Does it matter where you place keywords in articles?

With this knowledge you will optimize your keyword placement but also control search engine snippets in your search result listings.

Snippets are what users see when they are looking at your website listing in Google, Yahoo or MSN search page results.

What are text snippets in search results?

Search engines skim through pages looking for snippets of text to include in search results for occasions where your meta title and meta description are not usable in relation to the users search. Sometimes users will use the exact or phrase match in there search. For instance lets say we were searching in Google for free optimization analysis because that is a service we offer. When you put quotes around the search phrase then it changes the results for “free optimization analysis”.

Search phrase determines which text displays in snippets

Notice the differences? Maybe we should look a little closer. Here is an example of search results for our code optimization specialist’s personal website. For this we searched for the broad match keyword Dan Gayle Design.

Script Font Design Spanish Letters | Daniel John Gayle

Daniel John Gayle. It’s not much of anything, but it’s a lot about … You are currently browsing articles tagged script font design spanish letters. …
dangayle.com/tag/script-font-design-spanish-letters/ – 13k

Here is the same snippet but we searched for the term with  exact phrase match with parenthesis “Dan Gayle” Design and here are the results.

Script Font Design Spanish Letters | Daniel John Gayle

script font design spanish letters. You are currently browsing articles tagged script font design spanish letters. Parallel Histories font …
dangayle.com/tag/script-font-design-spanish-letters/ – 13k

Differences in snippet text is no accident

Do you see how Google returned two different text snippets for the two different keyword phrase searches. We used the same phrase but used “parenthesis” to target our search. In both searches the meta title satisfied the title result because the both contained Dan Gayle. But notice that when we separated “Dan Gayle” from Design we got a text snippet from some where else on the page that had design within approximately 10 words away from design again.

Position your keywords to control snippet text

Making sure that your keywords are positioned right for getting indexed as snippets is vital for getting users to click your listing in the Google results. It is important to know where to place your keywords and especially your keyword links. We have developed a formula that gets better results than pure guessing.

Keyword positioning to control snippet text

Notice that the keywords we were looking for were not just in the title of the page but also in the url also. The keyword dangayle was in the domain name and the word design was a name of a page within that domain. Importantly we now understand that Google examines the keyword placement in the title and url first and then tries to find the keyword in the text. This knowledge gives us the power to place our keywords in just the right page to control what the users sees in the search result snippet.

Formula for keyword placement for ranking and attracting clicks

The formula is pretty simple.You need an introduction paragraph, two or three supporting paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph. The page should start with a headline usually an <h1>, <h2> or <h3> heading code tag. Each paragraph or two should have another heading tag one step lower than the main one for the page. If you used and <h2> for you main headline your sub headlines would be an <h3> tag. This accomplishes what is called “chunkifying” your content.

Start page sections with your keywords

Start your meta title with your targeted keyword. Every page should have an h tag headline that begins the content.  Header tag hierarchy placement is not discussed here. Start the heading tag in your content with the keyword unless it reads awkward. Also begin the first sentence of your first paragraph with the keyword phrase or at least a slight variation of it.

Amount of content affects the quality of optimization

A page with less than 500 words is pretty worthless these days. You need several paragraphs of content. Make sure that the keyword phase is mentioned at least in two different variations throughout the supporting paragraphs at minimum. If you can get the keyword phrase in the closing paragraph in addition to the keyword text link that is great. Sometimes it is awkward.

Our recommendations for amount of keyword insertions

We like to have two or three keyword links for each page and two or three supporting variations of the keyword phrase that are not links. This is very spammy looking unless you have a decent amount of content. Only then you can make it flow correctly. Make sure your last words on your post are a keyword link. You can examine pages on this site for examples of this technique.

Link text passes SEO keyword association juice

The links in your pages pass Page Rank SEO juice to the pages that it is linked to. This is called your internal linking strategy. Associating certain keywords with certain pages is very important. Click here to read more on building your linking strategy.