On-page SEO keywords are still a valuable way to tell search engines (and human visitors) what your content is about. A few relevant words and phrases in prominent places will help to signpost the search robots towards indexing your page for the 'right' topics and themes.
But where do you put those keywords? As the average page length gets longer and longer, you're now faced with anywhere up to about 2,000 words of content to try to optimise - and that's before you start on things like meta tags and alt text.
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| Google Search by Jessica Lewis via Pexels |
Even if your content management system (CMS) only allows you to edit plain text, there are plenty of places for on-page SEO keywords that don't need you to edit HTML code directly.
Here are five of the best places to put on-page SEO keywords, to help you get the repetition you need to ensure your primary keywords and phrases stand out among the hundreds or thousands of other words on your page.
1. Headline (H1 heading)
Every page should have a main heading enclosed by H1 tags in the HTML code. Strictly speaking, you should only have one H1 heading per page - so if the name of your website is up top as an H1 heading, you might want to make the title of your content an H2 subheading instead.
"While using multiple H1 elements on one page is allowed by the HTML standard, this is not considered a best practice. A page should generally have a single H1 element that describes the content of the page."
Ideally your H1 heading should be the heading of your actual content, and not the title of your website. If possible, use a CSS class to style your website title, and save those valuable H1 tags to use on an SEO-keyworded headline that's unique to each page.
2. Subheadings (H2-H6 elements)
All subheading tags are valuable for SEO, so make sure you include keywords in H2-H6 subheadings where possible too. Use your judgment - I haven't forced SEO keywords into the subheadings on this article, for instance, and that was just a personal choice.
But on a page with descriptive subheadings, try to include at least one SEO keyword in each heading, and if possible, repeat one of your primary keywords several times in different subheadings.
Nested headings offer diminishing returns: there's more SEO value in H2 subheadings than in H3, H4 and so on, down to H6.
But it's still worth breaking up your content with H2 and H3 subheadings to aid readability, signpost the search bots and human readers from one section to the next, and to create more containers for keywords and phrases.
3. First Paragraph and Left-Hand Side
This is a twofer but it all falls under the F-model, which again applies both to the search robots and to human visitors to your website.
Generally speaking, SEO keywords perform better if they are located nearer the top and/or left of your page (for left-to-right languages like English).
If you trace this over your page, you're left with an F-shaped pattern, hence the F-model. Apply this template to every page and put primary SEO words and phrases up top, near the start of the second paragraph, and at the start of later lines/paragraphs.
While it's not exact, the same shape applies to how people scan your page when reading it quickly: once across the top, a second less specific horizontal scan, and then a skim-read down the left-hand side.
"The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
"Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behaviour. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words."
- Jakob Nielsen's landmark F-Shaped Pattern study, 2006
By putting relevant and informative SEO keywords in those positions, along with subheadings as mentioned above, you stand the best chance of catching the reader's attention during their drive-by, so that they don't just skim through to the end without engaging.
4. Hyperlink Anchor Text
In HTML, a link is added by placing <a> tags around one or more words. The 'a' stands for 'anchor' and the words between the opening and closing <a> tags are the 'anchor text' of the hyperlink.
This can be one of the most valuable on-page SEO keyword positions. Hyperlink anchor text is given special attention by search robots, and they not only associate any keywords with the page on which the hyperlink appears, but also with the page the link points to.
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For internal links (that is, links from one page of your own website to another page on your own website) this allows you to deliberately daisy-chain pages together in SEO terms. Use descriptive, optimised anchor text to connect related pages that share similar or identical primary keywords.
Yet again, this is also good for human visitors. More descriptive anchor text (as opposed to just writing 'click here' or similar) helps people to understand where the link is taking them, and can increase the percentage of visitors who actually click the link.
5. Navigation
This last one is a little different, because it doesn't necessarily count as part of your main page content. But it's often overlooked, and it should be more of a priority.
Navigation links appear all over your website. From your top navigation bar, to your side menu and page footer, to internal navigation links included in your articles, to breadcrumb trails above your headline, to topic tags at the bottom.
There are navigation links that appear on every page, some that are section-specific, and others that are unique to each different page of content. Where possible, make sure they are text (as opposed to linked images) and use relevant words and phrases in the link.
It's the same principle as above, as text navigation links are just hyperlink anchor text at the end of the day, but it's an on-page SEO opportunity that's often missed, and it's not that hard to get it right if your CMS gives you the ability to edit those page elements.
Final Thoughts
To summarise, five of the best places for on-page SEO keywords include:
- H1 Headings
- H2-H6 Headings
- F-Model
- Anchor Text
- Navigation Links
Remember to repeat your primary keywords. A few times per 100 words is good, but don't overdo it. By using SEO keywords in subheadings and in the start of the following paragraph, you can get some extra uses in there, without it feeling too crammed in.
And if you want some professional help to produce search-optimised content for your website, contact me and I'll be happy to discuss pricing and delivery times for your next order.
