Investing in good On Page SEO is one of the easiest and most profitable things you can do to get permanent traffic to your content. That’s why learning to master it should be a priority for everyone who intends to spread any kind of content on the Internet.
The truth is that there are already a lot of excellent posts, and in Spanish, that explain perfectly what On Page SEO is, with all the details of how to use keywords, tools, tricks, etc.
But a common weakness that I have found in almost all of them is the absence of a real example, explained from A to Z.
And this is precisely where I see that people get lost, in bringing this to the practical field, with their real content.
That’s why, in this post, rather than a thousand details, tricks and tools, I will focus on making a complete example of SEO On Page, as I do it myself for this blog when I intend to specifically position some of its contents for certain keywords.
In fact, this post is the continuation of the example of the post How to search for keywords in Google: A detailed example, which explained in depth the starting point for a good SEO On Page: how to find good keywords to position a content.
It is important that you read it if you don’t know yet what a keyword analysis is, it also sets important fundamentals such as the concept of page and domain authority to understand 100% the concepts that this post talks about.
I am sure that this way, with a detailed example that you can extrapolate to your own, it will be much easier for you to understand how this works and how to put it into practice in your case.
What is SEO On Page exactly?
Before starting with the example, it is important that we are clear about what exactly is SEO On Page and it is very simple:
SEO On Page is about explaining to Google as best as possible “what your content is about”, which in Google terms means what is the subject matter and searches (keywords) for which your post fits.
And for this, as you will see in this post, there are strategic points on a web page that Google looks at especially to understand what is the theme of it and what are the searches that fit with that page.
On the other hand, if we talk about SEO On Page, we must also talk about the other side of the coin, SEO Off Page.
It is also very simple:
As the name says, Off Page SEO is all about optimizing off-page factors.
The most important factor here, by far, is inbound links (the links your page receives), but other things also play a role, such as, for example, the movement on social networks (although there is some debate about whether they really influence or not).
In any case, stay with the idea that Off Page SEO is all those things that you can’t control on your page (at least, not 100%). Hence the name “SEO Off Page” (off page).
Also keep in mind that On Page SEO is only one of the tasks to be done to be on top of Google, except for keywords with very little competition, you will also need some inbound links.
ut today’s topic is not SEO Off Page, but SEO On Page, so, having done this prelude, let’s focus on it again.
Start the SEO On Page work
In the previous post we had put ourselves in the shoes of Sonia, a fashion blogger who, after doing a keyword analysis with a good tool like SEMrush, decides to create a content oriented to the keywords “cheap party shoes”.
It is a relatively affordable niche for a blog with Sonia’s authority and that falls within a huge long tail of the search “party shoes” (12,100 searches/month).
cheap party shoes: (880 searches/month)
comfortable party shoes: (590 searches/month)
party shoes Madrid: (390 searches/month)
Barcelona party shoes: (140 searches/month)
black party shoes: (90 searches/month)
comfortable high heel party shoes: (50 searches/month)
cheap party shoes stores in Madrid: (50 searches/month)
From here, let’s follow the example and get back into the skin of Sonia who will try to do a good job Seo On Page with the aim of focusing on “zapatos de fiesta baratos”, but scratching as much as possible also clicks on other searches.
- Post content
As I said before, the goal of SEO On Page is to explain to Google as well as possible “what our content is about”. Google gives different weights to different parts of a page.
According to Moz (one of the world’s leading authorities on SEO), within these different parts of a page, the normal text of the page is the most important of all On Page factors.
When I looked for references to link to in this post and came across this statement, I was shocked because it did not fit with my experience.
In the usual readings on these topics, my personal experience and in conversations I’ve had with some of the best Spanish-speaking SEO experts like Alex Navarro, it has come up many times that the weight of keywords in the content has been decreasing a lot over time.
That is, things like keyword density (how many times they are repeated in the text), once very important, no longer seem to matter much today.
But then when I read the Moz post I linked above I thought it was great the justification they give because it’s obvious, but we tend to forget about it: good content attracts links naturally.
I mean: what good is a content with a perfect SEO On Page optimization, but mediocre as content that nobody will link to?
Almost nothing, because links are still essential for positioning.
If you make an epic content, the links will arrive by themselves and constantly giving more and more authority to your page.
Therefore, always remember that everything I tell you in this post is worthless if you do not propose first of all to make excellent content.
What does this mean for Sonia’s post?
Well, in practice it will be enough to repeat a few times the keywords in the text of the post. Doing it in a natural way, along with some variant with synonyms, etc., will be basically enough.
To this we must add the advice of some SEO experts who make the recommendation that the keywords go, above all, in the first or, at least, the first paragraphs of the text and that it also helps to put them some times in bold.
- The title of the page () and the main title of the post (<h1>) The second most important factor highlighted by Moz is the page title, i.e. the <title> tag.
Not to be confused with the main title of the content which is an HTML<h1>, tag and, in fact, unlike the<h1>, the <title> tag is not displayed in the content of a web page.
But you can see it in two places:
In your browser window (tab).
In search engine search results (which is a good indication of the great weight they give it).
In the text for you must have the keywords for which you want to position yourself and the more to the left they are, the better. Here the simple presence or not of the keywords will have a very important direct effect on the positioning of the content that you can easily check in practice.When you only target one keyword or keyword phrase, things are simple. It gets complicated when you want to take advantage of the long tail and try to position yourself in several searches at the same time.
The answer is simple: you can’t, you have to prioritize and choose. My advice is also not to force things. But it’s not to say that there aren’t tricks to take advantage of all these searches in some way. Read on and you will see
On the other hand, beware of designing titles for Google that look “weird” to a human person.
What good does it do you to be #1 in a search with a title so weird and artificial that no one wants to click on it?
So, let’s focus: Sonia wanted to do a post about where to buy great party shoes at a good price.
On the other hand, it was also clear to her that the search “cheap party shoes” was the one she was most interested in (simply because of its search volume and because it fits the things she wanted to write about), this is where she wants to end up within the first three positions. Therefore, it is clear that in the title you cannot do without these keywords.
So from this point on, it’s time to think about possible titles and if we can include some more keywords from the other searches, without forcing the title, all the better.
Sonia can think of several titles that could work:
Where to buy the best cheap party shoes.
Super-Guide: The best stores in Madrid and Barcelona to buy cheap party shoes
Super-Guide: Cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona
Where to buy cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona
10 wonderful stores to buy cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona
Guide: 10 Stores to buy cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona
Where to buy cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona
After evaluating options, the title that Sonia likes the most is the third one, “Super-Guide: Cheap party shoes in Madrid and Barcelona”, it contains the words that Sonia is mainly interested in, it also takes advantage of the long tail around “Madrid” and “Barcelona” and, very important: it is reasonably short, it fits entirely in the search result.
If it had gone, for example, to the title of “Super-Guide: The best stores …” it would already be a title too long and heavy and in such a long sentence it would possibly also dilute too much the weight of the keywords that mainly interest her. Although in SEO you never know, this is fuzzy science and there are no exact formulas to calculate exactly the best option.
To show you how relative and difficult to predict all this is, I am going to introduce here another positioning factor: the CRT (Click Through Rate, the rate of clicks received). It is a factor closely related to copywriting, since a title with good copywriting will receive many more clicks than a normal title.
And for Google it is not all about keywords in On Page SEO. That is, Google also values user behavior. If Google sees that users click more on a title that appears at the bottom of a search result than on the ones above it, it will tend to move that result up in positions (as seems logical).
In that sense it would have been perhaps more accurate the title of “10 wonderful stores to buy cheap party shoes”. It sacrifices the keywords Madrid and Barcelona (although we gain “stores” and “buy”), but I sense that it could get more clicks because at first glance it seems to me that it seduces more.
On the other hand, the words “Madrid” and “Barcelona” and can be a strong additional incentive for people living in these cities to click and perhaps this factor compensates as much or more. Anyway, as you see, without testing you never know.
But let’s assume I’m right with the “10 Stores…” title.
What would be the consequence of receiving more clicks?
First, a direct increase in the traffic the blog receives because of the higher click-through rate.
It would improve its positioning in Google because the CTR is an important factor that Google takes into account, it would have more strength to compete in its searches.
Think about it, it makes sense. If the second result for “party shoes” received more clicks than the first one, isn’t it logical that Google should consider that it should become the first one and not remain the second one? Users are clearly telling you that.
That’s the idea and you can achieve that if you know how to make attractive titles, so we come to the copywriting topic and being a star topic as it is, I could not resist to create a small free eBook on this topic as well.
As you can see, the subject of titles has a lot of importance, much more than what one can guess at first glance and I can’t give you 100% clear and unequivocal guidelines because there simply aren’t any.
In this case you have to use common sense and accumulate experience and criteria with the results achieved in previous occasions. Now yes, experimenting with what works and what doesn’t and seeing the real results is a very fun job.