You’ve done your on-page SEO and you’re ready to start getting results. This will be the first thing you do, but it’s not the only thing you should do. Your first priority should be landing clients or a few good leads.

That should be the sole focus of your marketing. Not just that you’ve been online long enough and have a good-looking website (though you’re already there), but also that you’ve been practicing on-page SEO as much as you possibly can.

Why? Because if you’re not succeeding at this you probably aren’t in the business of finding clients. If you don’t have much on-page SEO under your belt yet, it’s probably a good idea to start.

Keyword research: Why Do You Need It?

“It’s about intent”, is what it’s all about. When searching for something you need to be able to understand what type of results you’ll be seeing when you type in your search terms.

Keywords can be used in two ways – natural and unnatural. The first way is where the content is written directly about the keyword (or keywords), as in, “Necessary SEO Tools.” These types of content don’t give you any important information about your potential clients or leads. They’re just filler.

The other way keywords are used is unnatural. You may see them like this in your search results – “best SEO services”. While these keywords will come up in some SEO sites, you should be aiming to find the natural ones. But you don’t need to write content specifically about your keywords in order to get natural searches to show up.

It simply takes a little on-page SEO to show up in the SERPs. People will look to your site for a quick answer, and your keyword placement should lead them there. On-page SEO is where the work happens. It’s the natural ones you need to make happen. So what does on-page SEO look like for a business owner? You’re going to be doing a number of things.

1. Linking Links

Look at the target keywords that are in the headline of your page. If your page hasn’t been created yet then it probably needs a few more links to anchor it. Link with related topics and anchor text (“best SEO services” vs “house-cleaning services”). Sometimes you can link to more than one in the same paragraph, but remember to anchor those two as separate to show that they’re different. Here’s a good example of anchor text vs other anchor text.

Internal linking gives you a leg up in SEO, and you can link to your home page, blog, and external social links, as well as to other pages on your site. That said, when you link, you should always anchor and link externally within the same paragraph. Another great way to add link juice is to link to pages about SEO. Often people associate keywords with SEO, and they don’t realize that there’s much more to it. With links, you can create content from articles that explain why you should use certain SEO practices.

2. Valuable Content

Your content should be entertaining and helpful to your audience. In other words, it should also be searchable. This means you need to think about how you’re structuring your content, and not just make it up on the fly.

Create useful content on the front page of your website. That means not just articles that don’t have a search box, but also information that’s searchable. Here’s an example of a blog post on how to convert traffic and leads using on-page SEO – this content isn’t searchable, but the title does show up.

3. Meta Descriptions

You also need to think about what information your site will provide. There are some key items you want your website to include in the meta description. The meta description should be anywhere from 10 to 15 words long. Use something relevant to the site and related to your primary keywords. My description above is about SEO for SEO’s sake, but that title does help to explain what I’m trying to accomplish with SEO. Search engines like Google want to understand what information a potential user is looking for on a site before they start a search. That’s why they look at your descriptions.

Also, remember to place your description right at the top of your post – don’t put it in the sidebar or below the article.

4. H1 Tags

H1 tags are the link that gives you the keyword of your blog.

5. Image Alt Tag

An alt tag is a short text description of an image that is used by search engines to understand the content of the image. Adding proper alt tags to your images can help your website rank higher in search results, and it can make a big difference in your website’s SEO.