Where to Put Keywords on Your Website (for SEO & AI)

Eliot Prince explains the six key hotspots for placing keywords on a website for SEO and AI search, using a live paddle boarding page in Cornwall as an example.

Key Takeaways

Place the main keyword in the meta title, URL, H1, and first paragraph as the core strategic hotspots.
Use keyword variations and related entities in subheaders rather than repeating the exact keyword everywhere.
Descriptive image alt tags with keyword variations help both accessibility and search visibility.
Meta descriptions are not a ranking signal, so they should be written for clicks rather than keyword density.

What the video covers

The video identifies six critical hotspots for keywords: meta title, URL, H1 header, early body paragraph, other H2/H3 headers, and image alt tags.
A main keyword plus several variations should be targeted per page, using keyword research tools like Semrush to find volume, difficulty, and related terms.
The meta title is the most important placement and can be set directly or through plugins like Yoast on WordPress.
URLs should contain the main keyword (e.g., dropping filler words like 'in') because search engines and AI read them first for context.
The H1 should contain the main keyword, followed quickly by the keyword or a variation in the first paragraph.
Over-stuffing keywords into every header can lead to over-optimization penalties; instead, use related entities such as specific beaches and towns in subheaders.
Image alt text should be descriptive and can include keyword variations to help images rank and aid screen readers.
Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, and Google often rewrites them, so they matter less for SEO though they can still improve click-through.
The video also demonstrates checking the page's SEO elements quickly with tools such as the Yoast plugin.
Writing naturally and avoiding repetitive keyword use is emphasized as important for reader experience and search performance.

Chapters

What are the six keyword hotspots covered in this video?

The six hotspots are the meta title, URL, H1 header, early paragraph, other subheaders, and image alt tags. The presenter explains each placement with examples from a live Cornwall paddle boarding page.

How many keywords should I target on each page?

The presenter recommends one main term plus several variations and related keywords that can be woven naturally into the text. This can allow a page to rank for many related searches.

Do meta descriptions affect Google rankings?

No, the presenter states that meta descriptions are not a ranking factor. They still matter for click-through, but Google often rewrites them anyway.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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In this video, I'm going to show you the six critical hotspots to put keywords on your website to improve your SEO, plus dispel some of the most common myths and answer questions like how many keywords should you target on each page. So, I'm

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going to show you a live page and live example and work through where we're putting keywords on these pages. I'm going to show you the front end of a website page, the back end in the sort of WordPress editor here. Going to show

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you some keyword research tools as well, and a few other little bits along the way. So, this page that we're going to look at the keywords on is trying to target the words paddle boarding in Cornwall. Now, if we go to Semrush,

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which is my keyword research tool that I use, um, if you want to try it out, there's a free link in the description for a 7-day free trial. But basically, we can see we're searching for the word paddle boarding in Cornwall. And we can

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start to see the monthly volume of it and the keyword difficulty along with other variations. So although we're targeting paddle boarding in corn as our main keyword here, there might be lots of other variations we can use to say

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that this page could actually rank for 10 10 20 30 keywords. So when you think about how many keywords should I be targeting on a page, you might want to think of it as like one main term and

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then several others that you can work into your text. So where are you going to put these keywords once you found them? Well, you want to use your main keyword in several strategic places. The first one is in your metatitle. Your

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metatitle is when we search for the search term on Google. You can see here this is actually the number one organic page. You can see that this is the meta title. This is the title that shows on Google search and it can be different or

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the same as the main header or title on your actual page of content. This is the first place you can see I've added the keyword in here. Now to add the keyword to this page, you can either just write

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it in the main title of a page and keep the first header and the metatitle on your page exactly the same. Or you can go and add plugins like Yoast at the bottom here on WordPress and start playing around with things in there.

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Now, I've written this page title quite nicely already, but you could go in here at the bottom and say paddle boarding in Cornwall hotspots to edit it and tweak it to maybe be more clickable on Google search versus a

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different slightly different header you have on the main page. So, that's the most important place to put your main keyword. I just need to interject here real quickly. This is a brand new channel and if you get anything from

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this video at all, do me a digital handshake. Hit the subscribe button and comment with where you are on your journey below. Now, the second place is in your URL. You can see this URL here for/paddleboarding-mal.

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I've dropped the in because it was just easier to have paddle boarding. It shows the same relevance to Google. It's pretty obvious that the word in is kind of more of a filler word than actual core information about the subject. This

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is really important to put your keyword in your URL. Firstly, for users, it makes it really easy for them to instantly understand and remember what a page is about. Two, Google indexes pages by their URLs. Every time it finds a new

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URL, it treats it as a new different page. So, it's the first thing it will read about your page. So, if you've got your keyword in there, it's going to send immediate relevance to search engines and AI chat GPT about what a

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page is, the context for the page. It's setting the scene along with your meta title. So that's the second most important place. The third most important place is in the main header on your actual page content. So this page,

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this title showing on Google is your meta title on your page of content. This is your H1, your header number one. It's the main header on your page. And panel boarding in Cornwall needs to go your main keyword needs to go in your main

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page title there, your main header. This should then be followed quickly in your text, your main first paragraph with the keyword or variations of the keyword in there. You can see here, I actually quite like using this opening line in

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SEO content. Ah, paddle boarding in Cornwall sets the scene for the reader. They immediately know they're on the right place. And two, we get the keyword in there. Really quickly, short, sharp, obvious, nice and easy. Following that, you then want to look at your headers of

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your page. Now, a lot of people will go and jam their keyword into all of their headers or their H2s, their header twos and header threes, their subheaders. I tend not to be so aggressive now because you can get over optimized and a bit

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sort of penalized by Google for being over the top. So, actually, what I like to do is put other entities in my headers. So, you can see here we've got beaches and Falmouth. Um, we've got different beaches and their locations

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which are all places in Cornwall and entities that should be mentioned in this article to give more relevance and more context for the article. Plus, as a reader, you're thinking like, yeah, we already know we're talking about padawwarding in Cornwall. You don't need

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to keep telling me that. Tell me more about the specific places, which is what we're doing here. But I still want to get my keyword into some other headers on the page. So, what I do is I'll tend

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to work in elsewhere either through some of those areas where there's relevant questions or I'll answer some more important questions for the readers through the page such as this. Where to rent stand up paddle boards in Cornwall.

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We've got a slight variation of the keyword standup paddle boards in Cornwall which is nice to work in a variation there. And again, in my final paragraph, we've got it as the main header, a slight variation of the the

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keyword again. And we've actually got it written a few different ways in the text through there. Now, that's the five most important parts in your content. The other place is in your images, your image alt tags. And I'll just go to the

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back end cuz it's easier to show you here. How you describe images for screen readers, but also describe them to search engines. So, you can see this image here, low beach paddle boarding sub. It's not really that descriptive.

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So, we could improve this description a little bit and say, um, low beach paddle boarding in Cornwall at sunrise. So, we've got a bit more context there.

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we've actually worked our keyword in there a bit more and we can kind of work our keywords or variations of it into these images. That's going to one help them show on Google search and raise the overall ranking of this particular page

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as we get some context to the images and how they relate to the rest of our subjects. Those are the six key hotspots for your keywords. your metatitle, your URL, your H1, your first heading on the page, early on in your paragraph, your

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first paragraph, and then through your other headers on the page, and into your images as well. Now, one place people like to put their keyword is in their metad description. This is the two lines of text that shows under your title on

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Google search. Now, as you can see here, Google actually rewrites them. This isn't the meta title that meta description that I've written for this page. again in this Yoast plugin you can use or in any CMS you can tweak your

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meta description or rewrite it. You can see I've written a nice couple of sentences trying to draw clicks. Um but Google's rewritten it. I have put the keyword in there but it's not that important because your metad description

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is not a ranking factor. It's not a ranking signal. So Google doesn't take it into account when ranking your page.

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One because they rewrite them. Two because they kind of get abused. They used to get abused a little bit. So you can put your keyword in there to help users think like yes this is what the page is about but Google might rewrite

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it and it's not actually going to help your rankings. So don't need to worry too much about that. You could use AI to to write your meta descriptions or a lot of people just ignore them altogether now because Google are going to rewrite

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them anyway. So you don't need to worry about that. And as for I think we sort of covered this already how many keywords to target on a page. you know, this page could be ranking for 20 or 30

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keywords, but we're going to target one main one or one main one to sort of summarize our topic. And then we can go and use variations through the page where necessary or where feels right rather than using the same terminology

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and getting bored throughout because you're just saying paddle boarding in Cornwall as many times as you can.

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Keyword stuffing like that isn't really going to help you. Now, the final little trick I want to show you is using detailed SEO extension. This is a Chrome add-on you can add to your browser and it allows you to see all this data

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really quickly on your own website or if you're spying on competitors. So you can see here it's going to show me my metatitle um and actually gives you a little sum summation of what everything if you can't remember and tips for like

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writing them well as how long they should be. You can see here it's giving me my meta title, my meta description, the URL. So I can check all this stuff really quickly. I can see all the different headings on the page. So if

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you're looking at competitors and wanting to write similar articles, you could take this almost hit copy and go and make start writing your own articles in a similar vein if you really like that sort of content that they've

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written. And if you want to find the best keywords for your website, then check out this video where I go through step by step how to use Semrush like a pro to get the best keywords to drive traffic to your Insight.

Topics:SEOkeyword placementon-page SEOmeta titleURL structureH1 headerimage alt textkeyword researchSemrushWordPress

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