How to optimize a page for SEO

Once you know how your customers are looking for you, you can follow this on-page SEO tutorial.

Why is on-page optimization important for search engine optimization?

For a moment, let’s forget that we want to optimize a page for search engines. Let’s think about basic marketing. When you’re writing marketing copy for anything (even if it’s not on the internet), good content should:

• Use words and phrases that customers expect. These words reassure them that they’ve found what they’re looking for.
• Speak plainly. Avoid technical jargon and industry slang. Your visitors shouldn’t have to be specialists in what you offer to be able to understand how you can help them.
• Speak in terms of solutions to their problems. How do your company’s services help them? Why would they want to use you? What makes you different than others who offer similar services? Hint: the answer isn’t “we do it better.”
• Include a call-to-action so your customers can do something with what they’ve learned.

On-page optimization for SEO is just good marketing with an advantage: thanks to our keyword research, we know the phrases our customers use to find what we have to offer. It will only do you good to optimize a page if you know the word for which you’re optimizing it! Before you complete this process, I assume you’ve completed your keyword research overview.

Write people-centric content, not SEO-centric content.

Google’s algorithms are always evolving, and most recently, its focus has shifted towards content that truly serves the user. Creating people-centric content rather than SEO-centric content is now the best practice and the most effective long-term strategy for gaining trust, engagement, and visibility.

Google’s ranking system now looks for helpful, reliable information that is valuable for readers. That’s why you need to prioritize the needs of your audience over the nuances of SEO tactics. People-centric content should resonate with readers, answer their questions, and provide real value, rather than just targeting keywords to climb the results pages.

As you optimize your content, keep in mind that your goal is to connect with and help the audience. The more helpful, relevant, and engaging your content is, the more likely it is to be shared, bookmarked, and recommended—all things that indirectly improve your SEO without needing to game the system.

So, write for your customers. Don’t write for Google. Your website will do better in Google if it does a better job helping your customers find the solutions you offer.

What should you expect from this on-page SEO tutorial?

When you optimize a page, you should see a growth in traffic from organic search. If you’ve chosen to focus on the right keywords, this traffic growth should produce more customers.

Sometimes, people get caught up in the details regarding on-page optimization. They focus on one tiny detail (“OMG! I need to put my keywords in bold on the page!”) and get lost in the forest for the trees. Minor tweaks like this don’t have as big of an impact as you might think. Keep sight of the big picture when doing on-page SEO. Of course, if you’re measuring your results, you’ll see what tweaks to your content are helping and what are not.

The on-page SEO checklist