Effortless, Effective On-Page SEO with 7 Strategic Keys

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

If you are a newcomer to SEO and want a way to get results quickly without breaking a sweat, start by analyzing on-page SEO strategies. Below are some important tips to keep in mind when planning your SEO strategy in 2022.

The 2022 On-Page SEO Playbook: Have You Seen It All Yet?

This guide includes 7 practical tips, grouped into 3 main categories:

• Keyword research secrets

• Improving user experience (UX) and making the most of multimedia

• Using internal links intelligently

Choosing and Using Keywords Isn't Just Technique — It's an Art

Keywords are the vital core of any SEO strategy in general and on-page SEO in particular. Selecting, using, and distributing keywords therefore requires not only logical data analysis but also creative thinking.

1. Target long-tail keywords

Long-tail keyword is an SEO term for longer, more detailed keywords as opposed to short, generic ones. They get fewer searches than short-tail keywords, but they carry a number of advantages. These detailed keywords help us understand more precisely what users are searching for, and today they dominate search volume compared to short keywords. A recent study found that 91.8% of searchers use long-tail keywords.

Another reason SEO practitioners should focus more on long-tail keywords is that they tend to attract more searches thanks to their specificity, so we can zero in on long keywords directly tied to user search behavior.

For example: the long keyword "how do I rank on Google" is far more specific than the short keyword "Google ranking." With the long keyword, we understand the user's problem and can answer it directly. With the short one, we can hardly tell whether the user is looking for a definition, a how-to, or advice.

Depending on the case, many long-tail keywords have low search volume — but in return, their competition is also low. Mining these keywords makes it much easier to reach the top rankings.

So how do you put long-tail keywords to work effectively in your articles? Don't stuff a string of long, tedious terms into your content and hope for the best — that can sometimes backfire. Here are some useful tips for using long-tail keywords:

• Define the topic of your article

• Enter the broadest phrases or headings of the topic into a keyword research tool

• Identify long-tail keywords related to your chosen topics with high search volume and low competition

• Narrow your keyword list down to the keywords with the highest search volume

For example: if you are a credit card issuer and one of your topics is "opening a credit card," the long-tail keyword you might target is "how to open a credit card for the first time."

• Write relevant content that answers what users are actually searching for behind the chosen keyword.

Learn more: Top #6 content strategies to make organic traffic skyrocket

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• Use keywords to write alt text for images in your article

Alt text is a description of an image and an important Google ranking factor. According to MozCast, it accounts for up to 20% of an article's performance.

Alt text serves 3 main purposes:

• Accessibility: alt text is read aloud by screen readers for visually impaired users.

• Image description: when an image fails to load on the page, the alt text appears in its place to describe the image content to the user.

• Search engine optimization: search engine crawlers use alt text to build image indexes. In 2021, Google confirmed that alt text is "still very important for SEO."

Tips for using keywords in alt text:

• First, think about the image and write an accurate description of it.

• Describe the image naturally; there's no need to overcomplicate it.

• Look for ways to work your target or secondary keywords into the alt text.

• Use keywords in your article's headings

When you place a keyword in a heading, you are implicitly "signaling" to search engines and users alike that your content satisfies the intent behind that search phrase. Just as a table of contents gives readers context, keywords in headings do the same for search engine bots.

Although 36% of SEO experts consider headings important, that doesn't mean forcing keywords in where they don't make sense.

Consider user experience and Google's recommendations before deciding where to place target keywords and other related terms. And above all, avoid keyword stuffing. Tips for using keywords in headings:

• Choose the post's main keyword to include in the title.

• Enter the keyword into a keyword research tool to find other related keywords.

• Use the main keyword and related terms in your headings as often as possible (making sure they appear in at least 40% of headings).

• Focus on Top-of-the-Funnel keyword phrases

The three main stages of the buying cycle are awareness, consideration, and decision. When it comes to top-of-the-funnel (TOFU), you should use keyword phrases that capture the attention of potential customers. Content targeting these phrases aims to build "awareness" of a topic — it draws readers in without expecting them to take action.

What do these keywords look like? Top-of-funnel keywords tend to answer broader questions about a topic. To focus on them, we need to do the following:

• Reach a wider audience, because these phrases tend to have higher search volume

• Capture users earlier in their research process

Tips for choosing top-of-funnel keywords:

• Pick phrases with higher search volume and low SEO competition

• Build a list of secondary keywords related to your chosen phrases that reflect the other stages of the buyer's journey. This helps ensure that the traffic you generate converts into leads or sales.

• Create no more than three top-of-funnel keywords per customer persona. Based on these customer types, we can make sure each search query matches the kind of customer we want to attract.

• Limit keyword spam that hurts SEO

Spamming keywords — both primary and secondary — is something you should never do. Many people believe that the more keywords an article has, the higher it ranks on the SERP. In reality, it isn't that simple.

When a keyword appears too frequently on a page, Google's crawlers flag that page as spam, which significantly hurts rankings. The easiest way to avoid this is to keep keyword density at around 2%, applying to the main keyword as well as related secondary keywords.

The 2020s: The Era of User Experience and Multimedia

When the internet can offer users so many options and possibilities, the only way to "win them over" and keep them on your website is with an outstanding user experience. Part of that effort is using multimedia content such as video, audio, and motion graphics.

• Focus more on UX to climb Google's rankings

Beyond keywords and content, you also need to care about the experience users have from start to finish. Google takes many factors into account when ranking pages, one of which is the time users spend on the page. If users leave our page within seconds of arriving, it signals to Google that this isn't the content its users need.

Another thing that affects time on page and bounce rate is page load speed. An analysis of 5 million websites on desktop and mobile found that the average time for a page to fully load was 10.3 seconds on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile.

The first 5 seconds of page loading have the greatest impact on overall conversion rate. Each additional second of load time reduces average conversion by 4.42%.

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Tips for optimizing user experience include:

• Make sure content and images match the search intent behind each keyword.

• Put the most relevant information for the search keyword at the top of each page.

• Reduce image sizes to improve load times for every page.

• Make content easy to navigate, especially for long articles — for example, a summary paragraph or a table of contents.

• Remove clutter such as redundant content, irrelevant images, or hard-to-read fonts.

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• Add types of media that engage readers

There are a few indirect things you can do to improve your SERP rankings — one of them is using a variety of media types on your blog.

Beyond images, media includes audio files, video, ebooks, and GIFs. These media types are seen as effective ways to engage users more deeply, keeping them on your site longer while giving them the best possible experience throughout.

According to HubSpot, video is the #1 form of media used in most content strategies. 86% of businesses use video marketing as a tool to grow their business. On the consumer side, 84% of users say watching a brand's video is what convinces them to buy a product or service.

Audio is also being used more and more thanks to the appeal of audio-visual content. 61% of businesses also plan to increase their advertising budgets with digital audio.

Combining video and audio on your blog/website can be a great way to improve user experience and increase time on page. You can start by adding short audio clips to blog posts or short videos that simplify difficult-to-understand passages.

Tips for making better use of media:

• If you don't know where to start, create a YouTube channel as an additional marketing channel to grow your following.

• Embed YouTube videos on related topics into relevant blog posts.

• Add audio clips from podcasts that fit the article's topic.

• Present data and statistics in more engaging ways, such as data visualizations or other custom graphics.

Learn more: Learn more: Overdoing On-page SEO — Are You Making This Serious Mistake?

Boost On-Page Engagement Organically with Internal Links

As mentioned above, Google values the time spent on an individual page when ranking websites, but the search engine also cares about how long users stay on your site as a whole. The longer users stay on our site, the more likely they are to explore deeper pages. It also signals to search engines that our site's content is high quality.

Over 80% of SEO experts believe every blog post should include at least 2 to 5 internal links. Two important steps to increase the time users spend on your pages are:

• Writing engaging, in-depth content

• Linking to related content

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When you link to internal content, you are guiding your users deeper into your site. This increases the chances they'll have more meaningful interactions with your content (for example, leaving a comment on a blog post or sharing it on social media), which benefits your SERP rankings. Tips for incorporating and leveraging internal links:

• Choose pages with complementary content related to the topic of the current page.

• Use link text that reads naturally and encourages users to click through to the next page.

• Avoid generic anchor text like "Click here" or "Read more." The more specific the anchor text, the better Google understands the structure of your site.

• As a rule of thumb, make sure the most important pages on your site are reachable within 3 clicks or fewer from the homepage.

All in all, the ultimate goal of on-page optimization is to satisfy the customers who visit your page, thereby scoring points with search engines and achieving high rankings. We hope these 7 tips from Markdao can help all the SEO "warriors" struggling with on-page optimization.

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