In SEO you need to stay on top of Google’s algorithm updates.

Or you risk not showing up on search results for your target keywords.

But simply optimising your website with relevant keywords is enough.

Optimising your website with your targeted keyword helps with:

  • Attracting higher quality website visitors
  • Increasing conversion rates
  • Closing more customers

Before you read how to add keywords to your website, after your keyword research is done.

But first, make sure to learn how to do keyword research.

In this article you will learn:

  • what is on-page SEO
  • where to add keywords to your website
  • how to avoid search penalties.

So, let’s dive right in.

What is On-Page SEO?

Creating, optimising and promoting content, is what SEO, or search engine optimisation, is all about.

On-page SEO and off-page SEO are talked about the most when it comes to SEO in general.

The different between on-page SEO and off-page SEO is:

  • On-Page SEO is the signal your website sends to a search engine.
  • Off-Page SEO is the signals other websites send about your website.

On-page SEO is optimising your web pages to rank higher on search engine results pages.

On-page SEO involves optimising your content and the HTML source code for search.

But, Off-page SEO is about gaining ranking signals from sources apart from your website like backlinks.

Optimising your webpages helps search engines understand:

  • who you are
  • what you do
  • what you’re writing about

So, by making on-page SEO improvements to your website:

  • you can bring in the right type of visitors.
  • you increase your website’s organic rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

On-Page SEO Tips that Help Your Web Pages Rank Better in Search

Now let’s go over some tips to help improve your web pages SEO.

We will talk about:

  • Organisation strategies
  • Keywords
  • Content

So, keep reading.

SEO audit your website.

When you create new content for your website, the content will have at least 1 or 2 specific keywords you are targeting.

But, an SEO audit will have to be performed on your website if you already have a lot of published web pages.

Doing an SEO audit of your website will tell you if your website is SEO-friendly.

Then, starting with the web pages with the highest traffic, you can update and optimise your content for search.

Duplicated content can also be identified with SEO audits so you can fix these issues right away and rank better in search.

Details of what an SEO website audit does includes:

  • Checks if your website is being blocked by search engines
  • Making sure your XML sitemap is working
  • Monitoring and improving your website performance
  • Finding and deleting internal duplicate content
  • Checking your website’s popularity and trustworthiness

Now, back to the main topic.

For figuring out which keywords to add to your content, you will need to:

  • Use Excel or Google Sheets to export your website pages into a spreadsheet.
  • Sort your spreadsheet by the most visited pages.
  • Pick a keyword category for each web page and add it to the column next to the web page name.
  • In the next column, add more specific keywords that you want to add to the web page’s content.

Remember to keep your keywords relevant to:

  • your web page’s content
  • your target audience’s search terms

Complete this process for all of your pages or at least the web pages with the most traffic.

Before learning where to add keywords on your website.

Or, read the following quick explanation on:

How do you find keywords on a website

To find a website’s ranking keywords, learn how to find keywords to include on your website.

The quickest option is to use SEO keyword tools like:

  • HubSpot
  • Ahrefs

Or, you can use a free website keyword research tool:

  • Wordtracker

Using these keyword research tools help you to:

  • Search for potential keywords
  • Know how many people searching for these keywords

Naturally add keywords to certain places on your website.

To optimise your website, you need to add your target keywords to your web pages.

But, for on-page SEO, there are more optimal places to add keywords to compared to others on your website.

The most important places to optimise your website for your target keywords are:

  • Titles
  • Descriptions
  • Headings & Content
  • Images Titles & Alt Text
  • URLs

Optimising these parts of your website helps you get more targeted visitors in the long term.

So, start with the web pages with the most traffic.

Then, optimise your web pages as you create more.

Titles Tags

Title tags, also known as Titles, describe your web pages topic using HTML.

The web page title are located at:

  • the top of the web page of your internet browser
  • in a search engine’s result page

The direct influence that titles have are:

  • searcher clickthrough rates (CTRs)
  • search rankings

To make your title search-friendly and click-friendly:

  • Keep below 70 characters to stop search engine pages cutting off the title.
  • Use one target keyword or phrase so your page is seen as relevant to searchers queries
  • Place your target keyword at the front of the title so it doesn’t get cut off on SERPs

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions, also known descriptions, are below the title and URL in search results.

What meta descriptions do:

  • help increase click-through rate (CTR)
  • tell searchers why they should click on your web page

What meta descriptions do not do:

  • influence your search engine rankings

So, remember to include target keywords or phrases in your meta description to help searchers decide if your content is relevant to their query.

Note: Tools like Dejan SEO help give you preview your search results before deciding on your meta description.

Headings & Content

Use your target keywords in your headings and content.

Because, website visitors stay on your web page if they see keyword terms they searched for in your headings and content.

Keywords in your content is a Google ranking factor and helps improve your SERP position.

Keyword in headings and content dos:

  • use your target keywords in a natural way
  • Focus on giving value to your audience when you create content

Because, by focusing on giving value to your audience, you will naturally optimise your content for important keywords.

So, use keywords in multiple places on your website.

Keywords in headings and content do nots:

  • Keyword-stuffing
  • Don’t focus on the amount of keywords or keyword phrases you can include

Because, Google can detect when people use keyword-stuffing in their content.

And, it negatively affects your web pages search results if you use too many keywords.

Image Alt Text & Titles

Include keywords naturally in your image alt text and titles.

You can add Alt text and titles to an image tag in HTML.

An image tag in HTML looks like this:

style=”font-family: ‘courier new’, courier;”><img class=”alignCenter shadow” src=”image.jpg” alt=”image-description” title=”image tooltip”/>

An image’s alt text helps:

  • Images show up in image searches
  • Search engines know what the image is about
  • Displays text inside the image’s container, when the image cant be found
  • Describes the image for people with poor vision, using screen readers

But, an image’s title tag shows when a user hovers their mouse’s cursor over the image.

And doesn’t show when the image can’t be displayed.

Compared to other SEO tips on this list, adding keywords to image alt text and titles doesn’t influence your search rankings as much.

But it is better to change an image’s name from”IMG51730″ to an accurate and descriptive one.

An example of a bad alt text would be:

  • Bad: alt=””

A better option for an alt text would be:

  • Better: alt=”puppies”

But, the best option for an alt text would be:

  • Best: alt=”golden-retriever-puppies-in-basket”

And, for alt texts, make sure to avoid keyword-stuffing:

  • Avoid: alt=”puppy-dog-baby-dog-pup-pups-puppies-doggies-litter-retriever-labrador-wolfhound-setter-pointer-basket-wicker-basket-box-container-straw-grass-green-nature”

URLs

If your keywords describe your web pages content then include them in your URL.

Every post has a unique URL.

So, make sure to optimise the URLs on every post you publish.

But, remember not to keyword stuff your URL or search engines will penalise your exact match domains.

Avoid domains like:

  • arizonerealestaterealtorsinarizona.com

Instead keep it more natural, like:

  • yourbusinessname.com/topic-topic

When you create your URL, remember:

  • keep URLs reader-friendly

Your URL slug should:

  • Make sense to users
  • Let users know where in your website they’ve landed
  • separate words with hyphens (-)
  • remove extra words (like “a” and “the”)

Learn to avoid search penalties.

Things to avoid when optimising your website for keywords are:

Never Hide Keywords.

Avoid hiding keywords such as the following:

  • Using the same colour for the keyword text and the background
  • Hiding keywords behind images
  • Hiding keywords off to the side using CSS. 

Search engines can find these hidden keywords and this results in serious search penalties.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing.

Keyword stuffing is repeating keywords unnatural over and over again in:

  • Titles
  • Headings
  • Descriptions
  • page content
  • URLs
  • the bottom of a webpage in very small text

Basically, unnecessarily adding keywords on a webpage is keyword stuffing.

The reasons why you shouldn’t do keyword stuffing include:

  • search engines can detect it
  • it looks spammy
  • search engines will penalise it

Don’t Force Keywords Where They Don’t Belong.

Don’t force keywords in your content, if it doesn’t fit the context of your content then don’t include even one.

If you struggle to find a place to place your keyword, then your content is not meant for that keyword and doesn’t fit your searcher’s personas.

Remember, SEO is about picking content topics relevant to your target audience, not including as many keywords as possible.

Promote a good user experience.

Your website’s visitor’s user experience is important.

A search engine’s goal is to give the best possible content and experience to the searcher.

This should be your goal too when it comes to your website and its content.

So, think about the user’s first and then the search engines second.