Do you want to know how to add keywords to your website for SEO?
Do you ever wonder where to put keywords in HTML when you write content?
This guide is for you.
For maximum SEO value and ranking, there are 20 locations you can place your keyword phrases on a website. In this blog post I will show you the HTML document’s hidden spots.
This page will cover everything you need to know about keyword optimization.
How to add keywords to a website for SEO
Meta Title
Meta title is where you should put your keywords phrases in the HTML. It’s the first step to adding keywords to a website.
Meta titles are the name tags for a website and appear first in search engine results pages for users to click. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing place a lot of SEO value in this HTML meta field.
Your keyword phrases will not be included in your meta title if you don’t include them. Always put your key phrase here.
It is important that your keywords are placed at the beginning of the field. This will ensure you get the maximum value from the meta title. This is where position matters. Search engines will consider your keywords more relevant if they are closer to the meta title’s beginning.
To get the best SEO value, I always begin my meta titles using my primary target keyword. Then, I try to add keywords where it makes sense.
This page should rank for the following keyword phrases.
- How to add keywords to a site for SEO
- How to add keywords to your website HTML
The best way to accomplish this is to include as many phrases as possible in your meta title, without repeating words.
Look at the image below to see what I did for the page’s meta title.
You can use an SEO plugin such as All in One SEO, Yoast or Rank Math to modify the meta titles of WordPress to increase search engine ranking.
Meta Description
Google does not consider the meta description to be a ranking factor. It does appear as the second search result entry for your website and adds relevancy to the keywords people are looking for.
You know that the meta description can influence your decision to click on search results. It’s a good idea to include your keyword here so that the user considers your listing more relevant to their search query.
A good marketing message, or a short description of the page’s purpose along with your target keyword can influence how many people click on your search results entry. That’s the most important thing here.
Here is a screenshot showing how I included my target keyword phrase into the meta description.
Meta Keywords
Although the meta keywords tag is no longer used by major search engines, many on-page SEO plugins still use it.
Google says that keyword meta tags were quickly used to stuff irrelevant keywords, without the typical visitor ever seeing them. Google started to ignore the keywords meta-tag many years ago, after it was so frequently misused.
Google ignores the meta keyword tag, so many SEOs leave it blank. You can include your keyword here, but some search engines might pay more attention to this HTML location.
Personally, I don’t use the meta keywords field in my content. However, you can read my post about what are meta keywords.
URL
Your visitors and search engines will appreciate URLs that provide information about the website, its content and where pages are located within the organizational structure.
The URL is a top HTML location for keywords that can be used on a website to improve SEO rankings.
There are many areas in your website URL where you can add your keywords. The best SEO advice I can offer you is to limit the number of exact match keywords that you include in your URL. Avoid keyword stuffing.
These are the components of URLs that you can use keywords for:
- Domain Name: You can add your main keyword to your website domain name, such as keywordphrase.com.
- Subdomain Name: If you have subdomains set up on your website, then you can include keywords here like this: keyword-phrase.companyname.com.
- Folder Name: If the content on your website is organized into folders, then the folder names can include your keywords like this: companyname.com/keyword-phrase/pagename
- Page Name: The actual page name can include your keywords like this: companyname.com/foldername/keyword-phrase.
Header Tags
Header tags are used in HTML documents to organize the content structure. These tags break down the text blocks, making it easier to read and skim.
Header tags contain H1 through H6 elements. For SEO purposes, however, the H1 through H6 elements are the most important. Page Optimizer Pro experts confirmed the importance of keywords presence in these areas.
This is how to properly use keywords in website header tags.
- H1: H1 is the main header tag of the page. It should appear only once and at the top of your content. Your main keyword phrase should be at the top of the H1 tag. You can also include additional keywords, but not stuffing. It is a good idea to simply copy the SEO-optimized meta to the H1 field. For more information, see my SEO H1 best practice page.
- H2-H4: The webpage can contain as many H2 and H4 tags you like. The best practice is to use H2s as a way to break down the main topics of the page. H3s can be placed under the H2s, if necessary, as sub-headers. SEO strategies that include keywords in the H2 tags at least once and variations in H3 tags are a good strategy. Personally, I don’t use H4s.
Another important point to remember is that header tags can be used to win Google’s featured search snippets or People Also Answer box. You can structure your content in the same way I did with H2s or H3s to give Google exactly what it needs to show your content in those search engine results pages.
The image below shows Crazy Egg using the same advice to rank in featured snippets for the targeted keyword phrase “how to optimize webpages”. The H2 main heading and the H3 list items 1-8 are respectively H2s.
Body Content
Page content is an important SEO ranking factor. Search engines may not be able to determine the keywords that you want your webpage to rank for.
You’ll want to make it easy for search engines like Google by giving Google what it wants in terms of keyword placement within the body text.
This is what I briefly discussed in my post about how to improve keyword search results. But I will go in greater detail here.
Three areas are the best places to place your keyword phrases.
- Introduction: Include your keywords in the first 100 words.
- Main Content: Include your keywords at least 2 to 4 times on the main page content (evenly distributed).
- Summary: Include your keywords in the last 100 words.
Remember that your content should be easily readable. Don’t simply put keywords in these places without making it sound natural. Make your content easily understood and readable for people first.
You may also think this will lead to too many keywords being used in the body content. But you can trust my opinion. This exact formula has been my standard for over 15 years.
You’ll actually find my main keyword phrase “how to add keywords on a website for search engine optimization” five times in the body of paragraph content, as I explained previously. This article had to be at least one page long, as I explained in the guide on optimal SEO word counts.
Images
Images can also be used to add keywords to websites. Although this may sound strange, because images are visual elements graphics and pictures can still be optimized for keywords.
Where do keywords go on a website that has images?
These are the top four places to optimize image keywords:
- ALT Tag: An HTML element that describes an image for a screen reader is the ALT tag. Blind people can use ALT tags to help them understand the visual elements on a page. This is also a great place to add your keywords. Make sure the keywords are relevant to the image, and not just being stuffed into the field. The ALT tag is primarily used to assist people with disabilities.
- Image Title: Your keywords can be included in the image title attribute. This attribute can be used to provide additional information about an element, but it can also be used for SEO purposes.
- Filename: Your keywords can be added to the filenames of your images for additional SEO value. Keyword-phrase.jpg.
- Image Meta Information: You can modify the image’s meta information using an image editor like Photoshop. These meta details can be used to credit the photographer, graphic artist, and provide searchable information for photo databases and archives. You can modify the meta title, description and keywords tags of the file to make it SEO-friendly. Google will also find the information once it is uploaded to your site.
DIV tags
The
This is the most popular way to use it.
You can add, for example, a
You may think, “This SEO strategy cannot possibly work.” But I can assure you it can. Ted Kubaitis’ powerful Cora SEO software shows correlations between higher Google rankings and the number of keywords in DIV tags.
Is that not unbelievable?
This popular website, “Addicting games”, ranks among the top three Google results for the extremely difficult keyword “games”. This website uses the DIV strategy to optimize for this keyword.
HTML Title Attribute
The title attribute provides additional information about the HTML element it is attached to. It also contains the tooltip text, which appears when you hover your cursor over an element.
The best thing about the title attribute in HTML is that it can be used on any HTML elements.
Where do you place keywords in HTML like this one?
These are the basic elements that you can use.
- Paragraphs:
- Headings:
- Horizontal Ruler
- Anchor Tag
- Unordered and Ordered lists:
- List Elements:
- Images:
- Dividers:
- Spans:
All you need to do to harness the power of the title attribute to your keywords is to add it to an existing HTML element. Don’t overdo it by adding your keyword to every title attribute of the page.
These are just a few examples from the HTML elements above.
-
Text block
- Anchor text link
-
- List Name
Similar to my previous tip about keywords in DIV tags, Addicting Games also uses this SEO strategy in HTML. You can see it in action by looking at the image below.
Link Anchor Text
An anchor text is the visible, clickable text within an HTML hyperlink.
Linking from one page of your website to another creates a great opportunity to add keywords you want the target site to rank for.
Here is an example of keyword optimized link anchor text: How many keywords are on a page?
Notice how the anchor text is exactly matching the keyword phrase. The hyperlinked text contains the keyword phrase that I want the linked webpage to rank for. You can also see similar instances of this link anchor text in other blog posts.
You can improve a page’s Google rankings by focusing on keyword-optimized internal linking anchor text. Because the anchor text is a direct signal from Google about the page’s content and should be ranked accordingly,
(This idea is covered in greater detail in my article on external vs internal links.
The golden rule is to never repeat your link text more than half the time. Variation in your anchor text is important to avoid sending a red signal to Google, which could lead to your website being penalized.
To ensure success, I rotate through the targeted keywords I want pages to rank for. This way, I don’t over-optimize by using the same keyword too often. To ensure that each match phrase is different, I add additional words to the link anchor text.
If I wanted to rank a blog for keyword “SEO keyword suggestions”, I could use this internal linking plan:
- SEO keyword tips (3 links within the site)
- Here are 2 internal links to help you find SEO keywords
- My SEO keyword tips (1 link internal)
- Keyword tips for SEO (2 internal links).
As you can see I am optimizing the link anchors within the keyword phrase, but also adding enough variations to ensure it isn’t overoptimized with a exact match phrase.
Navigation Menu
Another place to add keywords to a website is the navigation menu. It’s a valuable piece of SEO real estate that can be used to improve your website’s ranking.
By using descriptive anchor text in your global menu navigation, every page of your website will have keyword-rich links that point to these pages.
A page with a lot of links can signal to Google that it is an important part of your site’s content. Higher SEO value is associated with more links.
Similar to my previous tip, don’t put your keywords in the navigation menu. A partial match keyword phrase is the best option. This will ensure that you aren’t overoptimizing for the keyword.
If you have a webpage that contains the “best keyword instruments” page and want to add a link there in your main navigation menu to increase SEO value, I suggest dropping the word “best” altogether and making that anchor text “keyword tools”.
A page you want to rank in the search engine for “digital marketing service in Texas” is another example. In this case, the anchor text for the navigation menu would be “digital marketing service”.
How to Improve Your Ranking
Once you have all these tips in place, you can start to check your keyword rankings on Google.
Visit my page about how to check keyword positions in Google to learn more. This page outlines a simple step-by-step process that anyone can follow to check their position.
How to add keywords to a website for SEO Summary
This detailed guide will show you how to add keywords to your website to increase its SEO.
This was done to answer the question “Where do keywords go on a website?”
You have seen that there are 20 spots to place keywords in website HTML to improve your Google search ranking. The more keywords you add, the better SEO-friendly your pages will be.