How to optimize
your website
for SEO.
A Beginner’s Guide by AddThis®

You want people
to find yourwebsite, right?
Well, that means making sure that whensomeone searches Google or another searchengine for what you’ve got on your site, they’llfind it. This will only happen if the text content
on your website contains the words and phrases
that your target audience is searching for.
Sounds pretty straightforward, but there is a lot
you can do (and should do!) on your site to getsearch engines to prioritize your site above
others that contain similar keywords.

This guide presents a comprehensive overview of the steps
you need to take―and the “best practices” involved in eachstep―to optimize your site for best search engine results.
Having the right keywords on your site, and using themeffectively, is one of the cornerstones of SEO – Search Engine
Optimization. In fact, many online marketing experts will tell
you that keyword research is one of the most critical, valuable
and high-ROI activities in the online marketing field. In manycases, it’s not an exaggeration to say that ranking well for theright keywords can make or break your business.

I. INTRODUCTION

2There are two main
challenges to SEO

1

Identifying the words and phrases that people
are using to find the products, services orinformation you’re offering.

2

Properly implementing the keywords in yoursite’s content and code so that your site will rank
above your competitors in search engines.

Let’s dive into each one!

Keywords are
the foundationof SEOHow to build a keyword list
for your website
Your first and most important step is to compile alist of the most important keywords to target. Your
goal is to find the most relevant words and phrases
that will lead your desired audience to your site.
Here are some tips to get started:

Start with high-level categories and drill down
Make a list of the general topics that describe your business,
industry or offering. Brainstorm on all the specific words andphrases that make sense within each one. Include synonyms andalternative terms that searchers might be using. Some ideas to getyour creative juices flowing: consider including specific brandnames, product categories/names, product functions/features,complementary industry terms (names of items connected toyour offering even if you don’t sell them yourself) and terms
describing common users/purchasers of your products/services.

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

5

Think like your customers
Sometimes, business owners see their offering somewhat
differently than their customers might. It’s important to put
yourself in the shoes of your customers and try to imagine what
they might be typing into search engines to find what you’ve got.
Ask some of your customers to tell you how they searched for you
initially! Keep in mind that there will be extensive variety among
the people searching for your offering – some are looking for
initial information, some already know what they want, someare shopping around for alternatives and so forth. Make sure thatyou are covering all the types of customers, at all stages of thebuying cycle.
Look at the data you already have
If you use website analytics software, you should be able togenerate a report of which keywords customers used in searchengines to reach your site (Google used to be more generous withthis information in the past, but you might still get some of it,
especially if you are using AdWords). Even better, if you track
conversions (which you should absolutely be doing!), yourconversion reports can include those search terms that mostoften delivered the customers who converted. Also, if your site hasa search box, you’ll find plenty of ideas for keywords in the terms
your visitors have already searched for.

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

6

Research your competitors’ websites
Visit the sites of your online competitors to see what keywords
they use in their content (pay special attention to keywords usedin page and section headings) and in their site code (e.g., title andmeta tags – more about this later).
Include local terms, if relevant for your businessIf you are trying to attract customers who live in one or moreparticular geographic areas (e.g., state, city, neighborhood), makesure to include all relevant names describing those areas in yourkeyword list. When applicable, localized search terms are a fastand powerful way to get visibility alongside other competitors insearch engine results.
Select specific keywords to target specific customers
In addition to the general topics and terms that describe youroffering, dive down into very specific sub-categories that may beof interest to certain types of customers, or specificproducts/services that you offer.

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

7

Use tools to find similar keywords you may not have thought ofThere are many online tools that can be a big help in coming up withsets of similar yet different keywords (sometimes called “keyword
clusters”), and even in sparking ideas for entirely new keyword
categories. This is really not optional – you need to do it! Find one or
two tools that you’re comfortable with and take the time to learn
how to get the most out of them.
Some widely-used keyword tools you might want
to check out include:• Google Analytics Site Search (free, requires a Google Analytics account)• Google Keyword Planner (free, requires a Google AdWords account)• Google Keyword Suggestion tool (free, requires a Google AdWords account)• Google Trends (free)• Jaaxy (free trial, then monthly subscription)• Keyword Eye (free trial, then monthly subscription)• Keyword Revealer (free trial, then monthly subscription)• KeywordTool.io (limited free version or monthly subscription)• KWFinder.com (limited free version or monthly subscription)• Microsoft Bing Ads Intelligence tool (free, requires a Bing Ads account)• Moz Pro Keyword Explorer (monthly subscription)• SE Ranking (free trial, then monthly subscription)• SEMRush (requires monthly subscription)• SimilarWeb PRO (free trial available, then monthly subscription)• SpyFu (requires monthly subscription)• Trellian Keyword Discovery (limited free version or monthly subscription)• Übersuggest (free)• Wordtracker (monthly subscription)

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

8

Refine and prioritize your keyword list
Once you’ve got your initial set of keywords, you need to selectthe ones that will likely have the greatest impact, at least as a firststep. The limit on how many words you can reasonably optimize
your website for depends on the size of your site, but you’ll always
need to try to zero in on the best keywords to use.

There are two primary considerations while doing this:12Monthly search volume

You want to start by focusing on terms that have the potential tobring the most visitors.

Competition

You want to take into consideration which terms involve intensecompetition, because it might be difficult for you to rank well at first(or ever!) for those terms. On the flip side, look for keywords which
may be able to grab higher rankings quickly because fewer websites
are using them.

Of course, there is usually more competition for terms withgreater search volume (because that’s where the money is!), so
there’s not always a lot you can do about it. However, keeping thisin mind may help you find niches that your competitors aren’t
focusing on as much.
The best way to determine the search volume and competitiveenvironment for specific search terms is to use online keyword
tools, such as those listed above, that report these importantdetails. Something you want to be on the lookout for in thesetools is any super-competitive terms – consider placing theselower in your priority list, no matter how much you’d love to rank
for them, simply because your odds of winning with them early in
the game are probably slim.

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

9Treat keyword research as an ongoing process
Don’t go through the keyword brainstorming and research
process only once, this should be an ongoing process that you
tackle at least twice a year. As time goes by, you will have moreexperience and more data to continuously improve your focus listof keywords. Also, things change – such as market trends and yourcompetitive environment – so you need to be agile and change
your keywords accordingly.
Over time, you will find that some of your primary keywords justaren’t pulling their weight – either because they were off-base to
begin with, or because the level of competition is simply too high.
Once you’ve determined that certain keywords are simply notworking for you, drop them and use your website real estate tofocus on more productive keywords.
Also, once you’ve implemented all the recommended SEO advice
for your set of keywords, it’s time to expand the list and target
even more terms. Even if you have a healthy set of valuable
keywords in play, there are always more “long-tail” opportunities.
The term “long tail” refers to a large number of niche terms. Whileeach long-tail term alone may not bring a long of traffic, they can,in aggregate, serve as a significant source of search traffic, andare usually less competitive terms than the primary ones.

II. KEYWORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF SEO

10

Optimizing yourwebsite for yourkeywords

How to optimize yourwebsite around keywords
Now that you’ve got the list of keywords you wantto target, it’s time to optimize your website aroundthose keywords. The goal is to get as much visitor
traffic as you can from potential customers whoenter your keywords into search engines.
The first thing to keep in mind is that search engine technology
has evolved a lot over the past few years, and it is much better at
identifying well-written sites that provide visitors withhigh-quality, well-organized information. So, your goal should be
to focus on providing your visitors with good content and apleasant overall experience. With this in mind, it’s time to start
re-writing (or writing) your webpages to incorporate yourkeywords in the best ways you can.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

12Group your keywords to optimize individual webpages
It is important to realize that all on-page SEO is performed on a
page-by-page basis, and that it is not critical to optimize every
single page (at least not right away). While a site containing manyhigh-ranking pages will provide “clout” to all the pages in the site,
search results for given keywords still point to individual pages,
and so you need to focus on selecting individual pages andoptimizing them one at a time.
The first step is grouping and organizing your keywords into
logical collections of 5-10 keywords that can be the focus ofindividual pages. You will chose one of these to be the “lead”
term (for example, to be included in the page title and main
heading, among other places), with the others to appear invarious places throughout the page. This step helps make thewhole process more manageable while also helping you create
targeted, specific pages.
Prioritize your keyword groups from most important to least
important and proceed to select pages on your site (or create newones) that will be targeted by each set of 5-10 related keywords.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

13

Remember both layers of on-page optimization
Before continuing, it’s helpful to introduce the two layers in which
you will be implementing keywords on your webpages:

1

2

Content

The text that actually appears on your website, for visitors to read.
This includes headings, body text and image captions.

Metadata

The text that appears in the HTML code of a website and is notnecessarily seen by visitors. Examples include the title tag, themeta-description tag, image attributes and even page andimage URLs.

Search engines scan both layers, and analyze what they find to
determine how to index your webpages. For this reason, it is very
important to do everything possible to ensure that your keywords
are properly implemented in ways that encourage the searchengines to rank your pages ahead of your competitors. The more
you optimize your website content and metadata using yourkeywords, the better the search engines will “understand” what
your site has to say, which helps them send you search visitors
who are actively seeking the information you have available
on your website.
It goes without saying that the higher your pages rank for yourkeywords in search result pages, the more (and more relevant)search traffic you will receive to your website.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

14

Checklist:

Optimizing your page content
Use keywords in headings

This is most important for top-level headings (<h1> in HTML), but is certainly valuable
in <h2> headings as well (when your page contains multiple sections of text). Most SEO
experts don’t consider <h3> headings and below more valuable than regular page text.
Besides the SEO benefits, when visitors see headings that mention what they’re looking
for, they’re more likely to stick around and read the page. Make sure that the headingclosely relates to the body text following it. Additional tips: Use one primary keyword
per heading, and keep headings shorter than about 75 characters.

Use keywords in page text

Use your keywords naturally, in ways that provide a smooth and expected reading
experience. Repeat your target keywords, and variations of them, throughout the page
only as much as is reasonable for the content itself. “Keyword stuffing”―repeating
keywords many times―worked in the early days of search engines, but can now
penalize the page.

Use keywords in internal links

It is important to have at least a couple of relevant text links from others pages in yoursite to the page you are optimizing. The text of each link (known as the “anchor text”)
should contain a keyword for which the target page is optimized.
For example: <a href="targetpageURL">Use keywords here, inthe displayed link text</a>

Use keywords in questions

Because many searchers enter search terms such as “What is/are ___” and “How do I___”, search engines tend to give priority to pages that ask―and answer―these kinds ofquestions. Consider asking these questions using your keywords in headings, followed
by a paragraph that answers the question, starting with a keyword. For example, “Whatis Business Intelligence?” in a heading, followed by a paragraph starting, “BusinessIntelligence is ___”.

Use keywords in image captions

Captions below or alongside images are an excellent opportunity to repeat important
keywords without them overloading the main page content.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

15

Checklist:

Optimizing your page metadata
Use keywords in the title tag

Every webpage can have a title that appears in the browser tab where the page isdisplayed (in HTML, this appears as <title>Page Title Goes Here<title>
which is placed within the <head> section of the page code). Search engines use thistitle in two ways: as a strong signal for what the page contains and as the page title
shown in search results. Therefore, the title needs to include the most important
keyword you’re targeting for that page in a way that is natural and that encourages
relevant searchers to click on it. Ideally, the page’s lead keyword should appear at ornear the start of the title. It’s also a good idea to include a second keyword here as well.
Additional tips: As a rule of thumb, the title should be shorter than about 65
characters so that it’s not cut off when being displayed by Google, and no two pages on
your site should contain the same title.

Use keywords in the meta-description tag

Webpages also have a “description” field that should briefly describe what the page isabout. (In HTML, this content is coded in a meta tag, which is also placed within thepage’s <head> section, like this: <meta name="description" content="Pagedescription goes here">.) Because search engines often (though not always)
display this text under the page title in search results, the most important use of thistext is to encourage searchers to click on the page in the search results (which, in turn,helps improve the page’s ranking over time). Therefore, make sure to include one or
two of your keywords in this description field. You should include at least one keyword
at, or near, the beginning of the text.
Additional tips: Limit the description text to around 150 characters, don’t use thesame meta-description on more than one page, and avoid the use of any “special”
characters. For more meta-description tips, click here. Note that most search engines
don’t analyze this text anymore for the purposes of ranking pages.

Use keywords in page and image URLs

Search engines pay attention to words found in the file names of pages, as well as the
URLs of the individual elements (e.g., images) that appear within a page. This is avaluable additional way to tell search engines what your pages are about. So, forexample, instead of naming a page with a generic name like domain.com/product2413,
you should name it along the lines of domain.com/natural-air-fresheners. The samegoes for images and other elements referenced in page code.
Additional tips: Separate individual words with hyphens, and avoid the use of“special” characters.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

16

Checklist:...continued

Use keywords in anchor tag titles

We’ve already mentioned using keywords in the displayed “anchor text” of links. The<a> tag provides an additional opportunity to associate your target keywords with apage. For links pointing back to a page, use the target page’s keywords in the title value
as well, like this: <a href="targetpageURL" title="Keywords here">). Notethat while including keywords in the link anchor text is very valuable, this title attributeis considered less important for SEO purposes.

Use keywords in image tags

The HTML tag used to show images in a webpage (<img>) allows optional attributes
such as alt and title (which have multiple uses, including improved site accessibility forusers with poor vision). Because search engines use these texts both to index images
during image searches and also as signals regarding the overall page content, this is
another place you want your keywords to appear.
For example: <img src="beagle-puppy.png" alt="beagle puppy"
title="4-week-old beagle puppy">.
Additional tips: Avoid using “special” characters, and limit the length of these texts
to about 80 characters each.

III. OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR YOUR KEYWORDS

17

Tactics to avoid
when reﬁning
your SEO

What not to do when working
to improve your SEO
So far, we’ve covered the essential steps in
optimizing your website to rank well in the searchengines: building a keyword list for your website,refining and prioritizing your keyword list, grouping
your keywords for optimizing individual webpages,
optimizing your page content and optimizing yourpage metadata.
In addition to all of the “do’s” we’ve discussed, there are a numberof important “don’ts”. Some of these are tempting to do,
especially as you are working long and hard on optimizing lots ofwebpages, but search engines penalize pages for these sins, so
you definitely want to avoid them!
Once upon a time, SEO practitioners did some of these things
deliberately, because they could successfully “trick” searchengines into giving their pages higher rankings. However, as
search engine technology has advanced and improved,algorithms to detect these practices and demote pages that
use them have made them obsolete.

IV. TACTICS TO AVOID

19

Keyword stuffing
As mentioned earlier, this refers to repeating keywords manytimes throughout a page’s content and/or metadata. Searchengines calculate “keyword density” for pages, which describes
the percentage of times that a keyword appears in a page, as aproportion of all the words on a page. As a rule of thumb, youwant to make sure that none of your keywords have a keyword
density of over about 3% (meaning, that they don’t appear morethan three times for every hundred words). Another good rule ofthumb, as we’ve already mentioned, is to always write for yourhuman audience: if repeating a keyword so many times make thepage read poorly, you know you’ve gone over the limit.
Hiding keywords
One way of doing keyword stuffing without affecting the end-user
experience is repeating keywords many times in a page, but
making this text invisible (for example, by displaying it in the samecolor as the page background, placing it behind an image orsetting it to be invisible using CSS). Search engines have gotten
very good at detecting text that users don’t actually see – anddemoting pages that contain it, because it’s a big “red flag” that“black-hat SEO” is at work. There are exceptions to this rule, but ingeneral it’s a good idea to avoid the use of invisible text.

IV. TACTICS TO AVOID

20

Duplicate content
This refers to optimizing many pages to target the same
keywords, using the same (or very similar content). The idea
behind doing this is to try get as many pages in the top search
results listings as possible, to increase the chances of a searcher
clicking on one of those pages (and not one of a competitor).
If a search engine detects repeated content on different pages(sometimes, even on pages found on different sites―whichmight indicate plagiarism), it will demote those pages in search
result rankings. (Sometimes having duplicate content isnecessary―see below about how to use “canonical tags”
to handle those situations.)
Thin content
This is the creation of small, brief webpages containing very little
actual content beyond the targeted keywords. Again, and sorry
for repeating this so many times, your content needs to provide agood experience for your site visitors! Creating short pages that
contain a bunch of keywords, but that don’t provide value tovisitors, will not help you in getting good rankings for those pages
in search results. (If you’re curious how search engines know
which pages provide real value to users and which don’t, it works
like this: when most users click a particular link and quickly click
Back in their browser, returning to the search engine results page,
the search engine knows that users didn’t find what they werelooking for on that page. Thus, the search engine will demote thatpage in its search results in favor of other search results fromwhich users don’t return quickly – or at all!)IV. TACTICS TO AVOID

21

Meta keywords
Years ago, search engines would consider the contents of themeta-keywords tag, in which the website owner could specify the
keywords that describe each page. Since search engines ignore
this tag these days, don’t bother with it. It won’t hurt you, but it
won’t help you either.
Broken links
While not a keyword-related issue, you want to avoid having
broken links on your site, whether to other pages (or images,
videos, files, etc.) on your site or to other sites. Search engines canpenalize a page (or an entire site) for containing too many broken
links. There are many tools for scanning a website and reporting
any broken links found (two free online ones are W3C Link
Checker and Dr. Link Check); it’s a good idea to use one every
now and then and make sure that all the links on your site arein good shape.

IV. TACTICS TO AVOID

22

Some ﬁnal
advice for best
SEO resultsGive your optimized
pages the biggest boost
they can get:
Before we conclude, here are a few more
tips worth knowing:
Regularly update your content
Search engines like fresh content, so it’s important to update yourpages on a regular basis. When webpages are close competitors inthe search results pages, the freshness and frequency of updates
are additional factors that search engines consider. The more
dynamic, up-to-date pages will be given priority.
Maintain an up-to-date sitemap file
A sitemap is an XML file containing all the URLs in your site, andhow they are structured. Search engines use sitemap files to help
them crawl websites more effectively. Google provides a list oflinks to sitemap generators of various types here. When you
initially create your sitemap, and then every time you update it
thereafter, you should submit it to each search engine (Google,
Bing, etc.). Refer to each search engine’s directions for doing so (oryou can wait for the sitemap file to be rescanned automatically,
though it will take longer to get scanned).

V. SOME FINAL ADVICE FOR BEST SEO RESULTS

24

Use canonical tags for duplicate content
Although we mentioned earlier that you should avoid having
multiple pages with overlapping content, sometimes you need to
do this. In such situations, it is important to prevent Google frompenalizing pages with duplicate content by specifying which pageis the primary, or authoritative one. This is done using a tag thatlooks like this, placed within the page’s <head> section: <linkrel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/authoritative-(make sure to specify the absolute, not relative,path). This tells Google to show the primary page in search results,
without penalizing either page.

page-URL"/>

Inbound links
This is a major topic in and of itself, and is beyond the scope of
this guide. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention thegreat importance of having links coming (“inbound”) to yourwebsite from other websites. Pages to which other sites link,especially if the link text used contains keywords for which thetarget page is optimized, are a powerful indicator to searchengines that the page is valuable to other people. (An interestingpiece of search engine trivia: tracking and analyzing inbound links– and not just the page content itself – was the key innovationthat allowed Google to leapfrog – and ultimately eliminate – mostof the other existing search engines of that time and to cement its
dominance in the search engine space.) But, just like on-page
optimization, this “off-page” optimization has to be done
correctly so that it helps your pages rank higher, instead of
possibly hurting them.

V. SOME FINAL ADVICE FOR BEST SEO RESULTS

25

Run an occasional SEO audit of your website
There are tools that scan your website to highlight any issues thatmight be hurting its search results rankings. It’s a good idea to run
such an audit after you’ve done your initial optimization project(and occasionally thereafter). Addressing the issues raised might
further bump your pages up in search results. You can find a list ofrecommended SEO audit tools here.

Good Luck!
We hope you’ve learned a lot about SEO in thisguide, and that the wisdom we’ve shared with you
here will lead to dramatic increases in the number
and relevance of visitors coming to your website
from the search engines.

V. SOME FINAL ADVICE FOR BEST SEO RESULTS

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