Why keywords are important
Search engines basically “crawl” your website’s content and evaluate whether that content is relevant to what the searcher is looking for.
Singular Keywords vs Long tail
Think like your visitor. What would they actually type in? And what would they ask for? (Voice search is becoming more popular – e.g., personal assistants).
- Research vs. Research at Carleton
- Short or singular keywords are one word. Long tail keywords are key phrases made up of 3-5 words.
- Long tail keywords are more targeted which means it will likely bring in a more relevant visitor (higher conversion rate)
- Long tail – less overall traffic but traffic is more relevant
Where to put Keywords
- Page title (title has the most weight when it comes to SEO)
- Header tags (H2, H3, etc.)
- First paragraph
- Throughout your content: Mention keywords a few times. But don’t get carried away, write naturally using keywords where it makes sense.
- Anchor text for links
- Alt tags of images
- URL
- Meta description (use YOAST)