Brad Wester SEO Tips

Summary:

• Use keyword in post title
• Use keyword in post permalink
• Use keyword in the first paragraph
• Use bold, italics or underline for emphasis on keyword once
• Use keyword in anchor text
• Use keyword in Heading 1, 2 or 3
• Exact keyword should be mentioned 2-5 times
• Use variations of the keyword

Post Title:

Your post title should be written to create interest and entice clicks while using your exact keyword if possible. Your keyword should be placed near the beginning of the title, ideally in the first 5 words. Typically, words appearing before your keyword are similar to “How to…”, “What is…”, “The Best” or “Top 5…”. Placing your keyword at the beginning of your title helps search engines identify the subject.

Post Permalink:

Permalinks are the permanent URLs of your individual blog post or page on your website. Use your keyword in the post’s permalink with each word separated by a hyphen. Leave out any stop words such as, “a”, “and”, “the”, etc.

Example: http://www.stlsocialmediaconsultants.com/seo-template.

Only change these before the post is published. Once the post is published, you’ll want to leave these alone. If you change them after the post is published, you risk having broken links to your post.

First Paragraph:

Using your exact keyword early in the first paragraph helps quickly identify the topic of the blog post.

Bold / Italics / Underline:

In the first paragraph or two of your blog post add emphasis to your exact keyword by using bold, italics or underline. This formatting uses HTML codes which will help search engines identify the important words for your blog post – your keywords. If you use these emphasis tags too frequently, it may cause confusion about which words are important in your post.

Anchor Text:

Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It is often underlined and set as a custom color from the rest of the text. In general, adding links to your content shows you have done research on your topic and search engines like that. Try to add links to other posts/pages of your website as well as a few external links (other websites). Include your exact keyword in anchor text of one of these links, but make sure it is relevant.

Bad Anchor Text: “If you’d like to learn more about anchor text, click here.”

Good Anchor Text: “Learn how to write SEO friendly anchor text.”

Heading 1 – 3:

Using the heading tags are important for both users and search engines. Your website viewers will appreciate the appropriate use of headers so they can quickly scan your blog post. Search engines appreciate them for the same reason; their crawlers will quickly scan over your post and including your exact keyword in H1, H2 or H3 Heading will help define your topic.

Keyword Density / Variations:

It is important to use your exact keyword a handful of times in your blog post. However, over using your keyword can harm your search engine optimization. Overusing your keyword is a common signal for Google and other search engines that you may be simply keyword spamming. Search engines want to ensure they provided value to their users, so blog posts should always be written with the users in mind – but formatted to appeal to both users and search engines.

Thank you for reading Brad Wester SEO Tips!

Thank you so much for reading my post, Brad Wester SEO Tips. By simply reading through some of this post, you’re helping me test some search engine optimization tactics – thank you! I hope that you’ve found some of my search engine optimization tips to be helpful as well. The tips I mentioned above truly are the first steps I take when performing SEO for myself and my clients. I truly believe in the advice that I’ve shared in Brad Wester SEO Tips. Following these tips alone has often been enough to get web pages ranked on the first page of Google!