slap2dgroove
Junior Member
It's good thing to know how beneficial to attract targeted search traffic to your blog. If you want to take advantage of this, it's great and smart to learn search engine optimization (SEO).
If you've been blogging for some time, you already know that blog commenting, social bookmarking and getting link love from fellow bloggers can help increase your search ranking. In SEO circle, it's called "off-page optimization".
However, let's keep in mind that how you "optimally structured" your blog for human visitors and search engines is also important. This is "on-page optimization" all about. This plays vital role in terms of how the search engines crawl, index and rank your blog in their database.
Think of it this way. The search engines are bright little toddlers and your blog is a rib-eye steak. In order to eat it without mess, you've got to present it in a chewable bite-sized chunks with appropriate utensils. In other words, you have to "spoon feed" them.
Here, you'll learn the basic elements of effective on-page SEO and where to use your target keyword phrase in the right place that you can apply to your blog today.
HTML Head Tags
1. Title Tag - This is also the headline and one of the most important tag to place your keyword term or phrase. Because it appears in the search engine result page (SERP) which gives the first impression to the browsing search user. So it's preferably to employ your target keyword as the first words to increase your click-through rate (CTR). Remember to keep its length under 72 characters in order to make all words in your title completely visible. Moreover, the positioning of your post title and blog name is important. It's better to set your title tag into this format:
Post Title | Blog Name
especially if your blog name is too long.
2. Meta Description Tag - This is the snippet of texts that serves as an advertising copy for your content. To increase click-through, it's smart to craft a readable and compelling description using your target keyword. Put yourself in the shoes of a search user then ask yourself of what describes your content. By this, you persuade her to visit your post. Furthermore, don't forget to keep its length under 165 characters so it's full visible in SERP.
3. Meta Robots - If you already submitted your blog's sitemap to the major search engines and your blog has been crawled, this one's not necessary. But if you do, make sure it doesn't have any directives that may restrict the search engine spiders to access your blog.
4. Canonical URL Tag - Worried to have duplicate content? This one can help. Canonical URL tag is use to ensure that the search engines will find only singular version of your content and assign its possible highest achievable ranking. You can make it in this format:
5. URL / Permalink - Customizing URL is also important because it serves as a web address for your content. It's highly suggested to make it short and easy to remember. Try to use your post's topic main keyword so you can give a visitor a hint of what's your content about. One good example is this: yourdomain.com/keyword.
Body Tags
6. H1 Headline - When it comes to SEO copywriting, it's recommended to place your target keyword term/phrase here. H1 tag's purpose is to tell the search engines of your content's main topic. Chiefly, keep in mind to do not include more than one H1 tag in your content.
7. H2 and H3 Tags - Usually, these are use for subheadings of the content. Likewise, it's ok to seldom include your target keyword here.
8. Img Alt Attribute - When it comes to images, photos and infographics, it's a good practice to include your keyword phrase using img alt attributes. This is helpful if you want to attract visitors searching for images. In Blogger platform, an easy way to do this is by simply rename your image's filename (ex: iphone.jpg or instagram.png) before you upload it.
9. Bold/Strong - In writing, bold is usually use if you want to give importance to a text. In SEO, it's good to seldom use it in your keyword phrase. If you observe, I often use this in my subheadings.
10. Italic/Emphasis - Same from bold, it's good to use it to pinpoint when writing. Moreover, writing italicize letters are often use in quotations. In SEO reports, italic is surprisingly more correlated in high rankings than bold text. So it's smart to italicize few keywords.
11. Anchor Text - This one's of the important elements in SEO copywriting. This is the clickable portion of text that you assign every time you link out to other post. Be smart to choose words that you assign as anchor text because of two reasons. First, this serves as hint to a reader of what's your anchor text is about. Secondly is that search engines use this to find out the link you directed them to read.
Also, you can place keyword phrase related to your content. For example, here, one of my anchor text is SEO copywriting since it's closely related to this post's topic.
12. Keyword Frequency - This is the number of times your targeted keyword phrase appear on your content. Apparently, this element affects a content's possible ranking but keep in mind, don't go overboard and don't do it mindlessly. It's because you might get an opposite result. That's why I wrote this post. Above are the best places to use your target keyword phrases and practice to use them in variations.
13. Keyword Density - Lastly, this element is not a metric that affects a content's ranking but it still make sense to know this anyway. Keyword density is the ratio of your keyword to the rest of the words in your content. As a rule of thumb, it's ideal to appear your target keyword phrase between 1% and 4%. Remember to use them not lower or higher the above percentages. For example, you wrote 1200 words, it's ideal your keyword should appear 24 times, which is 2%. Again, this isn't a metric for ranking but at least a good reminder.
Obviously, this list might be complex to others but implementing above elements is a great way to make your blog "spoon feed"-ready in the eyes of the search engines. In case you think you need to perfectly do all of the above, you don't have to. Just like an expert believe about perfecting on-page SEO, get the top 20% of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links), you'll get 80% of the value possible in the on-page equation.
If you've been blogging for some time, you already know that blog commenting, social bookmarking and getting link love from fellow bloggers can help increase your search ranking. In SEO circle, it's called "off-page optimization".
However, let's keep in mind that how you "optimally structured" your blog for human visitors and search engines is also important. This is "on-page optimization" all about. This plays vital role in terms of how the search engines crawl, index and rank your blog in their database.
Think of it this way. The search engines are bright little toddlers and your blog is a rib-eye steak. In order to eat it without mess, you've got to present it in a chewable bite-sized chunks with appropriate utensils. In other words, you have to "spoon feed" them.
Here, you'll learn the basic elements of effective on-page SEO and where to use your target keyword phrase in the right place that you can apply to your blog today.
HTML Head Tags
1. Title Tag - This is also the headline and one of the most important tag to place your keyword term or phrase. Because it appears in the search engine result page (SERP) which gives the first impression to the browsing search user. So it's preferably to employ your target keyword as the first words to increase your click-through rate (CTR). Remember to keep its length under 72 characters in order to make all words in your title completely visible. Moreover, the positioning of your post title and blog name is important. It's better to set your title tag into this format:
Post Title | Blog Name
especially if your blog name is too long.
2. Meta Description Tag - This is the snippet of texts that serves as an advertising copy for your content. To increase click-through, it's smart to craft a readable and compelling description using your target keyword. Put yourself in the shoes of a search user then ask yourself of what describes your content. By this, you persuade her to visit your post. Furthermore, don't forget to keep its length under 165 characters so it's full visible in SERP.
3. Meta Robots - If you already submitted your blog's sitemap to the major search engines and your blog has been crawled, this one's not necessary. But if you do, make sure it doesn't have any directives that may restrict the search engine spiders to access your blog.
4. Canonical URL Tag - Worried to have duplicate content? This one can help. Canonical URL tag is use to ensure that the search engines will find only singular version of your content and assign its possible highest achievable ranking. You can make it in this format:
5. URL / Permalink - Customizing URL is also important because it serves as a web address for your content. It's highly suggested to make it short and easy to remember. Try to use your post's topic main keyword so you can give a visitor a hint of what's your content about. One good example is this: yourdomain.com/keyword.
Body Tags
6. H1 Headline - When it comes to SEO copywriting, it's recommended to place your target keyword term/phrase here. H1 tag's purpose is to tell the search engines of your content's main topic. Chiefly, keep in mind to do not include more than one H1 tag in your content.
7. H2 and H3 Tags - Usually, these are use for subheadings of the content. Likewise, it's ok to seldom include your target keyword here.
8. Img Alt Attribute - When it comes to images, photos and infographics, it's a good practice to include your keyword phrase using img alt attributes. This is helpful if you want to attract visitors searching for images. In Blogger platform, an easy way to do this is by simply rename your image's filename (ex: iphone.jpg or instagram.png) before you upload it.
9. Bold/Strong - In writing, bold is usually use if you want to give importance to a text. In SEO, it's good to seldom use it in your keyword phrase. If you observe, I often use this in my subheadings.
10. Italic/Emphasis - Same from bold, it's good to use it to pinpoint when writing. Moreover, writing italicize letters are often use in quotations. In SEO reports, italic is surprisingly more correlated in high rankings than bold text. So it's smart to italicize few keywords.
11. Anchor Text - This one's of the important elements in SEO copywriting. This is the clickable portion of text that you assign every time you link out to other post. Be smart to choose words that you assign as anchor text because of two reasons. First, this serves as hint to a reader of what's your anchor text is about. Secondly is that search engines use this to find out the link you directed them to read.
Also, you can place keyword phrase related to your content. For example, here, one of my anchor text is SEO copywriting since it's closely related to this post's topic.
12. Keyword Frequency - This is the number of times your targeted keyword phrase appear on your content. Apparently, this element affects a content's possible ranking but keep in mind, don't go overboard and don't do it mindlessly. It's because you might get an opposite result. That's why I wrote this post. Above are the best places to use your target keyword phrases and practice to use them in variations.
13. Keyword Density - Lastly, this element is not a metric that affects a content's ranking but it still make sense to know this anyway. Keyword density is the ratio of your keyword to the rest of the words in your content. As a rule of thumb, it's ideal to appear your target keyword phrase between 1% and 4%. Remember to use them not lower or higher the above percentages. For example, you wrote 1200 words, it's ideal your keyword should appear 24 times, which is 2%. Again, this isn't a metric for ranking but at least a good reminder.
Obviously, this list might be complex to others but implementing above elements is a great way to make your blog "spoon feed"-ready in the eyes of the search engines. In case you think you need to perfectly do all of the above, you don't have to. Just like an expert believe about perfecting on-page SEO, get the top 20% of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links), you'll get 80% of the value possible in the on-page equation.
