Online business success depends on the visitors a site gets.

To attract visitors, optimize your web page with SEO.

Search engines use SEO to match content with relevant search results and attract people interested in your business.

However, more than relevance, your content can drive conversions if it satisfies the readers` intent. To achieve this, your page content must

Answer readers` queries
Be readable
Appropriately apply keyword usage
Be incorporated with links

That`s how you will build credibility and increase your brand awareness, which boosts the chances of making sales.

That`s why online marketers need to learn On-Page SEO, and that`s what this article covers.

Researching Readers` Intent

They don`t read anything they find online: readers consume content that satisfies their needs.

You can know readers` needs based on the words they use when making searches, which are technically known as keywords. This helps create content that matches their searches, enabling your webpage to appear in their search results.

To know the targeted keywords

Doing Keyword Research

Image by WOKANDAPIX: Pixabay

To know the keywords people use, put yourself in your audience`s shoes and think of various keywords related to your niche.

If, for instance, you are marketing cars, you can think of keywords like

Affordable Mercedes Benz
Cheap G Wagon
Vitz for sale

Then, search for these keywords, one after the other in the search engines to see if they align with what people search for.

Under the search results page, you`ll find a keyword list of people`s recent relevant searches. Use them to tweak your keywords to align with what people search for.

The relevant keyword for “Affordable Mercedes Benz” that you find can be “Affordable Mercedes Benz in South Carolina”, for example.

In that case, you can make yours “Affordable Mercedes Benz in Nairobi”.

These keywords are more targeted and attract people who have the possibility of making purchases.

Such keywords are called long-tail keywords because they are long and specific. They are more effective than short-tail keywords, which are generic and difficult to rank for.

Afterward, put the keywords in keyword research tools and find more data. Here, you will get more keyword suggestions, monthly search volume, and difficulty.

Keyword volume will help you to choose the keywords that get more searches monthly. This enables you to create content that has high a chance of ranking.

On the other hand, keyword difficulty enables you to know the keywords that have a high-ranking competition. To avoid competitive keywords, use long-tail keywords.

Here are some of the best keyword research tools to use:

Considering the Audience Persona

More than intent, you should target content according to your audience`s characters That`s what persona means. It comprises creating content that aligns with people`s

Occupation
Age
Religion
Marital Status
Gender

This helps create content focusing on a more targeted audience that has a high potential of converting.

An example of audience persona is when you are a shoe seller. You cannot sell sneakers to factory workers.

Even though sneakers are also shoes, they don`t appeal to factory workers. Such people need shoes like Timberland Pro work boots. And that`s what you should target in your content.

To know the audience persona, paste your keywords in audience persona tools and search. They will reveal the kinds of people your content should focus on.

Here are some of the effective audience persona tools

Creating Actionable Blog Content

If your content offers less value, readers will avoid it, and your web page rank will drop.

However, if your content is read, search engines consider your page valuable and rank it higher.

But how can you make your content benefit-driven? Here is how:

Create an Intriguing Title

Titles prepare people for the website content. You should provide value upfront so people have positive expectations.

A beneficial title uses clear words so people can see how the content will help them. For example, when selling official shoes, your content title can be

Durable Official Shoes to Help You Win the Interview

The value is that the shoes are durable, and can appeal to the interviewers and increase your chances of acquiring the job. Such kind of a title can get more clicks than one that says

Latest Official Shoes

Such a title doesn`t provide any value or entice the reader to click and read your content.

Write a Powerful Introduction

It is easy to lose your readers with a boring introduction—even when the content is valuable.

To make your introduction compelling, avoid dictionary definitions and long stories. Instead, create a hook that intrigues readers to read your content more.

A hook can be a funny joke, anecdote, stats, quote, etc., as long as it grabs the readers` attention and is on topic.

Then talk about the readers` pain points and how the content can help readers solve them. Afterward, create a thesis statement; that`s to show readers what the content is about.

That is how you can hold people`s attention and lead them to explore the content body.

Craft an In-depth Body

This section is meant to explain the content in-depth, and every line should entice the readers to read the next.

You can achieve that by writing varying paragraphs that align with each other, and each paragraph should be detailed. This entails using examples and defining difficult words to make them easily understandable.

Moreover, the paragraphs should be short, preferably three sentences long. However, you can create even one-sentence paragraphs provided they carry a complete idea.

Additionally, create short, active sentences and use simple language so people can easily understand.

To make your content more readable

Use Value-Driven Subheadings

More than making content quick to read, subheadings make it easy for people to move to their preferred sections.

They back up the title and make the content logically organized.

Therefore, you need to ensure your subheadings are connected to each other and aligned with the main title.

Subheadings should also be parallel to each other to make the readers easily differentiate their ranks. This means all the headlines in the same rank should start with the same part of the speech.

For example, if the first H2 subheading begins with a verb, that should carry on to the others in that rank. For example, the title “How to Do Email Marketing” can have subheadings like

Finding a Specialty
Building a website
Creating Content

Additionally, each subheading should deliver benefit to the readers and be related to the paragraphs below it. In other words, readers should get value in the subheadings before reading the paragraphs,

For example, content about how to wash a dog can have a subheading such as

Rinse It with Warm Water

This enables the readers to know in advance what value the paragraph contains.

Utilize Numbered and Unnumbered Lists

Items arranged horizontally make a sentence much longer and hard to read. To make them readable, arrange them using numbered and unnumbered lists.

Use numbered lists for sequential items and unnumbered (bullets) ones for items that have no specific order.

Moreover, ensure they have a logical connection and are parallel to each other.

Highlight Emphatic Text with Bold and Italics

If you want to emphasize some parts of your content, you need to make them stand out. You can do that using bold and italics.

They draw the readers` attention and slow readership, making it impossible for readers to skip the emphasized words.

However, use bold for words that require much emphasis. Here is an example:

If you drink poison, you will die. The emphasized phrase has more weight than all of the other words in the sentence. Therefore, it`s bolded to stand out.

Conversely, Italics are used for words with less emphasis than bold e.g. in quotes, conversations, and titles. Example:

“If you laugh, you will increase your life`s longevity,” he said.

The quoted words are italicized so they stand out and attract the readers' attention.

Create a Persuasive Call to Action

This is a section to encourage readers to perform your content`s purpose. Summarize and emphasize the content's main points, and write a strong call to action.

That can mean asking readers to subscribe to an email list, buy your products or services, or share your content.

An effective call to action should use simple language and be clear on what the reader will benefit from taking the action. Example:

Subscribe to our email list and get money-making ideas we share with only our subscribers.

This will entice people to subscribe so they can learn the ideas for making money.

Add Attractive, SEO-optimized Images

Apart from making content attractive, images back up your text by showing people what you explain. People will not trust a Toyota Prado's description that has no image of the car in it.

Moreover, when you optimize images for SEO, you enable your content to surface in image searches and drive more traffic.

You can optimize your content for SEO by creating an ALT description (an alternative text describing the image). This text enables search engines to understand and relate the image with the content.

To make an effective ALT description, write what the photo is about and include the content focus keyword.

Incorporate internal and External Links

These are the paths through which people and search engines can find your content.

Internal links enable people to find different content and search engines to index various pages on a website.

On the other hand, external links redirect readers to cited resources to confirm your points. This builds a brand reputation—especially when you link out to authoritative resources.

To make links effective, link out to resources relevant to your webpage, and also use a related anchor text.

Here is an example of how you can link social media marketing tools content to Facebook marketing content:

To understand your Facebook engagement rate, use social media marketing tools.

Linking a resource irrelevant to your content will mislead the audience and make them mistrust you. This harms the business reputation and decreases traffic, hence reducing sales.

Creating Enticing Meta Descriptions

With the high rise of content with clickbait titles, readers are careful about the articles to spend time on.

For your article to get a higher chance of being clicked, you have to create an enticing meta description.

A meta description acts like the title`s summary in the search results. It describes the title so readers can affirm if the content answers their queries.

Ensure it`s descriptive and brief, preferably 155 characters long.

Too long Meta descriptions get cut off in the search results and hinder readers from seeing them in full. This can discourage them from reading your content.

Your meta description should answer the title and compel readers to click on it. To facilitate this, you need to use simple language and be precise.

For instance, an article on how to make money doing freelance writing would have a meta description like this:

Provided you are skilled in English grammar and have a computer, you can make money in freelance writing.

This answers the title and intrigues readers to want to know more. That`s because it gives a hint of what`s needed to know how to make money in freelance writing.

A bland meta description of the same title would be:

If you are looking for the best ways to earn money in freelance writing, you have come to the right place.

That doesn`t show why it is the right place; thus, it has few chances of being clicked.

Creating Compelling, SEO-optimized Title Tags

If you are not careful, title tags can be the first and last thing people see about your webpage. This is because nobody will click on titles that don`t provide solutions to their problems.

To make titles benefit-driven, ensure they show the value your content provides. This entails stating the product or service and the results one can get from reading your content.

Moreover, be sure to add your focus keyword to make the title SEO-optimized.

Besides, make it short to avoid being truncated on the search results. A title tag should be 70 characters long.

Make sure it is relevant to the page and use only factual words to describe the webpage. This involves avoiding conjunctions, making them look like a sentence. Instead of conjunctions, use pipes (|) to join words.

Also, ensure to add the company or webpage name at the end of the title tag so readers can easily navigate to relevant content on the site.

For example, if the main keyword is Prado and the website is BestCars.com, the title tag can be

Prado|White|3956cc Engine| BestCars.com

In the search engines, it will appear like this:

3956cc Engine White Prado- BestCars.com

Such a title tag gives the complete specifications of the Prado and increases the chances of being clicked on.

Increase Your Website`s Traffic with On-page SEO

On-page SEO is not just about the usage of keywords and links—the page content should be relevant to the audience's queries.

It should also suit their persona and provide value that solves their pain points, all of which you can facilitate through

Keyword research
Persona research
Creating in-depth content
Using optimized meta descriptions and title tags

Following this procedure will make your webpage appealing and navigable to the readers and indexable to the search engines.

The results: your rank will increase and your business will grow.