ON-PAGE SEO
Having a blog post show up on Page 1 of a Google search for a popular keyword is the holy grail for a blogger. I have been a professional blogger for several years, and I thought I knew quite a bit about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and I’ve had a fair share of posts appear in the first page results in the past.
But recently, I found a more detailed formula that seems to be working like a charm to get my posts consistently appearing on the first page of search results for the keywords I’m selecting.
There’s no guarantee that your posts will rank as well as some of mine. After all, I have been practicing blog-writing for several years. But since I added this formula to my posts, I am seeing better search engine ranking results. It might help you, too. So without further ado, here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Find a keyword or phrase with at least 20,000 local searches and low competition. Use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool. Type in your ideas in the top box and look at the results under the Keyword Ideas tab. You want to choose a word or phrase that has the designation of “low” in the competition column and at least 20,000 in the monthly searches column. Keep looking until you find one. I personally try to find phrases that are at least 3 words long but depending on your niche, a single word or two-word phrase may be fine.
Step 2: Write your blog post using your keyword or phrase. You want to write a minimum of 350 words, ideally you want the length to be about 600 words. You want good quality content. Bad content, duplicated content, poorly-written content will do you no good.
Step 3: Your keyword needs to appear at least 2 times per 100 words, so if your post if 300 words, you’ll want your keyword to appear at least 6 times. If your post is 600 words, you’ll want your keyword to show up at least 12 times. That’s going to be easy because of Steps 4-11.
Step 4: Your keyword must be in the title of your blog post (also known as the H1)
Step 5: Your keyword must appear at least once within the first 2 sentences of your post.
Step 6: Your keyword must appear at least once within the last 2 sentences of your post.
Step 7: You must include a subheading tagged as an H2 (heading 2) that includes your keyword within your post copy. Major hint here: ADD YOUR TAGS DIRECTLY INTO THE HTML, do not rely on the formatting options on the Visual screen. The Visual screen adds additional code that the Google bots sometimes miss. Here’s the formula to add a tag in
HTML: < h2 > keyword < /h2 > (without the spaces, of course)
Step 8: Include a subheading tagged as an H3 (heading 3) that includes your keyword. Again, add to the HTML screen: < h3 > keyword < /h3 > (without the spaces, of course)
Step 9: Somewhere in the body of your post, you must underline your keyword using the proper HTML codes: < u > keyword < /u > (without the spaces, of course)
Step 10: Somewhere in the body of your text, your keyword must be bold ( < b > keyword < /b > without the spaces, of course).
Step 11: Somewhere in the body of your text, your keyword must be italicized ( < i > keyword < /i > without the spaces, of course).
ANOTHER MAJOR HINT: Making your H2 or H3 bold, underlined, and/or italicized DOES NOT COUNT as fulfillment of Steps 9, 10, and 11.
Step 12: You must insert a link to an internal page of your blog. That link could be to another blog post, to your About Me page, or a product page. It doesn’t really matter where the internal link goes, but obviously, if you can include a call to action for your readers and send them to an opt-in page or special offer, all the better.
Step 13: Have an image that relates to your topic and include your keyword in the image ALT tag. Ideally, you can also include your keyword in a caption under the image.
Step 14: OPTIONAL, but if you include any links to external materials, you should have it tagged as rel=nofollow. The search engines appreciate it when you don’t send them on a wild goose chase following links that may divert them from their initial task, which is indexing YOUR post. You can do it manually by altering each link (or install a plug-in to do it automatically, like External Link or SEO-Automatic-Link recommended).
Step 15: Your post should be promoted and syndicated to a minimum of 5 sites, of which one “should be” Google+. I’m just saying. In my experience, when I’ve shared a post with my circle on Google+, my posts are showing up in the top five search results – when I promote my blog in other ways and check my listing before submitting to Google+, I’m usually at the bottom of the page or no where to be seen. Then I submit it to Google+ and in about 45 minutes to an hour later, I’ll see my post move up the page. It makes sense that Google prefers items submitted to Google+. They are still looking for quality content for all their search results, but if the content is of equal value, the content shared from Google+ is going to get a slight edge in the ranking.
One more hint: Google loves YouTube videos. If your blog post includes a link to a YouTube video, that’s just one more thing that Google loves to rank.
And speaking of quality content, don’t believe for an instant that spelling doesn’t matter. It does. Numerous misspellings will hurt your chances of keeping a high search engine rank, so make sure your run spell check! And don’t forget to put your post into a category and include tags (one of which absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt MUST be your featured keyword).