On-page SEO consists of five main tactics: choosing a focus keyword for each page, writing a unique title tag for each page, writing a unique meta description for each page, working the focus keyword into to the on-page copy at an appropriate keyword concentration, and assigning image alt data to every image on the site.
All of the tactics begin with your keyword research and choosing a focus keyword for each page. Here are a few of our tips on keyword research and focus keywords.
- Each page should have its own unique focus keyword. This focus keyword should be the primary term you’d like the page to be organically ranked for, and it should appear in the title tag, meta description, image alt data, and on-page copy.
- Tools for doing keyword research to help choose your focus keywords include:
- Focus keywords should balance competition and search volume. Too much competition and you don’t stand a chance at ranking for the term, so your work will be for naught. Too little search volume and you’ll rank quickly, but it won’t do you any good since no one’s searching for that term.
- The search engines’ algorithms change periodically. Sometimes the algorithms are exact match, meaning they match to the term exactly as the searcher types it. Other times, the algorithms are broad match, meaning they not only match to the term as it’s typed, but also to potentially related terms. This has been done by the algorithm picking out what it deems “important words” in the query in order to return results. Under the current Google algorithm, the typed (or spoken, depending on the device used for searching) query is being analyzed to try and return results based on context AND intent, thus better matching what the searcher is actually looking for.
- In the on-page copy, the search engine algorithms look for “keyword concentration”. This means the focus keyword should appear more than once within the copy on the page, but the author should not go overboard in its use. While the search engines do not release information on what is an appropriate keyword concentration, they have let it be known that overuse is considered “keyword stuffing”, and this will affect your site’s organic rankings negatively.
- The focus keyword should also be a longer-tail keyword instead of a broad term. Terms that are too broad to try and rank on their own could potentially rank for searches on cost, location, information details, etc, and this may not be information on your site. This leads the searcher to either not click the link in the results (which leads to a low click-through rate, which will lower organic rankings) or for the searcher to click through then leave quickly (which leads to a high bounce rate, which also leads to lower organic rankings).
The importance of keyword research and properly choosing focus keywords cannot be stressed enough when talking about SEO. Don’t leave your efforts to chance or lack of knowledge. Use the button below to reach out to SBN Marketing to get your SEO efforts off on the right foot.
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