In our last article we talked about how important the location of keywords is to the Google Search Bots. But just like the guy on T.V. ads says “But wait! There’s more!” While putting yor keyterms in headlines, titles and descriptions, and scattering it judiciously throughout your text is very important to send the right signal to the visiting bots, there are other, more hidden things that should be done with those keyterms.
The Google Bot LOVES keyterms that are linked. If you can include a keyterm in a link that sends a very strong signal to the search engines that this word or phrase is important. But how do you do that easily and naturally? Here are several ways.
If you have your own WordPress type blog or website, you probably have categories for your articles. A neat way of keeping your content tidy and easy to find for the reader.
Name those categories with your keyterms whenever possible.
Those keyterms will show up in your menu, as links, probably on every page.
If you have an article with good keyterms in the title, don’t just say “read more about it here” and link to the article, use your keyterm something like this:
Find more travel destinations - and link the text “travel destinations” to your article
This way you not only get the keyterm in your current article, it shows as a link AND links to an article with a title that uses the term “travel destinations” .
This is a very strong signal for the bots that the word or phrase is important.
When you are uploading an image or a file of any sort - video, pdf, zip, whatever - use keyterms in that file name. Not only will this help you keep track of your files, but it will also add importance to your keyterms. When you’re naming your files, either use spaces between words, OR use a hyphen - . Don’t use an underscore. It can be seen as a stop word by the bots or misread in other ways by them. Keep the file name short, two or three words will do.
Most article sites will display that file name to the bots something like this “travel-destinations-1a.jpg”. Since you’re likely to use an image in places other than your own website or blog, that keyterm will be automatically associated with your content and often establish a link as well.
Whenever possible, use the keyterm in any caption that is allowed by the article site. Not all article sites allow captions, but if they do, and it makes sense for your image to have a caption, use a keyterm or phrase in that caption text.
Be careful on positioning your first image on the page. This is especially a problem with Steemit. Some content sites send the opening paragraph as the description to Google. Thus, if you have an image as the first thing on your page, you could end up with a SERP result that looks like this one.
Notice how Shutterstock - the image site this author used for their images - is scattered several times throughout the description. Not only does this make it difficult for a reader to interpret that description when they see it in the search results, it makes it a little harder to get the click, and may even confuse the algorithms into thinking Shutterstock is one of the search terms.
On Steemit, and some other sites, it’s almost worse. The actual code that links that image can be included!
Most WordPress sites, your own or something like Blogger or WordPress.com don’t do this, but instead use the image you specified as the “featured image” as the visual representation of your article.
The easy fix is to start your articles with a solid text paragraph that includes at least one keyphrase. Google will display the first 160 characters of that paragraph so get in at least that much text before you drop in an image.
Another place the bots will look at is something called the "meta name" or “meta description”, but it’s probable that you will not run into that. A meta description is a place in website code that allows you to enter a page description in the code itself. Since most of you probably don’t have your own website or have access to the code behind it, this area is probably irrelevant to what you do.
MOST article sites merely pick up the first paragraph or 160 characters of your text and automatically use that as the “meta description” without you ever knowing that bit of magic is going on behind the scenes. But, if you do have access to the meta description in the code, carefully craft a description using your keyterms and drop it in the location “meta description” in the code.
If you have access to the code behind the website you will also see “meta-keyterm”. Because so many site owners have used this area to “stuff” keyterms, often ones that have nothing to do with their content, Google doesn’t really pay much attention to what you put in here. It’s waaaaay down on the list of things the algorithms look for, but if you want to drop the keyterms that are found on that page in here, it won’t hurt.
If you put keyterms in that code location that are NOT found in other places on the page, they will be ignored. They must appear on the page itself to be included by the bots as a keyterm to be considered for ranking.
Last, but absolutely not least, is one of my favorite places for keyterms - comments. Google loves to see keyterms in comments. While it may be difficult if not impossible to have someone drop a comment on your page that contains the keyterms you might want, it’s not hard at all to reply to that comment yourself using those keyterms.
This works especially well when you leave a comment that links back to your page on another website, especially one that Google considers an authority site or one that is very popular. We’ll get into that in more detail in the next article that will cover backlinks and how the Google bot and the algorithms look at those. But for now, just be aware that when you answer a comment on your page, use your keyterms whenever you can.
Don’t just say something fluffy like “thanks for the comment” say more. “I love the Hebrides as a fall travel destination and I’m delighted to see you share my thoughts on island vacations.” That will work much better, both for the reader and for the bots.
Next up will be the magical, mystical, and very very misunderstood backlinking. See ya next time!
All images courtesy of Pixabay or taken by the author
Previous SEO Articles in This Series
The Myth and Magic of SEO
The Marketing Mindset
Keywords - Part 1
Keywords - Part 2
Keywords - Part 3
Why Am I Writing This Stuff and How Will It Help Steem and Steemit?
I’ve been helping clients reach good rankings and teaching SEO for more years than I care to think about. Some of you may have taken part in Discord workshops and tutorial sessions I’ve had with various groups here on Steem. Because the blockchain is based on transparency and openness, it’s time to bring that training out from the private Discord groups for everyone on Steemit.
If we want Steem and Steemit to grow, we need to be able to compete for eyeballs on the traditional net in an effective manner. Thus, we need to know and understand SEO because it is the primary mover behind getting those eyeballs on our content. By breaking down SEO into manageable chunks of information, I’m hoping everyone reading these articles will be able to improve their own rankings and turn more conventional net people into Steemians.