A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool which you can use, however, you have to make sure that your targeted viewers can find your blog. In this post, I will show you some simple ways through which you can increase the visibility on search engines, drive more traffic to your blog and generate more leads and sales for your business.

Following are some On-Page SEO factors that you must utilize in order to create an attractive article for the viewers as well as the Search Engines. Before you proceed, you can research about the keywords and related keywords that you can use in your article using the Google Adword’s tool.

Title Tags

The title tag has consistently been one of the most critical ranking factors. Your title tag is likely going to the be clickable text that appears in search results, making its optimization important for reasons far beyond SEO; it’s one thing to rank highly in search results, but if your title tag isn’t enticing, it won’t get clicked.

Here are some tips to title a blog post for maximum visibility:

• Lead with your keywords. Search engines give more weight to the first few words in a title. Examples might include, “Pinterest Marketing: How to Generate Leads from the World’s Hottest Social Media Site,” or “Men’s Bowler Hats: What’s Hot This Season.”
• Number your titles. I know many people hate numbered lists, but they speak to how busy we all are. “101 Ways to Save Money for College” or “3 Questions to Ask in a Job Interview” are generally more engaging, and will generate more click-throughs at the search engines, which may increase your overall rank.
• The colon is your friend. If you have a couple of competing keyword phrases that both seem appropriate, use a colon (or some other spacer) to cast a wider net. Do you write an Asian cooking blog? Try “Chopstick Instructions: How to Use Chopsticks.”

Heading Tags

Heading tags are still one of the key factors Google uses to decipher what your page content is about. Fortunately, if you already have a good handle on how to use proper headings to improve reader experience, the same principles hold true in terms of what the search engines like to see.

Each page should have one – and only one – H1 tag. Your H1 tag indicates the main topic of your page and should be the first element on your page. This is usually taken care of if you are using WordPress. The title of your blog is used as the H1 tag or the main heading tag.

Breaking up long chunks of content with relevant headers will ensure your readers can quickly scan your content, and will help Google understand the progression of your content as well.

Use your keywords in your header tags H2, H3, etc.. Don’t force it! The key is keeping it natural and helpful.

Body or Main Content

Work your keyword phrase into your copy early and often.
Your title is critical, but it can’t stand on its own; it needs to be supported by the rest of your copy. You should work your keyword phrase into the first sentence or two of your blog post, and then repeat it several times throughout your post.

If you feel it’s difficult to work your keywords into the first sentence, try this trick: open up with a one to two sentence overview of your topic. If you still can’t work your keyword into the overview, then your blog post probably isn’t about your keyword.

Warning! If you overuse your keyword phrase it can backfire. Google and other search engines may punish you for “over-optimizing” your post. How much is too much? There’s no magic formula, but if your post doesn’t read well and the keywords feel forced into the rest of the copy, you’re probably guilty of over-optimizing.

You can also break up your keywords. If you wanted to rank well for, say, “Women Leather Jackets” you could use that phrase exactly once or twice, but also use just “Leather Jackets” and “Women” separately in different sentences or even phrase it differently like Leather Jackets for Women.

Alt Image Tags

Your image tags are important for SEO; not only do they reinforce the relevance of the text content on the page, they also have a chance to rank in Google Image Search. Where appropriate, your images should contain your keyword. If you’re finding that your images consistently aren’t relevant to your keyword, then maybe it’s time to rethink which images you’re choosing, rather than trying to ‘make’ them relevant.

Make sure your alt image tags are highly descriptive and give readers a clear understanding of the subject of the image.

If you are using WordPress for your website, after uploading the image switch over to Text tab. You will see something like this for the image code:

[php]<img src=”http://www.example.com/example.png” alt=”Keyword”>[/php]

You need to insert your keyword in the alt=”” section.

Other factors

Try to make the content readable without stuffing too many keywords. A lot of people stuff keywords in their articles to rank high on Google and get good traffic. What they don’t understand is that the audience who comes through the search engines may not like to read those keywords repeating so many times. Your article should act as a proposal to get a million dollar project. Use bold tags, italicize text, numbered list to format your content – all in all, make it interesting for the viewer to read and solve their query!