I’m still all about ‘Old School SEO” especially when it comes to Keyword Placement.
Keyword placement is basically what it sounds like; placing your targeted keywords in various locations on your web pages. Ideally you’ll pick 1-5 keywords to target per web page. If you are ranking well for those terms, you could be ranking for 100′s of other long tail terms (per page). However, correct placement of keywords on your website is imperative. Check out my past post on Keyword placement, it’s all about locations to place your keywords on a web page to optimize your site.
There are a couple key points I left out on those videos, for instance, if you want to rank well for the term “keyword 1″, in 2008 and for the rest of search engines lives, you need to be the most relevant site to ‘keyword 1″. In other words, if a searcher is looking for keyword 1, the top positions on the SERP should answer what is keyword 1, how much is keyword 1, a description of keyword 1 and some examples of keyword 1. Content, content, content. If you have already realized this the next step is finding the prime location to place your keyword, unfortunately there’s truly no ‘best’ location to place it. However, here are a few ideas to think about when deciding where to place your keyword.
Keyword Placement Idea #1 (Heading Tags)
Hx Tags: H tags (heading tags) can be used in a variety of ways. You can have an h1, h2, h3, and so on. (I will refer to all of the headings as Hx’s for the remainder of this post.) Hx structure and placement can be hard at times. You can look at other sites ranking for your term and see where in their site their Hx’s are located, which ones they are using and the structure of all them in relationship to the actual content. Where on the web page visually is their Hx’s located? Where are their Hx’s located in the page source?
One way I learned to use Hx’s is to place your 2 most targeted keywords in the H1. Then right under it, write 2 paragraphs of content (of course with those keywords prominent in those paragraphs). 1st paragraph H2 titled keyword 1 and the 2nd paragraph H2 titled keyword 2. So it would be 2 paragraphs with H2 headings under/about the H1.
Keyword Placement Idea #2 (Using Quintura)
Using Quintura to help you determine/imagine where to place your keywords is one of my favorite creative ways. Sometimes I just search the keyword I’m looking to rank well for and just look at Quitura’s algorithm, visually. Surrounding your search queries are good keyword supplements that can give you ideas of what to write about so that your content is composing of all the words related to that term; LSI SEO. For some keywords you’ll see that common terms are in packs. Long tailed keyword variations of your keyword can be made and broken up into different parts of the pages. After all, most engines do use block level algorithms. For example, you can place ‘keyword’ prices and content related words like cost, deals, specials, etc. in one area of the page (ie top right quarter) and place keyword definition type phrases like what is, about, defining, history of, etc. on the whole left half, then maybe in the bottom half, your 3rd through 5th targeted keyword phrases with terms relating to them.
Keyword Placement Idea #3 (Competitors)
Looking at all of the places your competitors are placing your keywords visually and in the source code is an awesome way to study keywords’ importance and weight. Check out the top 10 rankers for your term and look at their source codes. (ctrl+U in firefox) Highlight (record) your targeted keyword phrase every time you see that term on all of your competitor’s ranking pages. Sometimes you’ll see similarities like 7 out of 10 of them have it as the 2nd word in the title tag or 8 out 10 of the have it in the h1 or h2 tags. Or, 4 0f the top 5 have the keyword mentioned at least 20 times before line 200. (Those were just examples.)
Or you can check how it looks visually to visitors. Maybe right away you see that that targeted keyword is the biggest phrase on the whole page of 1/2 of your top competitors’ sites. Best believe the spiders can recognize how a site looks to a visitor. Maybe 8 out of those 10 have it bolded within 500 characters of content. The point I’m trying to make is, sometimes all your competitors are placing their keywords in places you’re not.
Google has a great exercise to help you see where the top sites are placing your targeting terms. It’s “An Excercise for Students“
*Please don’t take any of this literally. This post was not meant to tell you where to place your keywords (exactly). This was just some thoughts or brain exercisers to help spark that one place you forgot to place your keywords and to help you understand that your top ranking competitors are placing it in places you’re not. Just make sure you keep your keyword density in line with the competition.