SEO Tip 5: Keyword Placement

The golden rule is that if you want the page to appear on the search engine results pages for a particular term then the page must include that term.

• If you want to target multiple terms then consider whether these would be better addressed by having a separate page for each.
• Include each of those terms at least 2 or 3 times on the page – but not more than 10. If any one word is used a large number of times on a page then it risks being treated as keyword spamming by search engines. 10 times is given as a guide, but there are no hard and fast rules.
• Identify what similar terms exist (or what other words mean the same as the targeted term(s)) and see if these can be worked into the page as well.
• Remember: Do not compromise the content or readability of the page when targeting keywords.
• Add a meta-description tag that provides a summary of the purpose of the page and includes the targeted keywords. This should be no longer than 200 characters tops.
• Add a meta-keyword tag, this should include your targeted keywords as a minimum. Many search engines ignore these, but they are still used by some and even those search engines which claim to ignore them may still give them some weight.

This tip is part of a series of tips on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The previous tip in the series was Tip 4: Naming of pages and the next tip in the series is Tip 6: Target the Title.