SEO Techniques On-Page To Rank On The First Page – 2017

Want to make your post keyword-targeted, SEO-optimized, and ready to drive more traffic?

Would you like to make it easier for search engines to understand what keyword(s) your blog should rank for?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, then you are about to learn the secrets of making your blog post keyword-targeted.

When it comes to optimizing a website or a blog post, there are two main factors at play:

1. On-page optimization
2. Off-page optimization

Today’s article will focus on on-page optimization, and I will be sharing lots of good on-page SEO techniques you should implement while working on optimizing your blog posts.

Now, let’s not confuse on-page SEO-optimization with onsite SEO-optimization.

• Onsite SEO refers to the optimization of the entire website with things like sitemapping and setting permalink structures.
• On-page SEO optimizes content for a target keyword within a single blog post. This includes using proper headings, proper keyword placement, ensuring content quality, and paying attention to many other factors.
• Here is some food for thought:
  • Why are you not ranking on the first page of search results?
  Well, there are likely a lot of reasons, but if you aren’t paying attention to SEO, then that’s probably the biggest reason.
  So when we do SEO-optimization of a post, we follow a certain set of proven methods to rank it higher on a search engine.
  Now, Google doesn’t only consider on-page SEO score when ranking an article. It also takes into account many other factors like social media signals (shares, likes, tweets, follows, etc.), backlinks, domain authority, and many other off-page metrics.
  Our goal with on-page SEO is to optimize an article in a natural, but smart way, so that search engines can easily pick out the target keyword and bring our website targeted visitors.
• 1. Blog Post Title
  This is the most important on-page SEO factor. The reason for this is because the more attractive and optimized your title is, the more people will click. And in general, the more clicks your post gets, the higher it will rank.
  You should try to use the targeted keyword or phrase toward the beginning of title (H1) tag, but if that’s not possible, make sure it’s at least somewhere in the title.
  You should also not repeat the same keyword more than once in the title tag because you think it will help the article rank higher. It won’t. It could actually hurt your ranking. Don’t do it.
  And keep the title length to under 65 characters.
• 2. Post Permalink Structure
  Making sure your URL is displayed correctly is an important on-page metric. Again, you should use your target keyword in the URL, and avoid using special characters, symbols, brackets, commas, etc. within the actual URL.
  Use dashes to differentiate the strings in your URL structure. These are called “pretty” permalinks and are supported by most web browsers.
  Example of a good permalink:
• https://www.domain.com/post-title-separated-with-dashes
• 3. Heading Tags
  You should use heading tags to highlight various headings, sub-headings, and important points.
  In WordPress, the title tag is set at H1. You don’t really need to use any more H1 tags anywhere in the article. One is enough. For section breaks, stick to H2 and H3 tags.
  Also, don’t use too many H2 or H3 tags as Google’s algorithms won’t like that.
• 4. Keyword Density
  You should keep the keyword density around 1.5% percent with a mix of LSI keywords.But as Matt Cutts explains in the video below, there is no real magic formula.
  Use your main keyword once in the first paragraph and again in the last paragraph. And use it in the content where it makes sense.
• 5. Meta Tags
  You should add a unique and relevant meta description with each blog post.
  Again, you should use your use targeted keyword in the meta description, but don’t keyword spam your description. While search engines pick up on keywords, it’s also important for users to click on the post. You need to write user-friendly meta descriptions that make sense and are related to your post.
  With regards to meta keywords, Google has made it clear that they don’t care about them. But some search engines, like Bing, may still care a little.
• 6. Images
  Image optimization does help a lot in driving traffic from image searches.
  Keywords in the “image title” and the “alt text” help to make your blog post more focused and targeted.
  But more important than that:
  Images create engagement.
  And the more engaged a user is, the more likely they’ll stick around, thus increasing your overall rank.
  Blog posts that don’t have a lot of words typically don’t perform well on search engines. That’s because they’re usually seen as being “less informative”.
  Ofcourse there are exceptions, but for a general information-based blog, creating posts with at least 500 words is pretty standard.  
  It’s always better to be well-researched and overly informative than it is to not provide enough information. This is especially true if you’re targeting highly competitive keywords.
  Suggestion: Analyze other posts for your target keyword and see how many words they have.
  While there is no “official” count, longer posts tend to rank better because there is typically more information there. For instance, this post is over 2,000 words.
  But be careful not to over do it.