Keywords to a website for SEO
When you’re writing content, you often ask yourself, “Where do you put keywords in HTML?”
If so, this guide is for you.
And in this blog post, I’ll show you where all those secret spots are in the HTML document.
By the end of this page, you’ll know everything there is about on-page keyword optimization so you can do a better job writing and ranking your content.
How to Add Keywords to a Website for SEO
meta title
The meta title is the most important place to add your keywords in the HTML, and it’s the first step you need to take to add keywords to a website for SEO.
A meta title acts as a name tag for a webpage and is what appears first on the search engine results page for the user to click on.
If you don’t have your keywords in the meta title, you probably won’t rank for that term. Therefore, always place your keyphrase in this location.
To get the most value out of the meta title, it’s important to place your keywords at the beginning of this field; not at the end. Position matters a lot here. The closer your keywords are to the beginning of the meta title, the more relevant it will be seen by search engines.
I always start my meta titles with my main keyword to get the most SEO value from it. I then try to fit additional keywords into this field where it feels natural.
For example, I want this page to rank for these two keywords:
- how to add keywords to a website for SEO
- how to add keywords to website HTML
And the best way to do this is to include as many of these phrases as possible in the meta title without repeating words.
If you use WordPress for your website, you can use an SEO plugin like All in One SEO, Yoast, or Rank Math to tweak meta titles to improve search ranking potential.
Meta Description
However, it appears as the second part of the search results entry for your web page and adds relevance to the keywords people are searching for.
As you know as a search engine user, the meta description influences your decision whether or not to click on a search result. Therefore, it’s best to include your keyword there so that the user finds your listing to be more relevant to their search query.
Also, having a good marketing message or a short snippet of your webpage subject along with your target keyword can help influence the number of people who click on your search results entry. And that’s what matters here.
meta keywords
The keyword meta tag is no longer used by major search engines, but many on-page SEO plugins still include it.
As Google states here, “Keyword meta tags quickly became an area where one could put often irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords.
Therefore, the keyword meta tag is completely ignored by Google, and many SEOs leave this field blank. However, some of the other search engines may pay quite a bit of value in that HTML location, so you can choose to include your keyword here if you like.
I ignore the meta keywords field for my content, but you can find out more about this HTML tag by visiting my post on what are meta keywords.
URL
The best URLs are those that give visitors and search engines a clue as to what the site is about, what the page is about, and where a page is located in the site’s organizational structure.
However, the best SEO advice I can give you here is to include no more than one or two exact-match keywords in the URL. You want to avoid keyword stuffing.
Heading tags in an HTML document are used to organize the structure of the content. These tags also break up blocks of text for easier reading.
Header tags consist of H1 to H6 elements. But for SEO purposes, only H1 to H4 tags are what matters most for on-page search engine optimization. Page Optimizer Pro experts have verified the importance of keyword presence in these areas.
Here’s how to correctly use and add keywords in a website’s header tags:
- H1: The H1 is considered the main header tag of the page. A good practice here is to just copy the SEO-optimized meta title into the H1 field.
- H2-H4: You can include as many H2 to H4 tags as you like on the web page. However, the best practice here is to use H2s to break up the main topics on the page and place H3s under the H2s (where necessary) as subheadings. A good SEO strategy is to include your keywords at least once in the H2 tag and use variations in the H3 tags. I don’t use H4s.
One other important thing to note here is that you can use header tags to earn Google Featured Snippets and People Also Answer boxes. By structuring your content as I explained above with H2s and H3s, you can give Google exactly what it wants to present your content in those places on the search engine results pages.
body content
The body content of a page is one of the main SEO ranking factors. That’s because, without properly optimized content, search engines can struggle to know which keywords you want a web page to rank for.
So you’ll want to make things easy on search engines like Google by giving them what they like regarding keyword placement in the body content.
There are three main areas where you want to place your keywords:
- Introduction: Put your keywords in the first 100 words on the page.
- Main content: Place your keywords at least 2-4 times in the main content of the page (evenly distributed).
- Summary: Put your keywords in the last 100 words on the page.
Now, remember that you want your content to be readable. So don’t put your keywords in these places without looking natural. Write for humans first and make the content readable and understandable.
Also, you might think this advice will result in too many (or not enough) uses of your keywords in body content, but trust me. I’ve been using this exact formula for 15 years in every piece of content I write.
In fact, if you do a CTRL + F on your keyboard and search for my main keyword, “how to add keywords to a website for SEO”
Images
And while this might seem odd because images are visuals, graphics, and images still have three places you can optimize for keywords.
So where do keywords go on a site with images?
Here are the top four places to optimize for image keywords:
- ALT Tag: The ALT tag is an HTML element that describes an image to a screen reader. ALT tags help blind people understand what the visual elements are on a page. However, this is also a good place to put your keywords. Just make sure the keywords are related to the image and aren’t just being entered into this field. Remember, the ALT tag is primarily used to help people with disabilities.
- Image title: You can put your keywords in the title attribute of the image. Its purpose is to specify extra information about an element, but it can also be used for SEO purposes.
- Filename: You can put your keywords in image filenames to add SEO value. Just use dashes between words like this: keyword-phrase.jpg.
- Image Meta Information: If you use image editing software like Photoshop, you can manipulate the meta information attached to the image. These meta-details are often used to credit the photographer or graphic artist, as well as provide searchable information for photo archives and databases. If you want to use it for SEO purposes, you can edit the meta title, description and keyword tags of the image in the file itself. And once uploaded to your website, Google will find that information.
A tag <div>is a piece of HTML code that defines a division or section in an HTML document. It is also a container used for HTML elements that are styled with CSS or manipulated with JavaScript.
The most common way to use a tag <div>is to add a CSS class or id attribute to it. However, it can also be used covertly to add keywords to the website’s HTML.
For example, you add one <div>to the page that contains your target keyword by tagging it in the following ways:
- <div class = “palavra-chave-frase”>
- <div id = “palavra-chave-frase”>
Now, you might be thinking, “This SEO strategy can’t work”, but I guarantee it will.
HTML title attribute
The title attribute specifies extra information about the HTML element it is attached to. It is also the tooltip text that appears when you hover over the element.
The cool thing about the title attribute is that it’s part of the Global Attributes in HTML and can be used on any HTML element.
But where do you put keywords in HTML like that?
Here are the most basic elements you can use:
Paragraphs:<p>
Titles:<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6>
horizontal ruler:<hr>
Anchor Brand:<a>
Unordered and ordered lists:<ul> <ol>
List elements:<li>
Images: <img></img>
Dividers:<div>
Periods:<span>
To use the power of the title attribute for your keywords, all you need to do is add it to any existing HTML element. Just don’t overdo it by putting your keyword in every page title attribute.
Here are some examples of this strategy from the HTML elements listed above:
- <p title = “keyword-phrase”>Bloco de texto</p>
- <a title= “keyword-phrase”>Link de texto âncora</a>
- <ul><li title = “keyword-phrase”>Nome da lista</li></ul>
link anchor text
Link anchor text is the visible, clickable text within an HTML hyperlink.
And any time you link from one page on your site to another, you’re creating a good opportunity to add keywords you want the landing page to rank for.
That hyperlinked text is the key phrase I want the linked page to rank for. And if you read other blog posts on this site, you will see other instances of this link anchor text being used.
By focusing on keyword-optimized internal link anchor text, you can increase a page’s rankings on Google. This is because anchor text sends a direct signal to Google about what the page is about and should be ranked.
However, the rule of thumb here is this: never repeat your link’s anchor text more than 50% of the time. You want to vary your anchor text so that it doesn’t send a red flag to Google and potentially penalize your site.
The strategy I follow for success is to rotate between the target keywords I want a page to rank for, that way I’m never over-optimizing by using the same keyword too many times. I also add additional work to the anchor text of the link so that each instance is not an exact match phrase.
- SEO Keyword Tips (3 Internal Links)
- SEO Keyword Tips Here (2 Internal Links)
- my SEO keyword tips (1 internal link)
- SEO keyword tips (2 internal links)
As you can see, I’m optimizing the internal link anchors for the keyword phrase, but adding enough variations that it’s not over-optimized with an exact match phrase.
And it’s an often overlooked part of SEO to improve your website’s rankings.
Using descriptive anchor text in your global navigation menu means that every page on your site has keyword-rich links pointing to those pages.
Also, if a page receives a lot of internal links, it can send a signal to Google that the page is an important part of your site’s content. More links equal greater SEO value.
Now, similar to my last tip, you don’t want to put your keywords in the navigation menu. That way, you’re not over-optimizing the keyword.
For example, if you have a website that has a page about “best keyword tools” and you want to add a link to it in the main navigation menu for higher SEO value, I suggest you delete the word “ better” and just make that anchor text, “keyword tools”.
Another example would be a page you want to rank for the keyword “digital marketing services in Texas”. In this case, I would just make the navigation menu anchor text read, “digital marketing services”.
Checking your ranking improvements
Once you’ve put all these tips into practice, you can start checking your keyword rankings on Google.
How to Add Keywords to a Website for SEO Summary
The goal here was to provide a comprehensive answer to the question, “Where do keywords go on a website?”
As you’ve learned, there are 20 places to put your keywords in your website’s HTML for Google search ranking improvements. And the more points you can add to your keywords, the more SEO optimized your pages will be for those terms.
