Are you strategically positioned to capture customer attention when they conduct 70% of their research online before buying anything?
With changing customer behavior patterns that make the web the first place to find out about a product or service, capturing client attention online is do-or-die. As a result, search engine optimization (SEO) presents you with a set of tools to use in attracting organic customer traffic.
Part of any SEO arsenal is identifying and understanding how to use relevant and popular organic keywords. Here a quick primer on how you can optimize such keywords for your on-page SEO.
Understanding On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the art of optimizing pages on your website so that they can rank higher in search engine results, thereby earning more relevant traffic. In essence, you can think of on-page SEO as what your website says to a search engine.
Creating relevant and high-quality content is essential to on-page optimization, but there is more to it. On top of working on your website’s content, you also need to look at optimizing the headlines, images, and the HTML tags (that is the title, header, and meta).
As part of your on-page optimization efforts, using organic keyword use is essential. These keywords help you tap into the terms customers use when looking for products and services.
Powerful On-Page Organic Keywords Optimization Tips
For you to accurately tap into a user's intention when searching for a product or service on the internet, you need to identify and optimize for the right keywords.
Let’s look at some strategies you can leverage for compelling Google search engine optimization results.
1. Begin With an SEO Audit
To begin with, you need to assess the body of work you already published on your site to understand how well you deployed keywords in it. If you are only now beginning to work on your website, then the goal should be to develop content that features your target keywords once or twice per page.
Generally, an on-page audit gives you an idea of how well your website is doing at being effective with SEO. If you do not know how to conduct an audit, you can bring in an SEO services firm to help you assess your site.
As you assess the state of your organic keyword use across your existing body of work, you need to view things through certain filters continuously.
With every instance, ask yourself if you used the most relevant keywords in relation to the content on the web page it's on. You should also weigh every keyword in use to determine if it accurately reflects what your target audience is looking for.
Once you run a thorough on-page keyword assessment, you can identify the areas that need beefing up. Thus, you are ready to proceed knowing the most effective strategies that can work for you.
2. Identify the Relevance and Popularity of the Keywords
Part of optimizing your on-page keyword use is to understand how popular and relevant the phrases you plan to use are.
As a general rule, these two aspects should always go together. If you use popular keywords that are not relevant, you end up wasting your time and money. Conversely, relevant keywords that are not as popular deliver abysmal results.
Straight away, it is evident that you need to zero in on popular keywords to garner reasonable traffic.
However, there is a puzzle here in that the more popular a keyword is, the more people want to use it. Such high competition can make it challenging to rank well and get the results you want.
Thus, you ought to balance the popularity of a keyword with its competitiveness.
The most appealing keywords are those that are relatively popular yet are not as competitive. To this end, consider using modifiers to make them less competitive. You can also invest in mid to long-tail keywords that still reflect user intent but are less competitive.
When you are thinking of the relevance of a keyword, it has to speak to the user’s intent. It’s only when a keyword on your web page syncs with what a user is looking for that you get their attention.
In light of this, understanding the intent behind each keyword is critical. Users with navigational intent look for keywords that relate to brand or company queries.
If you are targeting those users looking for information, you need to use keywords that speak to this intent by reflecting curiosity and being solution-seeking. Keywords that relate to transactional intent can help you reach users who are ready to buy a product or service.
3. Titles
The title is the HTML that describes your web page's topic. They have a direct impact on your click-through rate and ranking, and as such, you need to optimize them the right way.
Title keywords should be a maximum of 65 words. Any longer than that and they will get cut off when the search engine displays the results, impeding performance. When you include your target phrases in the title, ensure it’s at the beginning to avoid it getting cut off.
4. The Content and Heading
When you use your keywords in both the headings and content, your visitors are likely to stick around. However, you need to be sure that you only deploy keywords naturally, as today’s search engines will demote your site if you don’t so.
5. Descriptions
Descriptions are displayed on search engine results underneath the title and URL. A description won’t directly impact your ranking but is highly useful to users as it helps them see how your content can meet their needs.
As such, you should use one keyword in the meta descriptions to attract the viewer by showing how it’s relevant to them.
6. The URL
Your URL helps describe the contents of your webpage and, therefore, help direct users to the relevant material. Out of necessity, you should tweak each URL to signal the content and include the keyword in it as well.
Keep in mind that your URL needs to be friendly to the user without any keyword stuffing.
Drive the Right Traffic to Your Site
Today’s customer is now doing 70% of their pre-purchase research online, and you must develop strategies to catch their eye at that moment. Using organic keywords, SEO can help you attract users by tapping into their intent. Ensure you understand how to optimize your on-page keyword use for your content and site to remain relevant to visitors.
Are you passionate about keeping your business search engine optimization successful? Check out more of our blog content for some top SEO and SEM business tips.
