I present you with an advance guide to a better on-page seo optimization best practices that work.

Bear in mind that like the 200 Google ranking signals, this list of seven on-page seo best practices is not a complete or absolute list, they’re just “part” of what is working and not in any way the only determinant factors that Google uses to determine on-page relevancy of any web page.

Use them to modify your web pages at your sole discretion.

1. Keyword Usage and placement.

It all start with knowing what you want to rank for – focus keyword – if you don’t know exactly what your ideal customers are typing into search engines to find information related to your niche market, you’re dead in the water.

Figuring out what your target audience is searching for is the first step to a successful on-page optimization. With the help of free tools like Google keyword planner…this task is made easy and achievable.

The next step is to have this focus keyword placed strategically in some ideal places on your web page. But while this practice still remain one of the most inform best practices to on-page optimization, its influence on search engine ranking has been known to have fallen in recent years.

This does not mean you should ignore its importance completely…NO! Is just that keyword placement alone has little or minimal effects to how web pages are ranked in search engines.

For instance if your focus keyword is “SEO Ninja“, below are ideal places to have your focus keyword placed.

2. Heading Tags.

Heading tags are part of your on-page seo strategies, and you shouldn’t ignore or misuse them.

Heading tags are used to differentiate sub-sections or sub-headings on a page, it lets the users quickly know that ok! here is another important section in this document.

The most important being H1, and your site HTML coding should automatically wrap up your page title in this tag to help simplify the process each time you publish a new blog post.

The industry standard for using H tags on a page is to start from H1, follow by H2 and on like that it goes down to the least important of them all –  H6 – they should follow a hierarchy.

This means and that if your page title is introduce in H1 tag, the next sub-title or heading on the page should be wrap up in H2 tag. Not following this rule is not an ideal option for better on-page seo practices.

From both users and search engines point of view, proper implementation of H tags have a positive impact on your on-page seo.

• Keywords included in H tags gives search engines spiders the signals to understand the consistency of keyword usage on a page with the rest of the content.
• Your focus keyword SHOULD be included in your page H1 tag which is very important for SEO benefits as search engines spiders pay utmost attention to this section on a page.
• Breaking up your content with heading tags give users a better experience as they can quickly scan through content to the most interested part of the content.
• The practice of using styling text or fancy font for H tags is not accepted and should be avoided completely.
• Stuffing keyword in H tags could result to Google penalizing your site for keyword stuffing, so be caution on how you use it.
• Headings tags should be clearly visible on a page, hidden text in H tags could lands you in Google’s court.

3. Synonyms.

While writing your content, is important not to focus alone on the usage of your focus keyword if you’re going to reach wider targets audience.

Users themselves generate keywords that content marketers target in their content, and these words varies in their usage or language but may also mean the same thing in their concept.

For instant, “PPC’ which may also mean Pay-per-click if we’re talking in content marketing concept – so using other variation of your target keyword is a good on-page seo practices as search engines spiders possess billions of synonyms or variations of words to match users queries even if the user didn’t use exact word to find your content.

Instead of repeating or using same target keyword throughout your content, use other related words that users might use to find you.

4. Word Placement.

Every web pages are divided into different sections such as header, footer, body, sidebars, navigation, etc.

Your most important words shouldn’t be placed in an area that is not easily visible to your human visitors e.g sidebars or navigation menus if you want them to rank or compete in the search engines.

The body section of your web pages should be and in my opinion is the only text area that should contain your most important words that matters most to your readers. Take for example, how many of your blog readers take note of those banner ads on your sidebar?

Few, right? I guess.

This is because it does not matters most to them but maybe only you, due to the monetary reason behind it. So also search engines spiders take into consideration in a smaller amount the less important sections on your blog.

To get the most out of your on-page SEO benefits, I suggest you have your primary keyword in the first paragraph of your document or as early as possible and somewhere very close to the end of the document. Other variations of it may come anywhere in the content as far as they are used natural and not forced to fit in.

5. Co-occurrence.

There is a method of indexing and ranking that search engines spiders uses to group web pages called Phrase base indexing. It is a process of indexing web pages bases on complete phrases and ranking them on the relevancy of that phrases.

Using co-occurrence concept, it makes it easier for search engines spiders to return the most relevant information to users queries based on the co-occurrence of your target keyword with other closely related or often mentioned terms or phrases.

For instance, if we’re talking about “best affiliate network programs”, there is the possibility of mentioning “Share-a-sale“, “ClickBank”, “Commission Junction” etc.

A page that target “best affiliate network programs” has its main focus keyword could possibly rank higher for any of all these related search terms, especially if its gain incoming links from related website than a page that target same keyword but with little to no mention of any phrase related to affiliate network programs.

In the eyes of search engines spiders, such page could possibly not all about affiliate network programs.

This is why you should leave nothing out when writing your content, go deeper and have all the meat and potatoes that content deserved included in your document. You never knows what keyword(s) in a content will bring you the most organic traffic.

6. Depth of content.

The length of an article itself in not a direct influence on ranking, but what makes this work is the fact that lengthy articles gives room to express yourself further and clearly. It allows you to touch on every aspect of the subject without leaving readers hanging.

At 1000 or more word on a page, a topic can be explored further, your target keyword can be fully utilize and occur at a good ratio to overall word count – not really keyword density – there is enough room to fuse in other related search terms you want to target with your content.

Studies shows that the average content length of top 10 Google ranking is 2000 word count according to SERPIQ.

However, its important to remember not to create long form content just because you want it to be 2000 or more words, thereby resulting into rambling all over the places without any meaningful facts, education or entertainments derive from reading the content on the part of the users.

If you’re aiming to attract organic traffic, then consider writing long in-dept articles that are full of fact, case studies, education, tutorials, quality reviews and drop jaw entertainments.

7. Topical Targeting.

It is a good and ethic practice to base your content on “a” particular topic so that both search engines and your human visitors could identify and understand what you’re talking  about…..but we can help takes this further by going all out on the subject and target more related keywords within a single piece of content.

Lets assume you’re writing about “what is blog commenting?”.

Normally, once you define what blog commenting mean….you have definitely answer the question. But you don’t have to stop there, you can in the same content provide answers to “how to leave effective comment on a post”, “how to find do-follow blogs to comment on”, “why short one liner comment might hurt you” etc.

If you follow this approach to writing your content, you’ll sure ended up with creating something that looks like an ultimate guide to xxx topic because you’re leaving nothing out of it, and writing 2000 or more words will become a pretty simple task.

And you could possibly rank for keywords related to those other topics too within that same content that talks about what is blog commenting.

What you’re doing in essence is covering a blog theme instead of just writing about a sub-section of it.

This topic won’t be complete without leaving you with some of the finest tools on the internet for achieving better on-page content optimization.

Source: http://cybernaira.com/2015/on-page-seo-optimization/