By paying close attention to on-page optimization, your content has the best chance of ranking on the first page of Google. By including your keywords in four key areas of each post, you help search engines understand the context and intent of your content.
Specifically, the four places you should include your keywords are as follows:
Page title
Heading tags (H2-H6)
Your post’s sections and subsections should be well-organized to help the reader follow the flow of the content. However, don’t use your main keyword in the H2-H6 heading tags for these sections.
Instead, target keyword variations and the related keywords you discovered in step 3 above. This provides additional clues to search engines about the overall scope and intent of your article.
URL structure
Include your primary keyword in the URL structure of your post. This is another clue to search engines about the topic of your post.
You should also keep your URL as short and simple as possible, while still including your target phrase.
The page title signals the main topic of your article and also appears as an H1.
The text in your title tag should be 60-70 characters long and contain your main target keyword. It should also be a real title that people can understand.
Metadata
The meta description gives you 155-162 characters to provide a brief summary of your article. It is essentially the promise you make to search engines about what you will deliver to readers, and it also appears below your page title and URL on search results pages.
Adding one or two of your keywords to the meta description can help improve search rankings.
The meta description is also an opportunity to entice potential readers to click through to your content. Keep it short and concise, but make sure to give the searcher a taste of what they will learn if they read your post.
5. Promote your post
Writing and publishing your post is only half the battle. You also need to promote your article to make sure as many people as possible read it.
Here are the three main ways to generate traffic to your content:
Create links
Email and social media can give you a quick influx of traffic to your blog post, but that will be a short-term boost. And it won’t help you improve your organic search results.
For long-term growth and consistent organic traffic, you need to build links to your article from other websites. In fact, according to Brian Dean at Backlinko,
“The #1 result on Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than positions #2-#10.”