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This is a unique guide to On-Page SEO in 2021.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

  • How to satisfy Search Intent

Let’s dive right in.

What is On-page SEO?

It’s simply the practice of optimizing web pages to rank higher in search engines and become valuable for users.

But on-page optimizations also involve creating and optimizing HTML tags like titles and meta descriptions.

And it revolves heavily around optimizing pages for search intent.

Why is On-Page SEO Important?

On-page SEO still make difference in 2021. Yup! it does.

Google How Search Works clarifies that:

Google likes looking for a specific keyword on your page. So you’ll want to optimize your page to follow Google’s own guidelines.

Below are 7 unique ways to optimize a page for SEO:

1. Satisfy Search Intent

Search Intent (User Intent) is the main goal a user has when typing a query into a search engine. Common types of Search Intent include informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional.

In simple terms, satisfying Search Intent is “Google’s number one goal”.

So for you to succeed with SEO and content marketing today, Search Intent needs to be a part of your strategy.

Backlinks and other traditional Google ranking signals are better.

But if your page doesn’t satisfy Search Intent, it’s not going to rank. Or in other words:

If you can’t match searcher intent, then you probably aren’t going to rank for your target keywords.

So again, search intent represents the reason behind a searcher’s query.

And matching search intent is one of those must-do things to show search engines that your page will fulfill its goal to deliver the most relevant results for any given query.

And while it might sound like you’re trying to satisfy Google, what you’re actually doing is learning what you need to do to satisfy the searcher’s intent.

Identifying search intent is usually quite easy: Use any of these two tips:

1. Look up to top ranking pages(SERP) by Googling your keyword or

2. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs.

(Both of the above are explained below).

  1. Look up to top-ranking pages: All you have to do is search for the keyword you want to rank for and then analyze the top-ranking results. And the top-ranking results are a great way to understand search intent because Google understands what searchers want, probably more than anyone else. To analyze the top-ranking pages you can use “the 3 C’s of search intent” by ahrefs. Which stands for:

1. Content type,

2. Content format, and

3. Content angle.

  1. Content type: Content type can usually be categorized into blog posts, videos, product pages, category pages, and landing pages. For example, the dominant type of pages for the query “best video hosting platforms” are blog posts.

2. Content format: Second C is the content format and this applies more to blog posts and landing pages. A few common blog formats you’ll see’re how-to’s, step-by-step tutorials, list posts, and opinion editorials. For a landing page, that might be something like a tool or calculator. Again for the query “best video hosting platforms” you’ll see that all of the top results are listicles, which makes sense because the word “best” implies that a comparison needs to be made.

3. Content angle: And the third C is the content angle, which often depicts the “benefit.” It’s basically your hook as to why someone should click and visit your page. For “best video hosting platforms,” you’ll see that most post has gone with the “freshness angle,(i.e date 2021)” which is evident based on the current year being in the titles. This is just one example of search intent for a keyword. The dominant content type is clearly blog posts. So this tells us that it may be worth creating a blog post to potentially get a spot in the search results. Depending on your keyword, sometimes you might even have a combination of both blog posts and video which signals that you should create both in order to potentially get two spots in search results. Or sometimes it’s clearly e-commerce category pages (depending on your keyword) which shows that the reason behind the is a shopping mode.

Well, in order to make a reasonable decision, it all depends on the keyword you’re targeting and the kind of website you are dealing with(e. g affiliate or e-commerce).

2. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs to analyze top-ranking pages. Ahrefs’ll show you the SERP( Search Engine Results Page) of the top-ranking pages from a variety of search engines including:

  • Google

It’d also show you: estimated traffic, the number of keywords, backlinks profile, etc. you can use their free SERP checker, but the pro plan will take you far.

2. Learned From Your Competitors

The top-ranking pages are ranking at the top for a reason.

Google and other search engines deem them as the best candidates to satisfy a searcher’s query.

So they’re clearly doing something right, at least from the perspective of a search engine.

While the content will vary from topic to topic, the way you research your competitors’ content will be more or less the same.

Let’s go through an example:

So let’s say that we want to create content that targets the query “best golf club sets.”

  • To start, I’ll go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and search for the query.
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If you don’t have an Ahrefs account, you can use their free SERP checker tool to do everything we are about to do.

  • Alright, so looking at the SERP, we want to pick out the top 3 or so relevant ranking results. And by relevant, we’re talking about pages that match the dominant search intent based on the 3 C’s we’ve discussed above. So in this case, the majority of pages are blog posts in the listicle format with freshness(2021 as above ) as the content angle.
  1. List of categories for the best items(e.g in this case “best golf sets”).

By now you should know:

  1. What type of content to create(e.g in this case blog post with “freshness” as the angle).

In summary, analyzing your competitors’ top-ranking pages gives you a clear idea of what to write, the content type, etc.

3. Do Content Gap Analysis

Content Gap Analysis is the process of evaluating existing content on a topic and discovering “gaps” in that content to improve upon.

For instance:

If you intend to create a piece of content on a topic e.g link building.

Don’t open up Google Docs and start writing.

Instead, look for some content gaps.

And you’ll notice that most of the content out there about the topic you write may be:

  • Lacking nice examples and details

You may find more content gaps depending on the content you want to cover. Content gap analysis is important:

  • The main reason to look at content gaps is that it helps your article do better (e.g in SEO and social shares).

Below are few ways to perform content gap analysis:

  • Use Ahrefs content gap analysis tool in site explorer

By doing content gap analysis, you get the opportunity to skim through the list and look for interesting subtopics that might be worth adding to your post.

In addition, you may be able to learn some interesting things about the audience as well as the language they use.

4. Create A Hero Content

Notice I said, “hero content”. It’s that kind of content that is unique, valuable, and full of original images and stats.

Publishing something that doesn’t just regurgitate the same stuff that’s already out there.

Here‘re a few ways to make your SEO content good;

  • Use strong copywriting skills

While the content is the most important part, there are also a few more “technical” on-page optimizations you should do. Here are a few of them:

  • Include your target keyword in your title.

1. Name your image files appropriately. This is done by using the name of the item in your image. E.g if you take of a cat with your phone it may be something like “IMG_ and then a million numbers”. It’s better to rename it as “cat”. According to Google, filenames can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image.

2. Use descriptive “alt text”. Alt text, short for “alternative text” is an HTML attribute that goes in your image tag So the syntax would look something like this: <img src=“https:// your domain name.com/cat.jpg” alt=” cat”> cat sitting on a couch.” Where the alt value should describe the image. “Alt text” helps improve accessibility for those who are using screen readers or if the image fails to load, visitors will be shown the alt text instead.

3. Compress your images. Compressing images makes your image file sizes smaller, leading to faster load times. And PageSpeed is a Google ranking signal. There’s a free tool for compressing images called “ShortPixeln which has both a web interface as well as a WordPress plugin.

  • Optimize For Readability: Here are 4 simple but effective tips you can use to improve readability.
  1. Use descriptive subheadings so people who are skimming the article can easily find the things that are important to them.

The most important part of your content is that you’re striving to satisfy searcher intent. Your content will be more conversational and entertaining to read.

A free tool you can use is the Hemingway app. It’ll give you some writing tips as well as a readability grade. Trying to keep things at or below a sixth-grade level.

5. Build Awesome Backlinks

Link building is the process of building relationships with other relevant site owners who want and will link to your content because it enhances theirs.

In fact, Link Building isn’t about getting something. It includes relationships, relevance, and value exchange.

Since effective link building is tough, you need to understand why it’s worth the effort.

In short, backlinks are used by search engines like Google to help rank web pages.

It’s been this since 1998 when Google created PageRank.

PageRank is a mathematical formula that judges the “value of a page” by looking at the quantity and quality of other pages that link to it.

If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality.

While getting backlinks may be harder than, let’s say, creating a blog post, they’re absolutely critical if you want to rank for competitive keywords.

And competitive keywords are usually the ones that’ll drive the most traffic and revenue for your business.

Below are some two qualities that make a backlink good:

  • Relevance. Links from the same authoritative niche will hold more relevance than vice versa. E.g an article on marketing linking to another marketing article would do a lot of good.

And this relates to how Google’s PageRank works. So the more quality links a page gets, the more PageRank it earns. And the more PageRank it has, the more authority it can pass to other pages through hyperlinks. etc.

By using these 2 attributes to help qualify prospects or people that are worth contacting, you’ll spend your time building links that will actually move the needle.

Link building strategies to try include:

  • Leaving comments; This is a great strategy to kickstart your link-building efforts and help spread the word about your content. Notice we didn’t say “blog comments” but comments in general. That’s because blogs aren’t the only place where you can leave comments with links to your articles. We also have niche forums, online communities, Q&A sites, and even YouTube videos. For example, in my niche (which is SEO) Reddit and Quora are rather popular places where people exchange opinions and link to relevant content. Reddit hates spammers and if you only post there to drop links — you’re going to get banned. But if you take time to consistently provide value to the community — no one will have a problem with you linking to your content now and then Which is exactly what experts do there. Quora is a bit different in that sense. They’re very strict with spammers too. Make sure each one of your comments is unique, well-formatted, and above all provides a ton of value to the conversation, before asking readers to click on your link for some extra details.

Summary

There’s a lot to On-Page -SEO. These are some of the ways to optimize a page for SEO. Satisfy search intent, learn from your competitors, etc.

It uses both content and technical elements to improve the quality of a page, so the more on-page SEO you do, the more traffic you’ll get to a website and the more relevant that traffic will be.