ON-PAGE SEO BASICS

On-page SEO is making sure Google can find your web pages so they can show them in the search results. It also involves having relevant, detailed, and useful content to the search phrases you’re trying to show up for.

Visual content

One industry study found that one form of visual content (infographics) was an ideal content format for getting links.

create visual content. There are videos, flowcharts, screenshots and more. You even have combinations of different types of visual content, like “Infographics”.

If you’re ready to get started, I recommend reading this list of visual content ideas and examples.

On-page SEO is making sure Google can find your web pages so they can show them in the search results. It also involves having relevant, detailed, and useful content to the search phrases you’re trying to show up for.

Specifically, Google scans your page for specific words and phrases.

And when it sees the same term over and over again, Google says: “This page must be about this keyword!”.

That’s why it’s important to use your target keyword on your page… without going overboard.

(More on that later.)

For now, let’s cover how to optimize your site’s on-page SEO.

Install yoast

If your site runs on WordPress, I highly recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin.

No, Yoast isn’t a magic button that will automatically optimize your site.

But Yoast makes it easy to set up your page’s title and description tag.

It also has a ton of other features to help optimize your site as a whole

Use your keywords in your title tag

The #1 rule of on-page SEO is this:

Use your keyword in your title tag.

Why is this important?

Well, when it comes to on-page optimization, your title tag is the most important part of your page.

Think about it this way:

Your title tag summarizes what your page is all about. And when you use your keyword in your title tag, it tells Google that your page is about that keyword.

For example, I published this list of 17 SEO tips a while back.

And my target keyword for that page is: “SEO Tips”.

This is why I made sure to include that exact keyword in my title tag:

Optimise your meta description for clicks

Your meta description isn’t nearly as important as your title tag.

In fact, Google has said that they don’t pay much attention to your description (or meta keywords

So why should you bother creating a description?

Because people use your description to figure out whether or not to click on your result.

For example, check out this description from an important page from my site:

See how I really sell my content? That enticing description “steals” clicks from the sites ranking above me. Which (obviously) brings in more traffic to my site.

Pro Tip: Use your main keyword in your description. When someone searches for that term, Google will bold your keyword… which helps your site stand out even more in the SERPs.

Use keywords in your content

Next, you want to include your keyword on your page a few times.

That way, Google will be confident that your page is really about that topic.

For example, for the SEO tips post I mentioned earlier, you can see that I include that keyword in the first 150 words:

In total, I used my main keyword 6 times in my content. And considering that my content is over 3,000 words, that’s not a very high keyword density. But it’s enough for Google to get the gist of what my content is about.

One thing to note is that you don’t want to go overboard and use your keyword 100x on every page. That’s a black hat SEO strategy called “keyword stuffing”, which can get your site penalized.

Bottom line? Include your main keyword on your page a handful of times. It’s no big deal if you go a little over or under that amount. But if you intentionally stuff keywords in your content, you’re actually doing more harm than

Use synonyms and variations

Make sure to use synonyms and variations of your target keyword throughout your content.

This can help your single page for dozens of different keywords.

For example, check out this post from my site

Because I include my keyword in my title tag and throughout my content, it’s no surprise that I rank in the top 3 for that term:

But I also include lots of variations of my keyword… along with what are known as “LSI Keywords”.

(LSI keywords are basically terms that are closely related to my main keyword.)

For example, I include LSI keywords like “outreach tools” and “backlink analysis” in the post.

How about another example?

Let’s say you just published an article that’s optimized around the keyword: “digital marketing tips”.

Well, you’d want to use variations of that term in your content like:

• Internet marketing tips
• Blogging tips
• Beginner marketing tips

Pro Tip: Find find variations of your keyword in Google and Bing Suggest. Just type your keyword into the search bar and check out the suggestions.

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