. ;)

    Hope that helps guide you and alleviate any further concerns.

    May the force be with you!

    Best,

    Jim
  • Not only have I found the article on keyword optimisation refreshingly simple but I also thank the others who have contributed comments to furthering the learning experience.

    Too much hype exists around keyword meta tags and I totally agree it is about achieving optimal density ratios on key search phrases within your content. Greatest value will come form doing your research first. Find out what phrases are of greatest interest to people that relate to your area of interest and be careful to be very specific about the area of interest.

    Marketing to a general segments too difficult. Find a core product or service as it relates to a very specific market segment and create your landing page around that and then optimise the content.

    Its a two edged sword - on-page optimisation and off-page optimisation. There is no silver bullet solution.

    Thank you one and all for your comments.
  • Excellent article - as usual. And I learned some new things, especially about using my keywords with my name. Thanks for the good advice.
  • These are all very useful for website owner new in the business like me.Thanks Jim.
  • Thanks Jim, really useful tips. I plan to implement a bunch of them.

    It's often hard to have your keyword in a url as so many domains are already registered...I am currently designing a Mother-of-the-bride e-commerce site/blog for a client and as you would imagine all the best URL's are taken. I spent a frustrating day yesterday trying all sort's of ideas out.

    So I was relieved to see you say, "keyword rich inbound links will trump a site that just has the keyword in the domain any day of the week."

    Thanks,

    Anna
  • Hi Jim
    As always a pleasure to read. Not much new for me but it is always good to be reminded. Your articles helps me to keep focus. That's not bad at all :-)

    Keep'm comming, Jim!
  • Thanks Jim for reducing some of my stress concerning keywords, with good information that I can put to good use as always.

    Just wondering though, when promoting a product, is it better to productname.domain or domain/productname.

    Which would have more weight?

    Thanks again Jim

    Trevor White
  • abbakd
    Hi Jim,
    Just curious about using keyword phrases in the 'H' tags?

    Thanks for the article, very good actionable advice.
    kd
  • I thought overall this article offers some pretty solid advice.

    I disagree with the author's take on alt tags, as I have found these to be quite useful as it pertains to image search results. Sure, keyword-stuffing won't help you in this day and age, but use of the alt tag as it was intended to be used does have its benefits.
  • Excellent article thanks Jim. I have already started implementing your suggestions.
  • Paul,

    You said:

    "In regards to point 2:(" Oh, and you want to make sure and place a hyphen "-" between the words in your keyword phrase of your URL.)

    I've always wondered is it better to have a hyphen in the domain name or without hyphen for keyword optimised domains? Or is the statement just related too page name i.e. www.sharpei-pups.com/Pups.html versus www.sharpei-pups.com/Shar-Pei-Puppies.html

    I think it's best to not use hyphens in the domain names only because it's easier for the web surfer to remember a domain without hyphens.

    Nonetheless, point #2 relates more to using the keyword phrase in the page name just as you mentioned in this example:

    www.sharpei-pups.com/Shar-Pei-Puppies.html

    The main reason is that if you submit an article (or any other piece of distributed content) and the directory hyperlinks your URL instead of allowing anchor text with a keyword phrase, you'll still have the keyword phrase in the URL (web page name) that gets used in the hyperlink back to your site. Thus, you'll still get credit for the keyword phrase used in the web page name... ;)

    Hope I was clear on that.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Pam,

    You said:

    "Thank you Jim for such an informative article and it is definitely a good one to print.

    Just one question. Should we ignore the meta tag altogether or place just a basic keyword there?"

    My pleasure for the article Pam.

    You can definitely just put the basic keyword in the meta keyword tag and be done with -- just don't expect any remarkable miracles.

    My main point is that I see a lot of people expending WAY too much energy by gathering more keyword research just for that tag when it's not going to make much of a difference in overall ranking and most the major engines ignore that send the bulk of traffic ignore that tag.

    Here's an interesting article by Danny Sullivan, Founder of Search Engine Watch, called The Death of a meta tag

    And I quote from the article written back in October 2002:

    "Indeed, my advice about the meta keywords tag for ages has been simple. For those running large web sites or short on time, don't worry about it. The stress and time involved in trying to craft a tag was not worth it, in terms of the minor benefit it might bring."

    Now Matt above indicated that he puts common spelling mistakes in his meta tags keywords and found that it works.

    I really think this is a time management issue. What's more important for a time expenditure -- crafting meta keyword tags (on page factors) or acquiring inbound links (off page factors)?

    I feel that more energy and effort should be spent on the off page factors and honing those skills than dwelling on meta keyword tags. Just my opinion.

    Hope that helps.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Matt,

    You said:

    "Some good advice here! I still think keywords in the URL make a difference tho. How many sites do you see number one with the keyword as a domain? There is a lot!"

    I see a number of top sites that have the keyword as part of the domain.

    I totally think it's a good idea.

    However, keyword rich inbound links will trump a site that just has the keyword in the domain any day of the week.

    I would much rather subscribers focus their time on acquiring inbound links than hinging on the faith that keywords in their domain name will be enough.

    But all things aside, if someone is starting with a fresh domain name, has a choice and is armed with the information above, get a keyword rich domain name (if available), make certain to use keyword phrases to name the web pages and make sure to acquire inbound links. ;)

    That should cover all bases.

    Best,

    Jim
  • Hey Gary,

    You said:

    I was aware of most of these points, but did not know what you wrote about where NOT to include your keyphrases.

    So I took a look at the HTML for this page and noticed how you're using the meta keyword tag:

    I'd be interested in why you did it this way.

    Actually -- WordPress automatically created the meta keyword tag. It took the name of this post and made it part of that tag.

    I really only take time to create a keyword rich title for the blog post which ends up becoming the title tag -- and apparently WordPress takes over doing its own automation with the Meta Description Tag and Meta Keywords Tag.

    I could go in and modify my WordPress installation and cut out the Meta Keywords Tag altogether, but that would be giving the tag too much of my attention. :D

    Hope that answers your question that I plainly disregard the Meta Keywords Tag and do not spend ANY time on it altogether as I think (1) it's a waste of precious resources that could be spent on other action items that hold a higher priority; and (2) as mentioned above, meta keyword tags simply creates easy keyword research for others that use desktop keyword tools that scrape keywords from the meta key tag. And why would I want to help others do their keyword research for them?

    Any pages you'll find on NicheBOT are closing in on two years old and back then, I expended my resources on meta keyword tags -- but I can tell you that expend no more energy on that aspect! :D

    Best,

    Jim
  • Very useful information. So, in reference to #11, does this blog give a search engine friendly link in the comment section?
  • Good Tactics! :)
  • hi Jim, thank you so much on the article. I was searching on some useful tips about keyword placement in seo cuz I'm doing the whole construction for my adsense's blogs especially for the seo. Hence, I found your article. You did a great job for it. Thanks a lot!
  • Wow Jim, I've been missing a few of these for over 10 years!
    Ok, looks like it's time to re-do some of my page links.

    Thank a ton

    Denny
  • This is an outstanding post. This obviously took some time and thought to put together. I am going to send a link to one of our clients who is redesigning their site, so they can see this and the screen shot.
  • Great article! And I'm glad that you stress the fact that keyword placement should never be just for the search engines.

    Communicating clearly to your readers what your page is about should always be the first priority. And I've always found that if I do that well, the result will be a page that the search engines consider well optimized for that keyword term, as well.
  • Great work guys! You give the right kind of break down for quick and dirty lessons in keyword usage. Are people really still keyword stuffing?? I thought that died 4 years ago.

    Thanks for keeping it simple. I send all of my small business clients to you. If you have enough time to write articles, but not enough time to stay cutting edge on all of the search engine algos, Nichebot is the best.
  • This is a fantastic compilation of the most important aspects of basic SEO techniques using keywords. This single article is better and more exact in the quality and usefulness of it's content than most courses being sold online today.

    Congratulations to Jim Morris for providing a clear concise and well needed overview of how to use keywords in a marketing program.

    This is real information not a bunch of nonsense about magic formulas or secret codes. I am very confident that any one using this information with find that when using in conjunction with standard market research techniques it greatly enhance any marketing campaign.
  • Some good advice here! I still think keywords in the URL make a difference tho. How many sites do you see number one with the keyword as a domain? There is a lot!

    One other point to add about site navigation. People often have a logo in the top corner which links back to the home page. Add a keyword into the logos title attribute!

    Also, keyword meta tags don't do diddly but are a good place to put common spelling mistakes. Ive seen this work!
  • NYGal
    This was useful, but not as useful as it could be. It would be better if you started with the keywords and showed a real life example of how you picked them, explained why, and then showed step-by-step how you programmed your page/set up the tags and what the results.
  • Tom
    This is some great information. I was doing a lot of it already, but I see where I can make improvements. Thanks for the help!
  • I mainly use xsitepro to build my websites, because it's so easy to do.

    I assumed that most people would use the navigation bars at the left hand side of the sites to jump from page to page and find the pages on the sites that interest them.

    The tip to create keyword rich links within the actual pages to other internal pages makes good sense and will be used by myself on the pages of my sites from now on.
  • Excellent article, Jim. This is something that has real value that I can pass on to my subscribers. I haven't seen this information about where to put keyword phrases anywhere else.
    I think you're about to tick off some of the big guns LOL

    Jay Jenkins
  • Brian
    Great Stuff!
    Some would put this together with a little packing and sell as a $7 or so e-book.
  • Thanks for cutting through the clutter of SEO advice, very useful article. I took your advice!
  • Nice going Jim, As usual.

    I think I already knew most of the those places already, but it is nice to have very succinct reminder all in once place. Well, maybe 15 places. I will be posting this on the side of my monitor to keep me reminded of where to place keywords from now on.

    Thanks for some very timely and useful information.
  • This article really is a priceless concise overview of SEO keyword marketing, and should come in handy as a checklist ! Conquering online niches is actually quite easy when you're willing to put in some effort.
  • Pam
    Thank you Jim for such an informative article and it is definitely a good one to print.

    Just one question. Should we ignore the meta tag altogether or place just a basic keyword there?
    Thanks
    Pam
  • OK here's another one, in your "tags" section when creating a post in wordpress!

    Use tagalizer plugin and your keywords will be at the bottom of each post so guys like me can just "copy" those keywords and "paste" them into the tags section when bookmarking sites.

    I used Onlywire to bookmark this post in 16 different social bookmarking sites at once. I flipped back here to copy the keywords for this post and much to my surprise....NO KEYWORD TAGS....for a post about where to put your keywords!

    Sometimes the obvious is too hard to see!

    Brian Ankner (non-guru)
  • Hi Jim, great article. I haven't used #8 as much as I should, it is an easy one that does work well.

    Here is another one....instead of just privacy-policy.html or disclaimer.html use your keywords in these links also!

    keyword-research-privacy-policy.html or
    keyword-research-contact-us.html or
    keyword-research-terms-of-service.html or
    keyword-research-disclaimer.html

    Utilize all the "off" pages of your site for additional keyword loaded links. This is one that I have only seen on my sites!(so far!)

    Brian Ankner (non-guru)
  • Thanks for the informative tips, I was missing out on a few of them so I changed them as I read them, now all I have to do is go through all 100+ pages and repeat the process, lol!
  • Great post! Another social bookmark site I have found very useful in promoting my duct cleaning twin cities website is Propeller.
  • Jim I have a question,

    Recently I discovered that by using just a couple of words in my images I am getting a good amount of traffic from Google images based on the keyword.

    Unfortunately it's the wrong traffic, these people searching are typing in the word "office people" which is what I named the picture, but those are not the people I want coming to my website.

    Should I just get rid of the picture all together?

    Gotta be careful with stuff like that. You might be getting traffic but they are the wrong ones.
  • Jim,

    Great. I appreciate your hard work and overdelivery. The article is really very educative and although I have read many articles on keyword stuffing, I would rate your article at 10 on 1-10 scale.

    Jayant
  • Hi Jim.

    A helpful post, thanks.

    I was aware of most of these points, but did not know what you wrote about where NOT to include your keyphrases.

    So I took a look at the HTML for this page and noticed how you're using the meta keyword tag:



    I'd be interested in why you did it this way.

    Thanks again
    Gary Harvey
    FindHotMarkets.com
  • ivon t hughes
    VERY,VERY COMPLETE FOR THE NON TECHIE.

    IVON T HUGHES
    WWW.TRUSTCO.CA
  • Usana 5 Day Reset | Weight Man
    Hi Jim

    I ahve been very busy lately building my Usana Business in malsysia but can say all your tips are great.

    One thing I have been using is including a site description in my site map on my blog as its now indexed with google and i am getting alot of free searches that way. I have been experimenting with ASdsense and find on just 5 sites I have been making a bit of money with no cost of adwords.

    I hope this helps others. Its does take a while to get indexed as the page ages and gets page rank you will find u will get more hits.

    Thanks Claude Brisbane
  • Since my last post I have knocked a lot off the top ones and rebalanced with other keywords that aren't showing up so high.

    Nice one, thank you
  • Great list!

    2 more recommendations:

    1) If you have a "Link-to-Us" page (whether reciprocal or not) do not just include your homepage URL... Direct clicks to a folder/file on your site with you keyword embedded. Have this code rotate on your page displaying each new visitor a different URL code snippet they can add to their website... each snippet has a different keyword-rich URL.

    2) Sometimes you can name your products in a keyword-rich way. Some affiliate program links passes LinkLove (PR) from each affiliates' URL to your site. WHen your product name is embedded into this affiliate URL, your target keyword ranks on hundreds on webpages, making it virtually impossiblef or your competition to control this keyword :-)

    Gerrit
  • Hi Jim, thank you for this. A very useful checklist just to keep in mind when going through my day to day checks.

    One thing that concerns me about my site is that it is not particularly wordy, I have a landing page for each genre of ambient relaxation music so what happens is that the descriptions of the products and the categories (genres) make up a larger percentage of my total word count.

    Of course.. this means that my keyword density is rather high, which I think is only natural for a music site, but will I get penalised for it?

    Im not sure if I am or not.My keyword density today is:

    music 7.64%
    mp 6.33%
    ambient 5.68%
    meditation 4.15%
    relaxation 3.93%
    cart 2.84%
    album 2.4%
  • Tom
    Jim,
    I've been reading your blog for quite some time now, and as alwasy you give a lot of great information. Thanks for taking the time to share!
  • Your not exactly wrong Jim, but your not accurate either. The total "effect" of the URL on ranking has always hovered around 20%. That includes the total length of the URL - long being bad - the keywords found there - matching being good - and the placement in the url - root being better.

    All the factors add up and if you don't have keywords in the URL, it's too long, and it has too many numbers, then you have to make up that shortfall in other ways.

    None of the ranking factors are "Make or Break". Some sites rank well while missing part of the equation by making up for it in other ways.
  • Hi Jim

    I do find that the first point is very important. I have many websites and those that tend to do well are those domains with the keywords in the domain names.

    Thanks for compiling the list with so much information included.

    W
  • Hi Jim,
    your articles always make very inspirational and informative reading. In regards to point 2:(" Oh, and you want to make sure and place a hyphen "-" between the words in your keyword phrase of your URL.)
    I've always wondered is it better to have a hyphen in the domain name or without hyphen for keyword optimised domains? Or is the statement just related too page name i.e. www.sharpei-pups.com/Pups.html versus www.sharpei-pups.com/Shar-Pei-Puppies.html
    Thanks Paul
  • Well Jim, you've done it again. I have gained a lot from the tips you have been giving to us. Thanks for those invaluable lessons.
  • Wow, Jim, this IS a doozie. Looks like you have covered all of the ones we normally try to take care of. Wish I had an article like this to guide me when I started out! Thanks. It's good to have a list to check that you are not missing anything.
  • Hello Jim

    A great read and some excellent advice. Extremely userful.

    Here's a question. On my Magazine Subscription website, for each product I've the magazine name in the aswell as the term Magazine Subscription.

    e.g

    Billboard Magazine - Magazine Subscription

    Would you recommend this approach?

    thanks

    Mally
  • Great article with very specific examples I can immediately apply, and very timely for me. My project this week has been to develop a keyword strategy and begin investigating the possibility of PPC.

    Thank you!

    Janet, The Organizing Genie
    http://www.KidsandChores.net
  • As always Jim, you have succeded in providing a very comprehnsive information about SEO tactics.

    Thankful again.

    Neptune,

    My Blogs:
    http://loverelationshipproblems.blogspot.com
    http://homeremediesfor.blogspot.com
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