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Keyword Placement Guide, a quick reference for
successful SEO — be seen.

After you have tackled keyword research, use the below keyword placement guide as a quick and easy reference to ensure you have taken full advantage of the most important landing page locations your targeted keywords need to appear.

For optimal results, use this list in conjunction with a website produced using current Web Standards. See our article, "How Web Standards Improve SEO and Web Accessibility" for more information.

1. The < title> tag — The most important location for your targeted keyword/keyphrase is the <title> tag, preferably at the beginning of the tag. Since the maximum allowed <title> display length varies between major search engines be sure your title is no longer than 60 to 65 characters.

   WHY? Search engine spiders use the <title> as the primary source for determining the web page topic. This text is also displayed as the linked "title" in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. The Meta Description — Add the Meta Description tag to the source code using your keywords to describe the landing page contents. The Meta Description needs to be unique for each page and should never be the same as the HTML <title> tag. Also, like the <title> tag, various search engines may have different text length limits.

   WHY? Sometimes search engines list the Meta Description below the "title" text on the SERPs so ensure it is both compelling and relevant.

3. CSS styled text headers — Place your keywords in CSS-styled text headers (<h1>, <h2>, etc.). It is very important CSS styled headers are used rather than image headers or headers created using non-standard HTML markup.

   WHY? Well structured, standard HTML markup always trumps non-standard markup. More importantly, search engines index text not images!

4. Main copy — Keywords should always appear in the main copy, ideally in the first paragraph.

   WHY? It is generally believed that keywords are given more weight when they appear towards top of the HTML source code.

Suggested Further Reading

• How Web Standards Improve SEO and Web Accessibility
• HTML Markup (new window opens)
• About CSS (new window opens)