Your keywords should be specific to the content of the page.

Why Keywords Should be Page Specific

April 26th, 2011 in Online Marketing Tactics by Chris2 Comments

In general, your website’s home page is probably getting more traffic than any other page of your site. This makes sense, considering that your homepage is the introduction to the website. It’s usually the page that will be linked to from outside sources, and serves as the face of your brand online. However, you shouldn’t try to cram all of your keywords into the home page, much like you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Your keywords must be page specific, meaning they should be based on whatever the content of that page is. For example, if you’re running a printing store, you might offer both greeting cards and banners. Why would you include greeting card keywords on a page for banners? Someone looking to get custom holiday greeting cards printed most likely isn’t interested in an 8-foot vinyl banner. If the greeting card shopper is brought to your banner page, it makes for a bad user experience, and the visitor could even feel tricked.

Based on the content, it’s a good idea to identify 2-5 keywords to include within that page. Back to the printer; they may provide mailing services, but those keywords should only show up on the mailing services page. The printer may reference their mailing services on the homepage, but those particular keywords shouldn’t be the primary focus.

Are you uncertain about what keywords to target on a particular page? Take a look at your analytics, and you will find what people are searching for that led them to that page within your site. From there, you can choose a few of the top ranking ones and use the Google keyword tool to find variations to consider including within your content. Take your long list of keywords, and work it down to the 5 best options.

Remember, don’t ever try to cram too many keywords into your content. If your content doesn’t seem ‘natural’, or reads too much like a list of keywords, it’s a turn-off for both visitors and search engines.

Author: Chris

Chris is an internet marketer, web designer, and musician. He is passionate about helping small businesses implement effective internet marketing strategies, and helping people achieve their business goals. "I won't waste your time with general concepts. I'll give you specific and actionable advice; strategies you can actually implement right away."

2 Comments

Thanks for the information Chris. I own/operate a small busines for which I built the website and am trying to handle the SEO. Having a rough time of it! What is your opinion/wxperience with backlinks? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Gary Thompson

6/9/2011

Gary, a good way to start getting quality backlinks to your site is through content marketing. By producing video and articles that are relevant to your services, and submitting them to video sharing sites and article directories, you can start getting additional traffic to your site. Company profiles on Social media sites will also provide backlinks.
Be sure to use Google Analytics on your site so that you can track where site visitors are coming from. In this way you can see which of your efforts are most effective.
If you haven’t already, see our other posts on Article Marketing and Analytics.