On-page SEO: 7 steps to get found in Google

You can get the top spot.

Once you know what you are doing, people like to complicate it with backlinking and keyword strategies that no longer work.

Marketers argue that ranking is getting harder and harder as google’s algorithm gets more sophisticated each year.

At one point SEO was easy. Just choose your keywords and create a quick article.

But then the updates came, panda, penguin, hummingbird.

With each update, businesses fell and marketers lost their income.

But when you know google’s ultimate goal, SEO comes that little bit easier.

Google wants the best answer to its user's search inquiry.

In this article, I am going to share how to do just that.

How to write an article that gets found on google.

First things first,

Don’t just focus on keywords.

The first thing you need to do when you want your site found on Google is to think of your overall topic. Google doesn’t just take into account the keywords in your content but the overall context of your site.

So you want to create a website that appeals to the same type of audience no matter which content they see on your site.

For example, if your product is all about pet care and you sell product care products you want your content to reflect pet care.

You want to think of relevant topics to talk about. You want to talk about the problems that pet owners face and solve them with your content.

Once you have created enough posts (if you are creating a blog) or website pages, Google is going to be able to index your site and see it is about pet care.

Rather than confusing them and creating posts covering unrelated topics where google will then get confused and not show your site in the search results.

Get specific

Once you have decided on the topic of your article you want to research potential keywords that you can rank for. So that when someone types in that keyword your article will show up. To find keywords, look at this helpful guide the covers keyword research.

When it comes to keywords you want to choose long-tail keywords, keywords that have three or more words that are in less competition but are still being searched.

You don’t want to try and rank for keywords such as ‘lose weight’ because there is a huge demand and bigger authority sites with higher domain authority will take the top spots.

On the flip side of this, you don’t want to pick a keyword that no one searches because then you will have no visitors. Again use this guide to help you.

Write the article the right way.

Now you have identified your overall topic and the keywords you want to rank for it is time to write the article. There is one golden rule when it comes to writing for Search engine optimization and that is to write for the user, not Google.

It sounds counter-intuitive but google’s number one goal is to satisfy the user’s search inquiry and the last thing Google wants to recommend is a poor article that is crammed with keywords.

Rather google wants an in-depth article that covers the topic in length and will satisfy the user’s inquiry. This is why it uses bounce rate, social shares, comments, and backlinks as a determining factor on whether to put that topic at the top of the search inquiry.

Make sure to write an in-depth article that satisfies the user’s needs. Just make sure to sprinkle your chosen keyword in the title and in the first paragraph so that google knows what your site is about.

Keep to the minimum word length.

On the topic of your article being in-depth make sure your article is over 1000 words long.

Any shorter and google won’t think it will satisfy the user’s search inquiry.

It has been proven that longer articles result in people staying longer on your site and they are much more likely to engage with your content such as sharing and commenting all determining factors on showing your content is good.

Just make sure to not flesh out your content and write for the sake of the search engines, people will notice and bounce, and won’t engage.

Keep your content engaging and keep the interest of the reader throughout.

A good tip is to keep opening loops. Like a cliffhanger on your favorite tv show, you want to keep your reader tuned in, simply write about something that interested the reader and reveal it later in the content.

For example, you could open with a shocking fact and hint at how you could avoid a pitfall, and promise to reveal it down the page.

This will keep the reader, reading down the page.

Optimize further.

Google can’t see images, it can only read the text.

Images are a great way to break up your content and keep the attention span of the reader increasing the time they stay on your site. So make sure you label images with a description of what it is and make it relevant to your keyword.

For example, going back to the pet care example if you had a picture of a dog getting groomed you could label the image ‘ pet dog being cared for by a groomer’ this tells google what the image is and tells them that your image is relevant for the content.

Make sure to sprinkle images every third or fourth paragraph to keep your reader interested and to label each image.

Add links.

The next step is to add links. Google uses links to crawl your site. It wants to know what your site is about and find the overall topic.

Make sure to link to other relevant articles that your content talks about for example if I had other blog posts that cover backlinking I would link to do it in this section.

Adding internal links also keeps users on your site even longer as they read more articles telling google that your content is good as they are still reading. Making it more likely that they will show your articles in the search engines.

It is also good to link to external sites with high domain authority that are relevant to your subject as this tells google more context of what your content is about. It also shows Google that you are willing to satisfy the user’s search inquiry by linking to trusted sites who can give them more information.

Use this sparingly as you don’t want your users to leave your site just make sure that all external links open in a new window so they stay on your site.

Ask for contributions

Next, you want other people to link to you as these will be valuable backlinks. Google will see that top authoritative sites like your content and are willing to recommend your content to others.

This will deem that content is both relevant and help the user.

The best way to get backlinks is to find other authoritative sites in your niche and ask them to contribute them to your blog article with a short paragraph that supports your point.

Just make sure to give them the credit for their contributions. With this approach, they are more likely to link back to your site rather than just asking them for a link.

You can also contribute to their blog and write a guest post, where you create a post on their site and link back to you.

Now, this has been abused in the past with people guest blogging on poor sites to get backlinks, just make sure to guest blog on sites with high domain authority to do that, check out the free domain authority checker by Ahrefs.

Conclusion

And that is how you use online SEO for your website.

Keep your site around similar topics, choose long-tail keywords, and sprinkle them in your title and first paragraph, then write the article keeping the user in mind by keeping the user in the back of your mind.

As this will satisfy the user's inquiry.

While describing what your images are with alt text.

Sprinkle in some internal links to keep users on your site for longer and tell Google what your overall site is about to build up that relevance score.

Make sure to sprinkle in some external links to boost your relevance score further and to ask for contributions to get a link back from their site to yours.

As well as using guest blogging.

With this proven strategy you are sure to see those google rankings.

For more information on SEO check out Neil Patel’s free SEO course.