Blogging is one of the most widely used online marketing tactics today. Digital marketing is all about building engagement and increasing website traffic. A blog is an excellent platform to publish fresh content, build credibility, and establish a brand.
The key to driving more engagement is to rank better in the SERPs of search engines. On-page SEO plays an important role in boosting the search engine rankings of your blog. Here are 5 simple On-page SEO tips for bloggers.
1. Use the right keyword density
SEO is all about ranking better in the search engine results pages. In order to rank better, users should be able to find you easily. The keywords you use in your content are the GPS to your blog. One of the key on-page SEO tactics is to optimize your keywords. Keyword optimization includes researching, analyzing, and coming up with keywords that can drive the most valuable traffic to your website.
Another equally important on-page SEO tactic is to optimize keyword density.
Keyword density is nothing but the frequency of your keywords in your content.
Keyword density = (Number of keywords/Total number of words)*100
The tendency to include both too little and too many keywords should be avoided. Too many keywords can result in keyword stuffing which is a black hat SEO tactic and your website can be penalized.
The optimum keyword density for better search engine rankings should be 1-3% of the total number of words.
2. Optimize your images to boost rankings
An interesting piece of content does not only contain text, but also contains visual content. Images are a valuable asset in SEO. Optimizing your images are just as important as optimizing your keywords in order to boost your search engine rankings.
Usera can get impatient when a webpage takes a long time to load. Images that are not resized and compressed before uploading increase the page-load time. Images need to be resized and compressed according to the specifications of the webpage and then converted into a file type such as JPG and PNG before uploading. This optimizes the image and saves on-page loading time
Images can also be optimized for search by using the same keywords as used in the textual content. This is done by including these keywords in image alt-tags. These tags are HTML attributes which provide a textual description to help search engines read images and rank the webpages associated with them.
It is always better to include original, high quality images rather than stock images since stock images tend to curb the authenticity of your post. Stock images also do not offer anything personal from the author whereas original images provide the users with the user’s visual interpretation of the post.
3. Come up with captivating post titles
The title is the very first thing that captures the attention of your target audience.
An interesting title can grab the attention of users and this in turn can help to achieve a higher click-through rate (CTR) as users are motivated to visit your page.
An SEO-friendly title should include the main target keywords in order to ranks better in SERPs. An attractive post title should include target keywords as well an interesting element to nudge the curiosity of the readers.
For instance, if your target keyword phrase is : increase traffic to your blog, then, an interesting title for your post could be: How to increase traffic to your blog: 10 tips from my first 100 posts. Note how this title is both SEO-friendly as well as attention grabbing.
4. Optimize your URL for better CTR
URLs comprise of text that are both machine readable and human readable. Including target keywords in URLs can help the page to rank better by connecting the relevance of the destination page to the user’s search terms. Improved rankings result in higher visibility.
Well-structured, optimized URLs can also serve as clickable text when included in other blogs, social media posts, and other online platforms and are likely to generate a higher click-through rate as opposed to unoptimized URLs. For instance, consider the two links given below:
https://www.godotmedia.com/%3Fp%3D5300
https://www.godotmedia.com/increase-website-referral-traffic/
The first link (from one of our older posts) is confusing and does not give users any indication of the destination page whereas the second URL clearly indicates that the destination page contains tips to increase website traffic referrals.
5. Get the meta descriptions right
Meta descriptions are essentially HTML tags that provide a brief summary of the destination page. The tag is a 160 character snippet that is shown in the search engine results page if the user’s search query is present in the snippet.
A well created meta description that includes target keywords is essential to increase visibility and achieve a higher click through rate. Meta descriptions should also be readable, well within the character limit, and if possible, should include rich snippets such as ratings, product information, and so on.
For instance, look at the meta description below.
The meta description contains the target keyword : Captain AMerica: Civil War review, is within the 160 character limit, and includes a star rating as well. This is an example of an SEO friendly meta description.
Feature image via Freepik.com