Now that you’ve done your keyword research you should have a list of the words and terms your potential customers are plugging in to Google.
You can advertise on these keywords using Pay Per Click advertising but you’ll also want to use these keywords and key-phrases in your website content.
What is website content?
What we mean by ‘content’ is the text on the pages of your website. The most important website content is the text on your homepage.
If you offer specific products or services that you know (from your keyword research) that people are searching for you’ll probably want to look carefully at the content on the pages of your website dedicated to those products or services.
Before you start
Make some notes about your current position in Google for the Keywords and Key-Phrases that you’re focussing on. Also take a look at your current traffic levels and conversion rates. Most people find that the traffic and conversion rates change over the course of a week (you may be busier on weekends (or weekdays) or month (you may be busier at the beginning or end of a month).
Depending on how much your traffic varies, you may want to wait a couple of weeks or a month before you judge success or failure of your changes.
But either way you’ll need a baseline to use for comparison once you make your changes. So make sure you’ve got your data! (If you’re using Web123 statistics or Google Analytics your data won’t go anywhere: but make sure you know what changes you made and when you made them!).
- Where are you ranking right now?
- How does your traffic vary over a week or month?
- Record the dates that you make major changes
What to do
You should aim to use each of your keywords or key phrases at least once or twice in your homepage content. Don’t go overboard: just repeating your keywords over and over again won’t help your ranking and will put your customers off!
Aim to have 1-2 short paragraphs on your homepage and try to have one key-word or key-phrase per sentence. If you’ve got a large number of keywords you might try focussing on the most important keywords or key-phrases for your homepage: and use more product-specific or service-specific keywords on pages dedicated to those products or services.
If you’ve only got a few keywords? that’s okay! if your business is very focussed you may only have one or two keywords that are worth focussing on.
- Use each keyword once or twice (no more than 3 times)
- Don’t repeat your keywords over and over
- 1-2 short paragraphs
- At least one key word or phrase per sentence
Strike a balance
It can be tempting to stuff all of your keywords into your copy: but remember that you still need to sell to the visitors that hit your website!
Repeating yourself or dropping in irrelevant terms will make your text look clunky and spammy: make sure that you’re content is still readable and immediately outlines the benefits of dealing with you.
- Be readable and engaging
- Outline the benefits of your products/services
What’s next?
Remember that it can take 1-2 weeks for Google to re-spider (look at, read and index) your website. After your site has been re-indexed have a look at your position in Google for each of your keywords and key-phrases. How does it compare to where you were before you made changes? Do the same for your traffic levels and conversion rates.
Use these results to decide what to change next!
If you’re having trouble working your keywords into your copy without sacrificing readability (or you don’t have the time to craft your copy yourself) check out ourCopywriting Services.