Do you know What is On-page SEO and How to use it in the Steemit post?
If Yes, then you already focus to write a Search engine optimized article on Steemit by following SEO rules.
If not, Then you are struggling with your post, why It is not getting enough traffic from Google or How my post is not reaching to more people? No worries Steemian, This Series of tutorials will let you know everything About SEO from scratch.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search engine optimization) is a process of attracting organic traffic from search engines (like Google, Bing, Yahoo) to your Steemit blog with writing SEO optimized articles.
By knowing this, You can easily rank your articles on search engine result pages(SERPs).
What is SERP?
SERP (Search engine result page) is a webpage which is returned by Search engines based on the keywords that the users implement in the search field.
It all starts with the keyword research
keyword research is a way of finding the target keyword that people used to search in search engines. or you can read the wikipedia definition.
Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and research alternative search terms that people enter into search engines while looking for a similar subject. Search engine optimization professionals research additional keywords, which they use to achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they expanded on it to find similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools usually aid the process, like the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and alternative keyword suggestions or by looking into Google Suggest.
Basically, There are two main factors out there, When It comes to optimizing your Steemit post or site.
- On-page SEO
- off-page SEO
But, In today's tutorial, I will walk you through On-page SEO by sharing some effective techniques to follow while writing your next article.
On-page SEO
It's a way of optimizing your individual blog post with a certain and the relevant target keyword in order to improve the position of your article in search ranking. This includes proper keyword placement, proper headings, optimized images, meta tags and more.
Let's get started
Below is step by step guide to get you started by following some essential rules.
Post Title
The post title is the most important on-page SEO factor, people click on your post just because of your title so It's always necessary to have a well-optimized title.
e.g: In my previous post the target keyword was Markdown.
It's important to Mention your target keyword in the title, but You have to keep in mind that the closer you place the keyword in the title, the more value it has with search engines.
Note: It is not always possible to place your keyword at the beginning of the title so at least put your keyword somewhere in the title.
Post Permalink
Permalink is a full URL of any post. If we take the previous post example, so here you can see, the permalink of my Markdown post.
So basically in steemit, you can't edit the permalink because Steemit takes the permalink from the post title by default, so here don't care about that.
Note: If you are a WordPress or blogger platform user, so always use your target keyword in your article's permalink and keep it short by avoiding the stop words(the, in & on etc) and special characters and try to separate the words with dashes.
Heading Tags
By using heading and sub-headings, Each portion of your article is going to be separate from each other, So by this way, it looks more user-friendly and readable. Users feel more comfortable to engage with.
Steemit uses the h1 tag for the title of the post. so you don't need to use the h1 tag again in your post, So it is better to stick with h2 and h3 tags for the whole of your post.
Note: It is crucial to write your keyword in any one of your h2 tags.
Meta Description
Meta Description is the another important aspect of on-page SEO, It's a small summary of any blog post, It shows by search engines in SERP when a user searches the keywords and the keyword is in the description.
Unfortunately, in Steemit you don't have any meta description section to define the summary of your blog post like WordPress But don't worry Steemian, Your post is still showing the description in the SERP because search engines took the initial few lines of your article as a meta description.
Note: You should place your target keyword in the first 100 words of your Steemit post for ranking higher in search engines.
Optimize Your Images
Images are necessary for every blog post because It engaged the users with your post and attracts the user's attention.
For optimizing your images with on-page SEO at Steemit, Place your target keyword in an image file name and Alt text. Separate the keywords with dashes.
e.g: 
Note: By optimizing your Images, It's driving a lot of traffic from image searches.
Never go for Plagiarism
It's good to know about the license of an image before using it in your blog post otherwise It affects your ranking in search engines If you do any plagiarism(Stealing other's images without their permission or without giving any attribution to them).
Here are some free resources out there under the license of CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) which means that you can use those images for any legal purpose and without giving any attribution link to their contributor.
Note: It's always good to give attribution link to their contributor If you want to.
Keyword Density
Keyword Density is a formula in percentage which defines the number of target keywords used in the article compared to the total number of words in a blog post.
It is better to use the keyword density around 1.5 to 2.5% for better ranking and use the keywords at the right place. some of the best places for keywords are as follows.
- Use it in the post title
- The first paragraph of the article
- At least in one h2 tag
- keyword in your image alt text
- At the last paragraph of the article
- Use it to your content where it's necessary
Note: Don't use the keywords a lot, Otherwise it looks keyword stuffing (keyword spamming).
General SEO Tips
Internal links: link the previous related post to your present post, so users can spend more time on your post and also read the related article on your Steemit blog.
External or Outbound link: You can use an External link in your article If you know that External website content (e.g: Wikipedia) is relevant to your article because this gives a positive sign to your ranking in search engines.
Quality content: Search engines like more detailed and informative content about any topic, So the more length your Quality content carries, the more strength it has to rank higher on the first page of Google.
Note: Your content should be relevant, Never try to put useless text to make your post more lengthy.
Conclusion
If you follow some of these On-page SEO rules while writing your next article, Gradually you'll see the organic traffic coming from different search engines But always keep in mind that write something useful and informative so people can get more benefits out of it, Otherwise if people coming to your content from different search engines and don't like your content because you've written it for Google not human, So your content is useless.
Now I'd like to hear from you guys, Maybe I missed something, Please share your thoughts in a comment below.