Getting your website up and running is step one. Step two is getting people there. One of the first things to review and spend some time with on your website is the use of your keywords. There are a couple of key places those keywords should show up on each page.
Page Titles
Page titles are what users will very possibly see first in Google. The blue link that you click on in Google to get to a page is the page title. So many times when I do a Google search for something, I’ll see that the company’s name is in the first words in the title. For some companies, this is fine. For example, one of our clients is Green Bay Doulas. Two of their main keywords are “Green Bay” for where they’re located, and “doulas” for the services they provide. For many businesses, however, their company name doesn’t include one of their keywords. For those businesses, I know it can be tempting to put your company name at the very beginning of the title, but that is a much better place to put your keywords. Once a user gets to your site, there are plenty of other opportunities to let them know what your company name is. First step though is to use your keywords to draw them to your site.
Heading 1 Tags
While the page title may be one of the first things that a user sees that draws them to your site, the Heading 1 tag (H1) on the page is key to getting a good search engine ranking. The H1 tag should inform both users and search engines as to the page’s subject. Search engines generally view this tag as being of higher importance than other HTML elements on a page, and they will use it to help identify keywords of the page. Once the search engines have those keywords identified, you’ll have a much better chance of having your page show up in a search for those keywords.
Page Content
The third key place to use your keywords on each page is in the site content, such as within paragraphs and lists. Having the keywords show up again in the content will, in essence, confirm to search engines that this is the ideal keyword for the given page. However, be sure not to use your keyword too often. If a keyword is used too often, most search engines will assume you are tricking them into a higher ranking. In general, attempting to trick search engines will not work, and is likely to hurt your page ranking. This practice could even result in your site being kicked out of ranking.
Using your keywords in these three key places will help your page get both a better page ranking and a better user click rate. If you haven’t determined your keywords yet, contact Full Scope Creative. We can run a keyword report and go over some possible changes to make on your site in order to get a better page ranking.
