Keyword Targeted Content: A Practical “How To” Map

Developing keyword orientated content for your website means to have a vision of the whole. It’s a matter of knowing the main keywords you want to target, the derived long tail keywords for each main keyword, how to use it in articles and how to link articles to get the results you want. Don’t make the mistake of paying too much attention to only one article and not realizing the importance of the whole.

The First Connection

This is basic knowledge for keyword targeting. Choose the keyword you want to target in an article and then make sure you use it in title, first paragraph, anchor text and the content of the page. This is the first connection: having the keyword present in all those places.

When you’ll use the keyword for that page in anchor text link only internally: you don’t want to help other websites outrank you, do you? It’s very important to use the keyword in the first paragraph and also in the rest of the content.

My advice is to use it naturally, as you would do it a real conversation with someone: don’t force it and don’t try to do keyword stuffing or achieve a certain keyword density. Although you follow some technical rules for search engines, in the end you write for people (those that will link back to you if they like your content – so keep this in mind).

Don’t limit the use in content to only the exact keyword: experiment with singular and plural form, synonyms or related words. This way you escape the danger of repeating the keyword too many times.

The Second Set of Actions

You can also use keywords in other places as well, to enforce the relevancy of the page to that specific keyword:

-          Description metatag: although using the keyword here will not improve your rankings it will help in attracting the eye on your link since this piece of information is displayed by search engines right bellow the title of the page and with the keywords in bold

-          URL – using the keyword in the actual URL of the page can have a positive impact on your rankings but it’s not a decisive factor

-          File names, especially images and the ALT property of the images can help with image search or different other file types search

-          Bold and italic text suggest some sort of importance of that text so use it wise

-          Subheading like h1, h2 and h3 can help especially when someone reads your page: it will be easier to follow the main ideas

The Third Factor – Internal Linking

It’s common knowledge that two is greater than one. More pages from your website linked in a logical hierarchy can greatly improve the relevancy of a page to a certain keyword. There are some rules that you need to follow in order to avoid penalties from search engines and to get the results you want:

-          Don’t link with the same anchor text

-          Concentrate on groups of articles: one main keyword and few long tail derived keywords

-          If you link to a page multiple times from the same article search engines will count the link once but you could get some improvement in functionality

-          Use relevant keywords as anchor text

-          Expect benefits from internal linking only when you link between related pages

What do you think about all this? Share your experience and questions in comments bellow.