Keyword Locations and How They Impact Your Traffic
Hello boys and girls!!! Today…we are talking about keyword locations. Keyword locations play a HUGE part in how Google determines both WHAT your webpage is about as well as how it ranks compared to other webpages of the same the topic!
Make sense? Great! Shortest blog post ever. 🙂
Kidding…
4 Steps to Telling Google What your Page is About
Ok…let’s say you’ve written a blog post (1500 words long…as I’ve previously recommended!). Let’s say your blog post is aboooout….hmmm….blueberry smelling dog shampoo. Let’s say you’ve submitted your post to all of the search engines (or it’s been about a week since you’ve posted it) and the lil’ spider bots of the Interwebs have run through your text to figure out where they are going to stick you in the Googles.
What are these bots looking for? Primarily, since they are a non-creative soulless…thing, they are looking for key phrases that occur multiple times near the top of your webpage
The first thing that comes to your mind might be the Title of your post…but think a little more aggressively! In the hierarchy of a webpage, what is even higher than that? You got it (you smart cookie, you)…the name of your website!
1. The first area the bots are going to check will be the website’s name…not JUST the page name, but the entire Website’s name! So…if your site is called “Blueberry Dog Shampoo”, and the keywords “Blueberry Dog Shampoo” appear in your title and body, google will (rightfully) assume that your page is all about Blueberry Dog Shampoo.
Now, understandably, you can’t go calling your ENTIRE website after a single product or topic. After all…how boring would it be if everyone was called a variation of “Dogshampoo.com”! So…keep in mind that this is a just a small piece of the SEO puzzle! Assuming you will be uploading a logo and a banner with your name and branding on it, I recommend changing your title in WordPress to a short, descriptive phrase. Take a look at the tabs area of this page as an example. What does it say? If you go to www.uncorkyourdork.com, it will say “Creating a Unique Small Business” at the top of that page too. EVERY article I write and product I publish will have to do with increasing traffic to your unique small business.
You can change this in WordPress by heading to your dashboard, “Settings”, and updating your site title. Utilize your tagline as well! Most themes will not show these phrases, so use this section to tell GOOGLE exactly what your website is about.
2. The second area the bots are going to check out is the “slug” or ending of your url. Take a look at the URL of this post for an example of a keyworded slug!
http://blog.uncorkyourdork.com/2016/03/17/keyword-locations/
The “/keyword-locations/” is the slug of the URL. This is a great place to insert the keywords or phrase you want this page to get found on. Try to make your keywords unique, and not too prevalent in a saturated market! For example, trying to keyword for something like “dog shampoo” will be a little more difficult. You’ll be going up against giants like Petco and Petsmart. Instead, a keyword like “blueberry dog shampoo” should be your key phrase. Keep you slug to 2-3 keywords and avoid using words like “the” or “and”. These short connector words just take up valuable SEO retail space and can hurt your rankings!
3. The next area the bots are going to check will finally…be your title. Make sure you’ve included your key words towards THE BEGINNING of your title!! The best titles have the keywords located in the first 3-5 words. Try to use your keywords in the same order that they appear in as seen in your slug.
Alright…HERE’s where things get just a lil’ bit more tricksy…NOT to mention fun. 🙂 The rest of what Google bots are going to see COMPLETELY dependent upon what your HTML looks like, how many times your keywords appear in the HTML and…of course where in the HTML they appear.
SO, your goal is to get your keywords to appear in higher up in your pages code! You can do this with plugins like Yoast…but you
4. They next area to appear in your text should be a H2 header. (Not as scary as it sounds.) Simply create another subtitle that includes your keywords, highlight the text, and change the format from “paragraph” to “Heading 2” in your editing bar above. Easy peasy!! You can checkout the top of the post for an example of an H2 header. It’s the bolded sentence at the beginning of the post.
5. When it comes to FINALLY writing the text for your page or post, the goal is to include your key words in the FIRST sentence of your first paragraph…and around 3-4 more times in the body of your text.
Dorky Ninja Tricks
Now…a little note on your backend. 0_0 (It’s lovely, by the way…very toned.)
Since you are a WordPress user, it’s probably fair to say that you are using a few behind the scenes plugins. Some plugins are great…and you should ABSOLUTELY be using them (think Yoast), but some plugins are more for a pretty blog…and can push your page titles and text even farther down the page. So be very particular about which plugins you install and use!!
Tip: Excessive plugins (and large images) can actually slow your page load time down. If your website load time is more than 1.5 seconds…Google will automatically knock you down a few pages.
I have a little trick that can help all of this, though! This trick is approved by Google, great for social media, and allows me to put boring keywords ABOVE the first paragraph of text without the reader being any wiser. (You can also use this trick on your main website, any Pages, or any area where you can edit your pages HTML!!!)
(Ninja time!!!! WaaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaaa……)
Alright…here we go!
You are going to want to create an image in either Canva or Photoshop that brands your business and can be pinned by your visitors in Pinterest. The code I’m going to give you needs to go at the VERY tippy top of your post…right above your H2 header.
When you write a post in WordPress, you have the option of writing in either a “visual” area or a “text” area. The “text” area is where you will put any html you want to include. This is where you will past the code I’m about to give you.
The code itself just tells your website that you want an image to be embedded in your post…BUT, you want this image to be invisible. 😀 See??? Ninja skills!!
Here is the code you’ll want to use:
<div style=”display: none;”><img class=”aligncenter size-large wp-image-281″ src=”http://www.blog.workfromgnome.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PINTEREST-593×1024.jpg” alt=”Your Etsy Image backgrounds play an important role in creating a uniform etsy shop and increasing conversions and sales with your customers.” width=”593″ height=”1024″ /></div>
The blue area is where you’ll want to include your image link (you can use the image link given to you when you upload your jpg to your media gallery in wordpress!). The green area is where you’ll type your “alt text”. If your image were visible…this is what would appear when you cursor hovers over your image. SINCE this is an invisible image…this is where you will write the perfect, keyword packed description! These keywords will appear at the VERY top of your HTML, helping to tell Google exactly what this page is all about.
Make sure you description is well written! Don’t just put your keywords there and call it a day. This is what will show up as a description for pinned images…and in addition to that, Google recognizes keyword stuffing when they see it. Don’t be dumb.
Whew!!! I think that’s all I got in me for this post!! I know there’s a lot of crazy info up there…but this information is SUPER important to kicking your competition’s ass!! If you have any questions for me…don’t hesitate to put them in the comment area below! I’d be more than happy to answer them as best I can!
PS…if you want to learn EVEN MORE about getting to page one using key phrases and other ninja tricks, be sure get the “SEO Rookie: 21 Days to Double Your WordPress Traffic Checklist’!! Grab it right now by filling in the pink bar above!
Peace out trouts…until next time!
Terra Dawn
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