Keywords and Keyword Phrases: SEO - Part 2
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. Today most businesses with websites understand that search engines, like Google, are key to reaching customers. In this series, we’re going to start at the beginning and help you solve the mystery of SEO.
In Part I of this series, we talked about keywords and keyword phrases. These are some of the most important components to successful search engine ranking so let’s dig into them a bit more.
Basically, KEYWORDS are like hooks on your web pages, that will snag the Google bots and, as a result, visitors. So ask yourself:
“In a perfect world, what will my future clients be looking for when they find my website?”
The answer might be ‘delicious local Greek food’ if you’re a Greek restaurant, or ‘speedy & reliable local plumber’ or ‘modern, up-to-date, tax accountant’ or ‘female family doctor’ or ‘community oriented gym and recreation centre’ or ‘affordable, knowledgeable, creative web design company.’
In all these cases, it’s easy to pick out keywords and these are the kinds of keywords you need to use when optimizing your web pages.
Tip 1: Take notes
Get some paper (or better yet, start a journal) and write down your keywords and keyword phrases.
It’s likely you’ll have a good variety of them. Let’s look at, for example, Whistler Glass. Their keywords will, of course, involve glass, but they have many types of glass and services and want all of them to index on Google. Including: shower glass, railing glass, skylights, glass shower enclosures, all-glass guardrails, auto glass, and Whistler, Pemberton, Squamish, Sea to Sky, and BC.
Now that you’ve got a good list of keywords and phrases, let’s look at where to use them.
Home page - as we mentioned before, your home page is a good place to start using your keyword phrases. A company like Whistler Glass can list many of them right at the top of the page so visitors know right away what they are offering - and also, so Google will know right away whether or not to send their searchers over.
Inner pages and blogs - each inner page offers an opportunity to use your keywords and phrases. Be sure to take advantage of this. We also highly recommend adding a blog or news area to your website. Google loves Fresh Content and each new article is an opportunity to share more keywords!
FAQ - does your website have a Frequently Asked Questions? This is a great page for all sorts of reasons. First, Google likes to be able to answer questions. If someone asks a question related to your business, wouldn’t it be nice if Google will show them your FAQ page? Second, and yes I’m stressing a point, it’s an opportunity to publish more relevant keywords and phrases.
Tip 2: Look at your images
Have you ever done a google search and clicked on Images the images tab? I do this all the time - it’s often easier to find what I’m looking for if I use Google’s Images tab. For example, let’s say you’re looking for a glass shower door in Whistler - type that into Google and then click on the Images tab. There is often a row of paid ads, but under that you’ll find lots of what you’re looking for. Clicking on an image will take you to the website.
No one searches for DSC202143
All this is to explain why it’s important to use your image file names as a place to put keywords. Let’s say you have an image file named ‘DSC202143.jpg’ No one is ever going to log onto google and type DSC202143 into the search bar when they are looking for shower glass or any other product or service. If you name the file something more like ‘WhistlerGlassFramelessShower.jpg’ you can see how much more likely Google will show this image to searchers who are looking for a glass or frameless shower.
Renaming image files can be a daunting and time consuming task, and in this article we’re not going to go into how best to accomplish it. I will give you one big piece of advice, however. Do the renaming before you send the images to your web designer (or before you upload them to your website if you’re doing your own work). It will be much easier (and cheaper) to do the image renaming in a folder on your desktop.
Tip 3. Check your Header Tags
Some of you are probably thinking … My What?
The content on your site is arranged using various sizes of fonts. And similar to the classic ‘business document’ these fonts have a hierarchy. The biggest ones are usually H1 (Header 1), the next size is H2, the next H3, and then there is P (paragraph). They are called ‘tags’ because of the way they look in code. The title is nested inside pointed bracket ‘tags.’
<h1> Biggest heading here </h1>
<h2> 2nd biggest heading here </h2>
<p>Paragraph between these tags</p>
In early Google days, anything located in an H1 tag would be given great weight when it came to search engine indexing. And indeed, it still is an important tool in the toolbox. Your H1 statements should be bold, clear, and include keywords or phrases.
You should have an H1 title on every page. Go through your website, and look at all your titles. Do they really tell a robot what is on that page? If not, consider changing the wording. Using a strong and relevant keyword in the H1 tag of a page will make Google happy. And it will make your visitors happy. If they find what they are expecting to find on your page, they will stay a bit longer. This will also earn you good Google juice.
Be sure to use only one H1 tagged title per page. Using more than one will dilute your Google ranking.
That’s it for Part II of SEO. You have homework to do!