This is a super basic aspect of SEO. But it’s also super important.

To optimize a piece of content or webpage, you should generally include its main target keyword in each of these places:

1) The meta title tag and meta description (which display on Google):

2) The H1 headline (which displays on the webpage itself):

3) The introduction:

4) The main body of the content:

5) And the URL:

In addition, you can try to include it in some of your image alt text.

But don’t stop there.

It’s also a good idea to add related keywords to your content. Meaning, phrases that are similar to or related to the main keyword you’re targeting.

This will help Google understand what your content is about. Which can help it rank for both your main target keyword, and the related keywords themselves.

For example:

In my post on content marketing tips, my main target keyword was “content marketing tips”. But I also included the singular version, “content marketing tip”.

Simple, right?

Including related keywords always happens naturally to some extent.

But tools like Frase and Surfer can help you find other terms to use.

When I analyze that article with Frase, it suggests adding the keywords “target audience” and “content strategy”.

Those keywords should be pretty easy to add to the blog post in a natural way. So I probably will.

Another way to find related keywords is to simply do a Google search for your main keyword.

Scroll down to the bottom of the results page and you’ll see a bunch of suggestions.

You can take any of those suggestions that make sense and add them to your article as well.