Optimizing Your Content for Search Part II: Using the Right Keywords

Are you ahead of your competitors when it comes to website content? The following four steps can help you keep your content optimized and recognizable for search engines, which can only improve your chances of advancing ahead of your competitors to land your organization in front of your target audience.

1. Identify the BEST Keywords

Using the best possible keywords will help search engines find your content. If you aren’t sure what keywords are appropriate for your business, we have some tips for you in Part I of using the right keywords. Remember these key takeaways: aim to use “consumer” words instead of industry words, and try to avoid broad search terms, like “web” as opposed to “web design firm.”

Specific and concise content that describes your service or product wins the day – both in terms of customer engagement AND when it comes to search engines. 

2. Keep Your Website Focused

Each page of your website has a different purpose related to your business, with the singular goal of engaging your potential customer. Because the content across your site will vary depending on your focus for that page, the keywords you use on each of those pages will vary as well. If your keywords align with the subject of that particular page, search engines will rank that page as valuable to potential customers.

Here are some ways keywords may shift across a website, using this sample business, Fresh Brewed Coffee Shop:

3. Write Content that Includes Your Keywords

At the end of the day, you’re writing for your site visitors, not search engines. When Google scans your website, it’s searching for content that is user-friendly, not computer-friendly. Be natural with your keyword usage.

The coffee shop from the example used “coffee shop” as their main keyword. They used different phrases and variations of this main keyword throughout their content that makes sense for a customer visiting the site. When Google bots crawl sites for a search, they pull the sites with language that makes the most sense for the customer.

Quick Tip: Use keyword variations in your header text. It is another important way to add keywords to your written content.

4. Use the Keywords in Hidden Tags on Your Website

While writing good content that incorporates your keywords goes a long way to grabbing the attention of search engines, you can earn extra Google-points by incorporating keywords into the hidden tags on your site. Add keywords to image alt tags (image alt tags are the descriptive text for your images on your site), image filenames, links, and page synopses to create even greater web content optimization.

You don’t have to be a web guy to figure this out. Many of these features are built into Spire websites or whatever content management system you use to edit your website.

Looking for more tips to improve your rankings in search results? Get our free SEO Cheat Sheet – a one-page, easy to follow guide to SEO for everyday small businesses.