While you would normally use a single page to target a particular keyword, you will certainly come across situations where you want to target multiple keywords on the same post or page.
For instance, many keywords and phrases are similar or interchangeable. When you find these types of keywords, your best bet is to go after both using the same page.
This is especially true if both are on the list of your target keywords for ranking.
For instance, if your target audience is interested in losing weight, “lose weight” is the most obvious keyword to pick and target.
However, you can also target another one, like “slim down”. Although they sound different, the two terms imply the exact same intent.
There is plenty of room for you to experiment here. Your target audience will also look for techniques, products, exercises, and specific foods which will help them lose weight. Because of this, you can target keywords like “green tea”, and so on.
You get the idea. Now, let’s take a look as some of the best practices for targeting multiple keywords with one page.
1. Optimize Your H1 Tag for Multiple Keywords
This is one of the first things you’ll want to do. Your main headline and H1 header tag needs to contain your target keywords.
Of course, you shouldn’t just lump them all in the same sentence like “lose weight, slim down”. Try something more user friendly, like “How to Lose Weight: Slim Down in Two Weeks with These Exercises”.
Even though you will have two or more keywords in the title, the way you structure the title still needs to make sense.
Once you get them right, these good headlines will produce great results.
2. Use Subheadings
Although subheadings (H2, H3, H4, etc.) carry less weight than your H1 tag, you get to use more than one inside your content.
This goes double if you are writing listicles. If you are not, you should.
People love these subheadings. Why?
They are concise and easy to skim through, and you should learn to love them because they allow you to target each of your keywords with a different subheading. For instance, you can turn each keyword into an item inside the list.
3. Forget Keyword Density
Keyword density used to be extremely important some time ago. These days, it has taken a back seat to other ranking factors, such as content quality, user engagement, bounce time, etc.
Since Google has improved at detecting relevant and useful content, you don’t have to worry about mentioning your target keywords again and again inside the text.
Instead, try to get them into several of your headlines and subheadings. If you don’t manage to work them inside the body more than once or twice, it’s not a problem.
Relevant and useful information will beat out high keyword density any and every day.
4. Optimize Your Meta Descriptions
Meta description don’t affect your website’s ranking. Regardless, they are still crucial for getting people to click through and check out your content, just as much as your title tags.
The good thing about meta descriptions is that you have more room to incorporate multiple keywords without making them sound unnatural.
For instance, you can go with something like “Your one-stop shop for information on how to lose weight, slim down, eat healthy, and become a better you.”
5. Careful When Using Plural Keywords
Not that you should worry about creating a huge mess by using plural keywords, but be prepared for some subtle differences.
For example, if you are trying to rank for “exercise bike” instead of “exercise bikes”, then the results will be largely similar in both cases, since the search intent is almost identical.
The people searching for these two slight variations are typically looking for the same thing.
However, if they were to look for “best exercise bike” as opposed to “best exercise bikes”, the results would be different, because the intent might not be the same.
Google’s algorithms have gotten smarter at figuring out the intent behind the keywords.
In the case of “best exercise bike”, the list of search results would be populated with bikes which have been chosen by as the best ones by different exercise equipment review websites.
But in the case of “best exercise bikes”, you would most likely be provided with list articles containing roundups of all the best exercise bikes.
6. Avoid Unnatural Anchor Text
You might find it tricky to target multiple keywords with anchor text. If you do manage to get an exact match, such as “lose weight, slim down”, it will appear unnatural.
That’s something you want to avoid at all costs. If the search engines take notice, they may opt to penalize your website for attempting to manipulate your ranking for those keywords.
Conclusion
As you can see, targeting multiple keywords using a single page is not that complicated.
However, there are some practices you need to follow, as well as some which you need to avoid.
We hope that this article has shed some light on the matter.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain. View original feature image on Pixabay.com.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Justin Osborne
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- How to Target Multiple Keywords on One Page - May 1, 2018
