Are you tired of guessing how to get more website traffic using keywords? SEO might be overwhelmingly confusing. But I want to help clear the confusion about keywords and optimization. If you’re wondering how to optimize website content to drive traffic to your website, this post is going to cover where to put keywords on your website to help your website content rank better in search engines..
Using The Right Keywords to Drive Traffic to Website
Many new business owners and bloggers make the mistake of not optimizing website content correctly. Because there might be a misunderstanding of what keywords you should be using when your website is new, they end up using keywords that are extremely hard to rank for initially.
When your website is the “new kid on the block”, those one-word keywords that are hard to rank for (high-competitive or in the red) aren’t going to drive traffic to your website or get your website content visible in front of your audience.
To please the masses (search engines) as a new blogger & business owner is to expand on your keyword research and look for low-competitive keywords and phrases (long-tail keywords). Getting super niche on our keywords is going to give us the best chance of getting known for our offer (solution).
You might be asking, “What is an SEO keyword”? First of all, SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. To simplify the definition, this means when people (your audience) type in a specific keyword or phrase, your content will show up in search results. In the marketing world, we call this organic marketing.
Optimizing Website Content With the Right Keywords
To see quicker results and drive traffic to your website, you have to optimize your website content with “easy to rank for” keywords. These are the low-competitive keywords that are up for grabs to get known for. Even if the search volume is around 10 searches a month, it’s prime real estate. Why?
Search volume and keyword competitiveness numbers fluctuate.. Frequently.
Obviously, if you can find a keyword or phrase that’s got a good search volume and a general low-competitive SEO score (no higher than 40), go for that one.
In order to drive traffic to your website, using low-competitive keywords is going to be your way to ranking #1 on Google for that specific keyword.
6 Places to Optimize Website Content to Drive Traffic to Website
How to Optimize Website Content Tip #1: Categories + Tags
SEO isn’t just about optimizing blog content and callin’ it good. To leverage search engines and drive traffic to our website, we also need to place keywords in strategic places within our website content. This makes it easier for search engines to understand our website content and what our site is about. Our priority is an approach to website content as a whole. Not just blog content.
The Optimization fix
Limit blog categories. Remember that you’re serving one niche, so you don’t need a wide variety of topics. Keeping your topics tight & niche is really going to help you tap into your audience and will result in you creating quality content that your audience values because you have one focus. Having a variety of topics will take you SO MUCH LONGER to grow.
Remember this when you start to question your skills or website content.. You are only solving ONE problem, for ONE audience, and you have ONE solution. It’s just that simple.
How to Optimize Website Content Tip #2: Content Structure
Every piece of website content should be skimmable and readable in length for your ideal reader. If you know that your ideal reader won’t read a lengthy post, don’t create lengthy posts. Your audience most likely doesn’t have time to read a novel. So keep it short and sweet.
You’ve probably read that Google favors long-form content, which is true.. As a reminder, you are serving your audience first, then Google.
Keep it super easy for your ideal reader to consume, and easier for bots to crawl. First priority though for any kind of site or content structure is user experience. Search engines second.
How to structure website content
Keywords should be placed strategically throughout our website content. These not only apply to blog content but content as a whole, even in the rest of our website copy where it matters.
H1 – There should only be one H1 per post/page because this is the title heading.
H2’s serve as subheadings that break up your website content to make it easier to read and more skimmable. Most of the time, keywords also go in H2s.
Within and throughout website content – The key is to insert the keywords where they naturally fit. Long-tail keywords, for example, are sometimes hard to insert into a sentence naturally. because these keywords are usually hard to naturally add into a sentence, don’t be afraid to rephrase and shorten the sentence using the main part of the keyword in the content. It’s still considered adding the keyword to your content.
Optimization Website Content Tip #3: Add keywords to URL
Keywords are added to the URL for two reasons. It gives your website content an extra boost in search engines and the potential for more visibility.
Secondly, the potential to drive traffic to your website with keywords that your ideal reader is typing in. So your content has a better chance to show in search results when those specific keywords are typed in.
The correct way to use URLs
When you’re creating the URLs for your website content, add dashes between every word. This is the communication language and how bots understand strings of code. Always add dashes to URLs!
Optimization Website Content Tip #4: Image file name
Another important but easily overlooked place to add keywords is image file name. This is the name of the image before you upload it to your website. For example, the image file name might look like IMG26545.
Any image that is added to any website content needs to show relevancy to the topic the content is referring to. It’s always best practice to rename every image file, even if it’s an image you have used somewhere else on your website.
How to rename the image file
The image file name has to be renamed before you upload it to your website. It won’t be able to be changed after it is already uploaded to your site. To change the name of the image file on your computer, right-click on the image file name, click on rename, and change the name of the image with the keywords in it. Use those dashes, friends!
Since I’m mentioning adding images to your site, compressing image files is also crucial for content SEO. Huge file formats on any page of your website are a site speed resource hog. Usually, JPGs or JPEGs are the best file formats to upload because these are the smallest file sizes.
Optimization Website Content Tip #5: Meta description
Adding the keyword to the meta description is SUPER important. This is what people will likely be reading if when your content shows up in search results. You have seconds to capture the attention of your reader. Make it not just keyword-friendly, but eye-catching and curious.
How to create a clever meta description
Keep the length of your meta description to 140 characters. Ask a trigging question – something that your ideal reader wants a solution to, then follow that with a very short blurb of what the content is about with the keywords. Learning how to write clever and triggering titles and descriptions for website content is a skill to develop.
Bonus Tip – If you notice that your website content is getting impressions in Google Analytics, but no clicks, try adjusting the title and description.
Optimization Website Content Tip #6: Alt text
Similar to an image file format, keywords should also be added to alt descriptions. This is a part of content optimization to give the website content the boost it needs to have more chances of it ranking in search.
How to write an Alt text
Just add the keyword to the alt description. It’s just that simple. Pretty straightforward. The alt description doesn’t need to be lengthy, just the keyword or phrase.
Optimizing website content isn’t hard to do. You just need to know how to optimize website content with keywords to drive traffic to your website.
Want to know how you can optimize your website content to drive traffic to your website?
My custom content marketing strategy has literally helped me grow my audience and visibility. If you’re struggling to understand where to put keywords in website content, or what keywords you should be using, book an UNstuck session with me right here.
I’d also love for you to come and join my private community where you can get help to grow your visibility and website traffic with organic marketing. We have daily prompts, Q&A’s, and live trainings in the group to teach you how to optimize website content & website copywriting. We also have weekly accountability and support threads. Click to join and hope to see you there!
Hey there skimmer
Wanna listen instead of read? Listen to episode 25 // Stumped with SEO? 6 Best Places to Optimize Keywords for Better Ranking Potential
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