Keyword Placement in SEO: Top 5 Exact Places Where Your Focus Keywords & Variations Must Appear

Keywords Are Very Critical in SEO. Many SEO tools will help you with keyword research. But SEO is not just a tool game. Not many tools in this world will help you place your keywords correctly. Because keyword placement requires human intelligence and efforts, not just machine algorithm intelligence. Gladly this article which you are reading now will definitely guide you about keyword placement in SEO.

If you don’t know how to place the keywords strategically on your web page then your SEO strategy might not succeed. I have learned that in many cases the keyword strategy determines whether the website would rank faster or would the site get more traffic or not. Hence Picking the right keywords and placing them strategically in your content or web page is highly important to get fruitful SEO returns.

Let us now get some great insights about how you can strategically do keyword placement in SEO to get better returns.

1. Keyword Placement in SEO Title & Page Title

The SEO Title is the first thing that the user notices when your web page appears in the search results.

It is well-known fact that in Google SEO, the most relevant website results on the search get the most amount of clicks.

And one awesome way to make your web page more relevant for both users & Google is by placing the keyword at the beginning of the SEO title.

That’s right. The main focus keyword of your web page should appear at the beginning of the SEO title.

Because this helps people to get a broad initial understanding of what the topic of your web page is all about. 

For example, if you are searching for “how to learn swimming” then you would expect web results with titles like “How to learn swimming easily in 7 days ” “How to learn swimming faster” and so on.

You can apply the same logic to any product or service page which you have on your website.

See by adding your main focus keywords you also send a signal to the user’s head that you have some interesting content that is very relevant to what people are searching for.

Along with that, you must naturally include power words, numbers, brackets, and a positive sentiment-oriented term in the SEO title.

I prefer to use co schedule headline analyzer to create amazing headlines for my blog posts. It is also highly recommended by many of the top SEO experts.

2. Keyword Placement in SEO Meta Description

The Meta Description is Perhaps the Second most important thing after your SEO title. Many research has proven that a strong and attractive, relevant meta description can help in increasing the traffic.

As a Good rule, the focus keyword must be placed in the beginning part of the meta description.

You should also include the long-tail variations and keywords.

It’s important to focus on keyword placement in SEO meta descriptions.

But kindly keep in mind that there is a lot more scope to add useful sentences in the Meta description box.

I think you can add probably 150-160 characters of content in your meta description field.

So, think of adding your focus keywords & long-tail keywords naturally by constructing relevant and beautiful sentences for your product offering or service offering.

Try to make the SEO meta description make more actionable and specific to your topic or any offer which is mentioned on the web page.

Remember the logic is always to add the keywords naturally where it makes sense. So don’t just stuff the keywords forcefully anywhere in the Meta tags or in the Content. 

3.Sub Headings & H2, H3 Tags

Sub Headings improves the user experience and content readability factor.

Because people like to read and observe the text content which is not too long and also is divided into multiple smaller paragraphs, subsections, and subheadings.

You Must use H2 tags for the Major Subheadings. For smaller subheadings that come within the H2 tag, you can use the H3 tag.

As you know Subheadings are used for breaking down the main topic and describe them in multiple steps and subtopics.

So, it definitely makes a lot of sense to add your keywords naturally in the subheading titles & subtopics or subsections headings.

In fact adding keywords in the subheadings and H2, H3 tags have more weightage from the SEO point of view.

It also in a way signals to Google that most of your subheadings are relevant to the main topic of the content. Because the focus keyword appears in the important subheadings. So this becomes a great relevance factor.

4. Image Alt tags

A lot of time when I do SEO for websites, I find one common thing. And that is the “Missing Image alt attribute”.

Alt attributes are nothing but Image Alt tags.

Google has confirmed many times in the past that words present inside these image alt tags carry heavy weightage. There are more carefully observed and matched. Hence alt tags can be a ranking signal. Google will carefully observe, analyze and match the words present in the alt tags.

So from Google’s point of view image alt tags are more prominent.

Hence it becomes heavily important for us to add our focus keywords naturally in the alt tags for the images present on the web page. Try to use the focus keyword where it makes sense to add them inside the alt tags.

Not only for Google, but Alt tags are also important for users and to their experience as well.

It happens quite frequently that when you open a web page not all the images would load properly due to technical issues. In such a scenario, if the alt tags of the corresponding images are present then it would help in conveying what the content (the topic) of the image was all about to the user. This is how image alt tags help the users.

5. Beginning of the Content & Throughout the Content in Major Sub Headings

It appears that including your main keyword in the first paragraph has some kind of good impact on your rankings.

Most of the SEO plugins like Yoast and Rankmath are suggesting their users to add the main keyword within the first paragraph or first 250 words.

I don’t expect you to write the first paragraph just for the sake of keyword inclusion. That’s not a good idea.

Your first paragraph must talk about what your topic is all about. It should lead the user and encourage them to read the rest of the content. It should help them get greater insight into what exactly your topic is all about. The beginning paragraph helps in catching the eyeballs of your readers.

It must be noted that 7 out of 10 people read the titles but they leave without reading the content. Hence the first paragraph has an important role in catching the user’s attention and attracting them to read the content.

Alongside the first paragraph, your focus keywords and the long tail variations should also appear in all the major subsections and subtopics of your content.

It is important to distribute the keywords wisely.

Keywords must be distributed throughout the content from the top to bottom. Sprinkle the keywords in subsections and place it strategically where it makes sense.

Yes, It is right that the keyword should be present throughout the content of your web page. But you don’t have to use the same exact keyword 10 times everywhere.

You must also try to use phrase matches of your main keywords and synonyms, similar words, and long-tail keywords in your content wherever there is an opportunity and where it makes sense.

For example, if the keyword is “buy laptops”, then you can synonyms and variations of that like “buy cheap laptops” “buy laptops at the best price” “best laptop deals” and so on. 

You don’t necessarily need to use “buy laptops” 10-15 times everywhere. You can make use of synonyms to make the content strategy and keyword strategy more relevant.

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