Content SEO Part 3: Keyword Optimization
Learn how to optimize content for keywords to prepare it for ranking in Google.
Keyword optimizing the content piece is an important step of creating SEO content.
Goal of keyword optimization
Creating original content that attracts readers is the hard part. Once we’re through with that, we just need to go back and optimize it for keywords so that Google identifies and puts our piece forward for the relevant queries.
The goal is simple: use the focus keyword in some key locations to make the content more clickable, readable and relevant to what users are searching for. At the same time, it’s very important not to overuse keywords.
How not to use keywords
The following paragraph is a prime example of how not to use keywords. Observe how just overstuffed the passage is with keywords:
“Are you looking for the best dog supplies? The best dog supplies near me are available here. Find best dog food brands, best senior dog food and best young dog food for healthy canines in your family. Learn about dog supplies and older dog nutrition to offer the best food for your dog.”
How to use keywords
Weave keywords naturally into the content of the page, just enough times to tell Google and the users what the page is about. Any attempts to overuse it will set off Google’s spam filters and inflict our ranking potential.
Effective Keyword Use
Our online store provides a variety of healthy snacks for every taste. From organic trail mixes to gluten-free energy bars, our selection caters to those seeking nutritious and delicious options for on-the-go lifestyles.
Keyword Stuffing
Healthy snacks are essential for a healthy lifestyle. If you’re looking for healthy snacks, our healthy snacks store has the best healthy snacks. Buy healthy snacks online for a healthy and happy life with our healthy snacks!
Where to use keywords
There’s no fixed rule as to how often and at what locations our focus keyword should appear. That being said, many SEO specialists incorporate the keyword at the following locations:
Page URL
The title tag
Meta description
Subheadings (if, and where, relevant)
Content (preferably in the first 100 words)
Image names and/or alt texts
Anchor texts on other pages linking to this page
When including focus keywords, the above locations are the most appropriate ones to do so. However, make sure we don’t exceed a suitable keyword density, discussed later, while doing so. Again, keyword stuffing is penalized by search engines and makes the piece unappealing to readers.
What are LSI keywords?
Instead of using the exact keyword each time, we can also include variations of it. These are called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. To optimize a page successfully for a topic, we need to have a focus keyword and two to three related keywords.
LSI keywords help search engines understand our content better, build a stronger relevancy between searcher’s intent and our content, ultimately, increasing the content’s tendency to rank higher. LSIGraph is a free tool we can use to find LSI keywords for our focus keywords.
Keyword density
Keyword density is the number of times a keyword is used on the page as a percentage to the overall word count.
Multiply the result from the above calculation by 100 to express keyword density as a percentage.
There’s no rule or a set keyword density with which we can calculate the number of times a keyword should appear on the page. However, 0.5% is generally presumed as a good keyword density by SEO experts. At this keyword density range, search engines will effectively be able to include the page for the SERP results for that keyword, without raising the flag for keyword stuffing. So if we have 200 words on a page, the target keyword should, ideally, appear one time.
Yoast SEO plugin allows us to check keyword density within the WordPress post editor. Premium version of yoast also tracks related keywords to alert us even if we accidentally use too many variations of our keyword, for instance, dog supplies, dog supplier, and supplies for dogs are all added to our keyword count.
SEO Book Keyword Density Analyzer is a free tool that gives us the keyword densities used on a webpage or text.
Test your knowledge
Choose the correct option for each of the following questions.
What is the primary goal of keyword optimization in SEO content?
To use as many keywords as possible
To make the content longer and more detailed
To improve readability by removing keywords
To make the content more relevant to user searches
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