On Page Keyword Optimization: The Foundation For Getting Organic Search Traffic

By Taylor Flanery, Social Media Manager of A-List Blog Marketing

 If you hear the term “keyword optimization” and shudder and recoil you aren’t alone.

That is why many bloggers just don’t do it. They think of it, and its close cousin search engine optimization, as all tricks and ways to game the system that they just don’t have time to fool with.

However, I’m here to tell you that if you don’t optimize each of your pages to be found more easily in search engines you are leaving traffic, and therefore money, on the table. So, if you are really serious about making money from your blog you need to start optimizing, right now to help build your organic search traffic to your site.

On Page Keyword Optimization Is the Foundation of SEO

As I said, SEO and optimizing for specific keywords are close cousins of one another, but they are different. SEO focuses on getting your content higher up in the search engine rankings for a particular keyword, and while that is important that is not the focus of this article. What this article is focusing on is more foundational. Before you can move up the rankings for a particular keyword the search engine has to know you even have something to say about that topic to get you in the pool of search results at all. That is what on page optimization is designed to do for you.

The search engines want to know what your page is about, so tell them. Don’t make them guess.

They won’t send you traffic if they don’t know what topic you’re talking about.

Fortunately, it is quite simple to tell search engines the information they want to know. Here are the steps you should take on each page of your blog to optimize each of them for the main phrase you are writing about. 

Strategically Tell What Keyword Phrase You’re Writing about on Certain Parts of Your Page

Tip #1: Be Explicit About Your Main Keyword in the File Name

One simple way to tell the search engines what your page is about is to use the keyword phrase within your file name. That means if your page is about blue widgets your file name might be: http://www.nameofyourblog.com/blue-widgets.html.

Tip #2: Use Your Main Phrase in the Head of the File

Web pages are designed to provide information both to search engines and to readers. Readers get their information in the text of the article, but in the head of the file, which readers don’t see on their screens, search engines are asking you for some specific information to help them understand what the page is about, so give it to them. Don’t make them work for it.

Within the head of your page you are asked to provide a page title (also known as a SEO Title), meta keywords and a meta description of the page. You should use your exact main keyword phrase in each of these three sections. (You can use the free plugin WordPress SEO to do this).

Listing your phrase in the keyword section is obvious, but often it is neglected in either or both the page title and description. However, both the page title and description of the page are the text that shows up in the search engine results pages and if you don’t use your main phrase in both these locations, woven somewhere into the rest of the text or title, it is much more difficult to be found in the top 10 or even 30 results for competitive keywords.

Tip #3: Place Your Main Phrase within the Text of the Article

The final places you should use your keyword phrase within your blog post is in the headline, and then sprinkled within the body copy. This doesn’t have to be difficult, and really it shouldn’t be. After all, if you are focused on writing about a specific topic, your main keyword, than you will naturally use the exact phrase, synonyms, related words, and roots of the keyword within the copy itself.

As you write keep in mind it is ideal, but not crucial, to use the main phrase within the first sentence or two of your body copy. However, never do this if you have to write awkwardly as a result. Search engines are getting smarter and smarter so you only have to spoon feed them so much. On the other hand don’t be purposefully obtuse either, so if you can work in the phrase easily you should do it.

Tip #4: Important Pitfall to Avoid – Keyword Stuffing

While it is important to sprinkle your main phrase within your body copy to help the search engine know the whole article is about that topic, a little use of keywords goes a long way. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking if using the word some is good a lot is better. That is known as keyword stuffing, and it is annoying to your reader, who doesn’t want to read a particular phrase over and over without rhyme or reason, and makes search engines think you are trying to manipulate them.

The purpose of on-page keyword optimization is only to help the search engines know what your blog post is about so there is no guessing involved. Tell them directly and simply, but there is no need to beat anyone over the head.

Keyword stuffing will get you penalized in the search engines, which is the opposite result you want from your optimization efforts. If you are concerned you’ve gone above and beyond what is a good amount of keyword usage use a free tool such as Keyword Cloud or Keyword Density Checker  to see what density your article has for various words or phrases. Typically, you want to be in the 3-7% range, and definitely not more than 10% for any word in particular.

You’ll find Market Samurai an invaluable tool for keyword optimization.

You Still Need To Write For Humans So Don’t Be a Slave to These Rules

Following these guidelines will tell search engines in simple terms what your page is about and not leave them guessing. On its own, however, these steps will not get you to the number one spot in Google for ultra competitive keywords. They will, however, build you a strong foundation for all your other SEO efforts. I myself have used this method as I’ve built all the pages of my niche websites and I believe it is an important reason I receive so much organic search traffic to my sites.

However, I will caution that you should always choose to please the human visitor over the search engine spider if you can’t please both. As search engines become smarter they are more and more forgiving of deviations and are becoming much better guessers about the true topic of pages. Human readers, on the other hand, are much less forgiving so make them happy by giving them what they want — original, quality content which answers question or gives ideas about the topics discussed.

Hopefully though, you will find creative ways to please both humans and spiders, which is the real trick of white hat SEO and optimization. 

Taylor Flanery is the Social Media Manager for A List Blog Marketing, and has also been optimizing her own websites from the start, gaining organic search engine traffic in the process. When she’s not tweeting or Facebooking for ALBM you can find her spending lots of quality time with her family or blogging about the topics she’s most passionate about, home and family. You can follow her at Household Management 101, Stain Removal 101 or at her newest site,  Home Storage Solutions 101.