Ranking on the first page of Google can completely transform your business.
There are 3.5 billion searches made on Google everyday, and you NEED to capture the huge amount of organic search traffic from Google, to grow your online visibility and more traffic means more money.
In this post, I will share with you 5 essential steps to optimize your blog posts to rank in the first #2 results on Google.
This was the same process I used to rank my article on the first page of Google (with almost 1 million competing pages!).
#1. Target Medium Tail Keywords
Medium tail keywords are 2-3 word search phrases that have significant search volume and have medium conversion potential.
Let’s break this down further into what that means:
- 2-3 word search phrases are like “easy vegan diets”, “cheap bali travel”, “fitness for women”
- significant search volume means that keyword phrase have at least 1k-10k in monthly searches
- medium conversion potential means that keyword has a specific intent, particularly an intent to take action
Why target medium tail keywords?
Because medium tail keywords are easy to rank for, and can drive huge search traffic to your site.
When choosing keywords, the conversion potential and search volume help you attract quality traffic.
Conversion potential is important because you want to attract traffic that is qualified.
- A person searching for “travel” is not very sure what he’s looking for.
- However, a person searching for “travel to bali” has a much clearer intent and if you can capture that qualified search traffic — you are attracting users who are likely to become leads and potential customers.
Search volume is important because you want to pursue keywords that will give you a good ROI.
- Should you target long-tail keywords and rank for “travel to seminyak for under $100”? Not quite. Because that is too specific and there’s not enough search demand to be worth pursuing. (i.e how many people would actually search for something so specific?!)
- But going too generic is not ideal either, if your target keyword is “travel” which has over 1M monthly searches, that is an insane amount of traffic that can grow your blog, sure.
- But only if you can capture that traffic by ranking in the first 3 results on Google. However, chances are slim to none. Why? Because you are vying for that coveted position with millions of other websites, some are likely to be big players in the travel niche. (i.e, how likely is it to outrank expedia and wikipedia? Hmmm…very unlikely.)
- Pick your battles and target keywords that are not too competitive but still have sufficient search demand to give you a good return on those rankings: medium tail keywords.
So when I was thinking of keywords to target for my article, I specifically picked a medium-tail keyword that had at least 1k monthly searches and were 2-3 word search terms, indicating clear intent and conversion potential.
Medium tail keywords can give you a good ROI on your traffic gains + not too difficult to rank for. Voila!
#2. Use Google’s Predictive Search to Find Popular Keywords
Google’s predictive search feature is a super under-utilized part of SEO.
When we think about keyword research, immediately we think Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMrush and more fancy tools, right?
Totally fine.
That’s how serious marketers do keyword research. But sometimes the best things are just right under our noses, and the most effective solutions are the simplest.
I absolutely looooove Google’s predictive search because the keyword suggestions are from Google themselves.
It’s an aggregate of the most popular keyword searches based on your seed keywords, which you typed initially.
It is seriously a GOLDMINE of content topics. Woohooo!
#3. Make sure your target keyword is in the title and first paragraph
This is a must. Your title is the most prominent part of your page on the search result.
Think about it, there are only 3 things about your page on the search result: title, URL, meta description.
How to optimize your title for SEO:
- Include your target keyword in the title, preferably near the beginning
- Keep your title under 70 characters long
- Add numbers and power words to make your title enticing, the goal of a great title is to get clicks.
Related: 7 Elements of a Perfectly SEO Optimized Blog Post (+checklist).
How to optimize your first paragraph with your target keyword:
First, always include the exact-match keyword you want to target in the first paragraph.
If you want to rank for “travel to bali”, include that exact phrase in your paragraph text.
Second, optimize your first paragraph with related keywords.
As you can see, I enhanced my paragraph with several keywords related to “SEO keywords”.
This helps build a semantic relationship around the topic of “SEO keywords”, which improves the contextual relevance of my content.
In my flagship course, SEO Demystified, we dive deeper into SEO Copywriting and Semantic Search. The secret to writing content that ranks well on Google!
#4. Create in-depth content that builds around your keyword topic
To rank well on search engines, you need to create great content.
But you know that already.
Specifically, content needs to be comprehensive (at least 800 words) and is built around a keyword topic.
You want to pick a focused angle for your article, and then go deep.
A focused content angle has a clear promised benefit:
- “How to make money blogging in 3 months”
- 7 headline hacks to improve your click through rate”
- The beginner’s guide to starting a vegan diet”
It is specific and targets a single issue that your article promises to solve.
How to go deep and create long-form content:
Ask yourself, “can this article answer every single question about topic X?”
Creating long-form content has often been touted as the holy grail of content marketing.
But why?
Why does an article with 3,000 words do better than an article with 800 words?
To be honest, I don’t think it is a numbers game. Quality is more important than quantity, always.
But are you able to cover a topic comprehensively enough with 800 words? If yes, fantastic. Answering the searcher intent is always the goal of any content piece.
Though having more words and content on a single article can help you rank for thousands of related keywords, and build a strong thematic relationship around your keyword topic.
And that will boost your chances to rank higher on search engines.
Related: SEO Blueprint: How to Get Your First 10k Visits from Google.
#5. Promote and optimize your article for shareability
Content that is not shared, is not seen.
A movie no matter how amazing in its plot and cinematography, does not exist without a distribution deal.
Content no matter how great — will be pointless without visibility.
First, get social.
If you are on WordPress, download the free Social Warfare plugin.
This will add social sharing buttons and stats on every page on your site. Plus, the floating sidebar is great to encourage people to share your articles!
Next, promote your articles in Facebook groups.
I’ve gotten tremendous results using Facebook Groups to get more visibility on my content and also snag a few freelance gigs.
Make sure you are following the group admin’s rules and posting your articles on designated threads.
Be helpful first, promotional second.
I usually don’t post my own articles until helping others out by answering their questions pro bono for a week.
Warm up to the community and slowly promote your content. Small steps reap huge rewards in the long-run, my friends!
Oh, and we have a wonderful Facebook Group: SEO Traffic Growth Mastermind. Click here to join us!
Second, reach out to everyone you have mentioned in your article.
Reach out to everyone you have mentioned in your article.
Let them know you mentioned their advice or linked out to their resource. Most people would be thrilled to hear you’ve featured them and would be happy to check your piece out.
The key here is to be subtle and make this about THEM.
Don’t ask for a link, don’t ask for a share.
Ask for feedback. Try this email outreach template:
Hey {name},
I’m {your name} from {your blog/company} and I recently wrote a piece on {link to article} and featured your opinion about {topic}.
I was wondering if you could check it out and let me know your thoughts, as you’d probably know the subject matter more than me.
Thank you!
101 people reacted on this
SEO can be a lot of hard Work if you don’t know what you are doing but you’ve made it easy on this post. Looking foward to applying your tips. Thank you for this post
Wow! these are great tips to rank on Google. Will help me a lot to rank.
Thanks for this guide and I am learning a lot. I need to give focus on SEO as well, as much like my content.
Happy to help! Glad you found this guide helpful!
This is such good advice for those who have websites. Making a website is fun but it’s even. Better when you start to see traffic!
Absolutely, once traffic and leads start to generate, it will be building a community!
Great tips you have here! I’ve been struggling with SEO for a while now, and this really brought it to light. I’m using Ahref’s and still need to expand my long-tail keywords.
Ahrefs is a good tool for SEO keyword research indeed! Hope this post can help with your SEO optimizations too 🙂
I was just actually finding answers to these questions. I need to up my seo keywords for better serp ranking. Im looking into your boot camp.
So happy to hear you joined, Kat!
Those are great SEO tips. I can see how it would help.
Thank you, Cinny!
I’m still working on my SEO game and I’m trying to make it as short as possible for all my posts. These going to help a lot.
Cheers!
My cousin asked me to look for a blog that’s very informative about this topic. I think this is the one.
Thank you so much!
I love all of these tips! This is really useful information to have in your back pocket for improving your website. 🙂
I’m so happy to hear this!
SEO is very tricky but this guide really helps! Thanks for the tips. I agree on medium tail keywords. You need to target them.
Cheers
Promoting your content and helping other bloggers in Facebook groups is very efficient. Also, mentioning credible sites in your articles and emailing them about the article is a great way to collaborate.
Definitely!
Ranking first on Google is the goal here. thank you for sharing these tips. Ill try to target more medium long keywords
Happy to help!
I’ve been working hard to improve my SEO but there are some things in here I haven’t been doing! Thank you for the extra help.
Cheers
I’ve heard a lot about long-tail keywords, but not medium. I’m going to have to work on that for my recipes and see if it will help boost them since I do some of the others already.
Happy to help! Please keep me posted 🙂
Interesting – I’m going to have a play around with targeting medium tale keywords and see what kind of knock on effect that has. Thanks for the tip!
Please keep me posted on your results!
Great post, it’s always great to get a refresher on SEO. Thank you
Cheers 🙂
Great post to read, and thanks for sharing this knowledgeable post with all your reader
Thank you!
After I read this article, it is true using intermediate keywords provides ROI and it is easy to log in to page one of Google. I used to use long tail keywords. But my blog visitors are still very minimal. Because the average visitor uses only 3 to 4 words in doing a search on Google. Thanks for the knowledge. I’ll reread your article again. While I bookmark your site. Thanks.
Those keywords tend to be easier to rank for!
Really it was so helpful. I loved this post.I applied on my post. I hope I will rank soon !
Cheers 🙂
This is a really useful post. I’ve just started using the Google predictive text idea and I do the same on Pinterest.
Google and Pinterest are the best sources of traffic!
You are killing it! ? Thanks for the post. Really helpful for me.
Thanks Minosh!
Your post is really helpful and informative regarding SEO ( ON & OFF page ). I have noticed some points and i would surely consider them while doing SEO of my next blog. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and research.
Cheers!
Great and Valuable information regarding on-page SEO and off page SEO. I will keep these tips in mind after writing my article posts. Thanks for sharing these tips.
Cheers! Glad you found the SEO strategies helpful.
Great article, got some useful information from here!
Thank you, Eileen!
All the tips you specify are very useful, yes, of course, On-Page SEO is 80% of the Whole SEO process so if your content is powerful and quality content and as you mentioned the placement of keywords in title and meta description are very important to rank in SERP.
So you will rank more easily in the search engine if you focus on on-site SEO
Cheers!
“Answering the searcher intent is always the goal of any content piece.” You hit the nail on the head with this. With AI and RankBrain understanding the intention of a search is critical for ranking. As crazy as it sounds, ranking has little to do with keywords but rather proving that a web page is the best solution to a query and satisfying the users intent. And… your bootcamp looks interesting.
Yeap, they key to great content is really knowing the searcher intent and why they were looking for information. Glad you enjoyed the article, Dan! Hope to see in the Bootcamp.
What a great SEO read! Thank you so much for sharing such awesome information!
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed the article 🙂
GREAT!!! I learned a lot from this article. Will apply these tips on my blog. Thank you!
Cheers!
I struggle so hard with the SEO stuff and your tips are so handy. I am so happy that I stumbled across this site because this will be now my resource guide!
You are so kind, Nilakshi! Keep pushing onwards, my friend! SEO is certainly not the easiest subject, but with time and practice, it will pay off and results will come. So glad that my articles have been helpful for you 🙂
Excellent, detailed post! I received some advice once that if you’re a new blogger, you should focus primarily on keywords that have a QSR (number of competing websites with same keyword) of less than 100 if you want to have any hopes of ranking on Google’s first page. Problem is, these keywords (which are very specific) all have very low monthly searches, 200 at most. I’ve had my blog since March and quite frankly, my traffic sucks. So I’m curious what your thoughts are on this strategy. I wanted to be scientific in my approach and not all over the place when it came to SEO, but I’m thinking maybe I should try a new strategy!
Hi Kate, thanks for sharing your thoughts! Indeed, targeting very specific keywords (long-tail) with too little search volume may not be the best idea. Because search demand is too low, traffic potential will be low as well. My advice would be to target medium tail keywords (2-3 words phrases) with at least 1k-10k in monthly searches. This ascertains the keywords you’re pursuing will have significant ROI. You can get this data from Google’s Free Keyword Planner tool, which is great for brainstorming relevant keyword ideas in your niche. 🙂
Great info- I’ve been working hard to improve my SEO but there are some things in here I haven’t been doing!
Woohoo!! Keep pushing, the results will come. SEO takes time to see improvements but they WILL pay off!
Great information! I’m so happy I found your blog. I’ll definitely be implementing your techniques. Thanks!
Cheers!
Cheers!
great stuff.people obviously tries to be on 1st or 2nd position on SERP. but few people doesn’t how to increase the keyword position. i am sure it helps them a lot. nice post on seo.
Thank you 🙂
I’m so glad SEO has evolved since the early days. As a writer, I always struggled with using Keywords that didn’t make much grammatical sense. WIth longtail keywords, I find it’s easier to make my posts rank and flow better.
Absolutely! Actually long-tail keywords target a more specific searcher intent and you’re attracting people who have a much clearer intent — more qualified traffic to your site. 😀
This post is super helpful and comprehensive. Thank you! There are several suggestions that I need to apply asap. Targeting Medium Tail Keywords is so important, and I need to prioritize this for SEO purposes. I appreciate this informative article!
So happy to hear this article was useful for you, Aarika! Yup targeting the right keywords can make ALL the difference in ranking on Google!
You are awesome, nice post on SEO!
Aw, thank you!
Thank you so much for these SEO tips!! Saving to refer back to later!
Cheers!
This is so amazing and comprehensive. I’ve been doing SEO for years and this is probably more through than anything I would have put together. Amazing job!
Aww thank you so much for your kind words, Bridget! Sooo happy your enjoyed the article, let me know if you have any questions along the way, my dear!
I really need to work on my SEO! Thanks for all the great tips!
No problem, Candace! Glad you enjoyed the article 🙂
Really useful and actionable SEO tips – thanks for sharing!
Cheers!
Wow! What great information. I have so much to learn about SEO and will be studying this post over and over. Thank you!
Thank you, Bethany. Really happy that you found this article helpful 🙂
What a great SEO read! Thank you so much for sharing such awesome information! I knew about seed words and long-tail keywords, but never about medium-tail keywords. I’m going to put your advice into use!
Yay! so glad to hear it, Denay! Let me know your progress 🙂
Great tips! I love using Google Keyword Planner and AHREFS for keyword research to figure out the best keywords for each of my posts.
Awesome! I love Ahrefs as well!!
Woah, I’ve never even thought about using Google’s Predictive Text! These are really good tips!
Thank you, Megan! Yup there’s actually a LOT we can do with Google’s free tools!
Wow what an in-depth step by step SEO article! I think I’ve found what I’m using my winter break to work on.
Thank you Kristina! Awesome, great to hear that 🙂
This is a good post! I just started learning about SEO. I never knew that it could make a difference with medium and long tail.
Totally, keywords can make ALL the difference in SEO! Glad you enjoyed the article 🙂
Omg these tips are super helpful! I realize I wasn’t paying as much attention to SEO as I should have. The tip about using Medium tail keywords is especially helpful. I am definitely going to try and do that. Thank you! <3
That’s great to hear, Ananya! Glad the article was helpful for you 🙂
Wow! Such great information. I hadn’t really thought it through about the difference between short, medium, and long tail keywords so this was very helpful! Great tip about predictive text too, thanks!
Awesoooome!
This post is great! SEO can be so confusing at first. I wish I would have came across this in August when I was starting my blog. Thanks for the sharing!
No problem, Lauren! Glad you found the article helpful, my dear.
This is a great, comprehensive post for optimizing SEO to rank on Google’s first page. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made as a newbie blogger was focusing on social media traffic and not learning about SEO until way later! However, once I started implementing SEO techniques like the ones you described, Google rewarded me with several front page posts and snippet features and my traffic exploded! It’s so important!
That’s so awesome, Christina!!