5 SEO Tips for On-page Success
Posted by Ben Sibley on Jan 7, 2012 | 22 commentsWhen it comes to on-page SEO, some tactics are just WAY too obvious. You’re going to bold your keyword 3 times? Really? I’m sure Google will never find out how to overcome such advanced tactics *rolls eyes*.
Let’s be clear about one thing – if you practice SEO then you are trying to game the search engines. Even if your tactics are ethical and legal, you’ve never spammed a site or person in your life, you’re still trying to game the search engines. With that in mind, approach your on-page optimization in a less obvious way.
These days it’s all about being subtle with your optimization tricks and techniques.
Tip #1 Pretend Google is a Person
Sometimes we get wrapped up in optimization techniques and lose focus of the basics. Take a look at a piece of content you recently tried to rank. From the perspective of a person, is your article completely relevant to your keyword?
Pretending Google is a person or writing like your handing your page to someone for review is a good tactic for keeping your content relevant. If you don’t think your content is great result then why should Google?
Tip #2 Define Your Keyword
This is a tip I got from Neil Patel about approaching the way you optimize your content. The idea is that you write like you are providing a definition of your keyword. This will help you in your content creation by giving you a simple way to structure and design your writing with SEO and relevancy in mind.
Even if your keyword is a few words long and contains some verbs you can still use this approach in creating content that is very whole and centered around your keyword.
Tip #3 Keep Consistent Meaning
It’s important that you don’t just begin and end your article with attention to your keyword. After finishing, take a good look at what each block of content is about. Google actually might consider the relevancy of individual parts of the content and you want each part to seem equally relevant.
This doesn’t mean to put your keyword in every paragraph. Rather, keep a more holistic view of your article and its contents so that you can make less obvious adjustments.
Tip #4 Use Similar Terms
You can use a tilde (this squiggly thing ~) in order to find Google-recognized synonyms.
For the most part, Google understands and recognizes synonyms the same way you and I do. However, the search is a good idea because it will provide you insight into exactly which terms are being considered and used as synonyms.
Tip #5 Link to Relevant Sources
I’m sure you’ve been told before to link out to other sources… but seriously do it! When linking out, before even considering SEO simply consider your readers. If you reference another article or some resource link to it, that’s just good writing.
The common fear with linking out is the loss of PageRank. Just forget about PageRank! I’ve written posts before with DOZENS of DoFollow outbound links and haven’t noticed any negative effects. That page also is having problems gaining rankings.
If you’re still trying to sculpt your PR and bold your keyword, well, welcome to 2012. Stop trying to game the search engines so aggressively and make your optimization more passive. Keep semantics in mind and assume Google can read your article like a real person.
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Using header tags can also be helpful when cultivating SEO – but you are right, it’s easy to get keyword happy. A good rule of thumb is to hand your content off to an editor and see how they think it reads. It’s easy to become blind to your own keyword usage after a while!
Laura recently posted..What Lead Automation can do for Business Conversions
I think the best thing that you can do is to do it clean. Blogging can be very tricky and time consuming before you reach the target but if you keep it clean you will get there.
Mark recently posted..Massive Traffic Ultimatum Review-IS THIS A JOKE?-Read What DC Fawcett Says…
Currently working on on-page in another project. Thanks for the tips, it is helpful. (I’m literally new to SEO, especially yo on-page. I more familiar with link building or off-page)
If still in 2012, one believe that keyword stuffing could help in SEO then no other could be more foolish than the person itself. Try to write the content defining your keywords and helping your users will do the needful. I am also agree with Laura at times become blind to our own keyword usages so its better to get advice from someone else.
Hi, I’m pretty new to SEO and still trying to find my way around. I’ve tried linking out to relevant sources and it does help a lot, it’s also extreamly helpful to your readers, giving them further resources that they may be interested in.
Beth recently posted..Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back – Some Things You Shouldn’t Do
You’re right.
nowadays, keyword stuffing is not anymore encouraged. Great content will market itself.
I like what you mentioned about using the tilde to know the synonyms of our keywords.
jessica recently posted..Extraordinary Christmas Party Packages at Caliraya Resort Club
Great article with some really handy tips there, especially #1. I don’t see the point of optimising your site for the search engines if it’s going to turn off actual people.
Damien recently posted..Jones Roofing Uses SEO (Brisbane) Techniques
Hi,
I don’t think it will be long before Google really can read an article like a human, the big G is getting smarter all the time and the more we try to game them, the more reasons they will have to slap us down!
Thanks – Jay
Certainly, your content will be pretty relevant to your keyword right off the bat due to Google’s understanding of the semantic web. However, there are definitely some subtle techniques that can be used to help improve the relevancy of your content.
Hello there. I have been studying SEO and tried mastering it for a couple years, but working around similar terms is very interesting to me. It makes sense, but I’ve never really looked at it as a strategy. For instance, if my niche is ‘pet food’, then I search top 5 keywords in that niche and build around them constantly. Then I can get traffic from those 5 search terms constantly. Just switch up post titles and angles.
bbrian017 recently posted..Blog Engage Official Theme Launch
Yea I like to grab a list of all the relevant terms I can for on-page optimization and then use them for anchor text during link building.
P.S. I’m digging the update, BE looks great!
I like approaching it as if Google is a person. Because it’s ‘him’ that really searching for your content. Brilliant!
Keeping consistent meaning is also a good point, because if you use SeoPressor and you just keep it that way, the post looks lame and uninteresting. IMHO.
Ivin recently posted..My New Facebook Page Design – Get Your Own!
Absolutely, I think stronger optimization these days comes from a more holistic and almost hands-off kind of technique.
I read a lot of blog about Search Engine Optimization, and all I can say is that your website really am very concise and helpful than most of the SEO blog post I read so far. You really explained it very well and I love it very much. Thank you for sharing this. I bookmarked your site for more interesting and wonderful tips and guides I can find.
Thanks so much Ruth, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my site
Very informative post. I like the tilde idea of working around similar terms to your keywords. This is a little different angle to me, but it sounds like a good idea since the majority of your competitors will probably be using the obvious keywords. I’ve always heard that you should just write as if you would speak and not keep repeating your keywords. This is sometimes hard as you may feel you want to get them in there and more is better. I guess clean relevant content will win in the end as it should. I struggle for subjects to write about and so tend to go with statistics alot. It’s relevant but not so exciting.
Thanks Susan, you’re right in that content usually turns out pretty optimized on it’s own. The big picture perspective is definitely the way to go for creating SEO copy. I think statistics/data are great for creating strong posts, but here are a few more ideas to help you with your writing:
1) Visit big-boards.com and pull a list of forums in your niche. Head to the biggest message boards and use ctrl+f to search for question marks. Visit every question thread to see what people are currently interested in and want to learn about.
2) Visit a few sites in your niche and find their most tweeted posts this month. There’s no since reinventing the wheel – write posts on similar topics to these.
3) Use topsy.com to find out what topics are trending around your keywords/niche
i think Google will put more weight on web sites that clearly show who are the people behind it. As you said treat Google as a person, Google wants to make sure that the search results it shows to the users come from authentic sites trusted by users. Presence of social media also becoming on page SEO factor.
nauman recently posted..Disk Read Error
Good article. I have seen many f.e. offline business owners with website trying to rank high ordering tons of backlinks and still staying on 2nd page while on-page optimization is such an important thing we should do daily and also watch how our site looks and how the description we read in search results is calling to action and visit our site.
Another thing is I have noticed myself too Google knows synonymes – I did a search on “cheap car insurance” and the website with headline “auto insurance” was 3rd in search results – this is the reason we should not stuff synonymes and create a site like myautocar.com
Mark recently posted..SMS Laenu ja Kiirlaenu Firmad Eestis
Hey great example Mark, thanks for commenting!
Haha, I like the expression “keyword happy” someone wrote about the phenomenon you described when people don’t realize Google sees through these tactics like bolding keywords and such. Putting keywords in the header is a great idea, too. Many beginners fall into these traps of keywords and wrong SEO strategies, and this is why I try to prevent similar mistakes by educating myself ahead of time; before I start experimenting with new strategies, I read about them and ask other marketers to tell me their views. I could choose to learn from my own mistakes and experience, but I don’t see the point when we have bloggers like you, who share their knowledge so we wouldn’t have to start from zero.
Thank you for helping and sharing information,
Leonard
Leonard,
Thanks for the comment, I think your approach is excellent. This is one of the reasons I like the SEO industry – there are so many bloggers sharing information freely. I would hate to be in a niche with very little free information, unless of course I was going to be the blogger to change that