You should always optimize a keyword & write only around it. Keyword optimization is the process of increasing the relevance of a web page’s content to a given search query. My 3-strep strategy on how to optimize your new and existing content for any keyword (to get search traffic)- 1️: You need to ensure that keyword optimization is worth the effort and that your chances of ranking are good. Start with keywords that have enough volume (50+), good traffic potential (blog ranks on 100s of keywords, if you rank high, tp gives idea how much traffic you could pull) and low keyword difficulty (below 20) Start with keywords that can bring direct sales and are bottom of the funnel. In Google Search, the messenger is at least as important as the message. Your content should clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise. 2: 3Cs of Content - Align with the search intent. We try to figure out what kind of content, searchers want to see. Content type - the goal the searcher is after. The task here is to take top-ranking pages & look for the dominating type of content among them. Ex - Blog post Product page Category page Landing page Content format refers to how users seemingly prefer information served to them. “How-to” guide Opinion piece Review Comparison Product page Content angle is the unique selling point of a page. It should catch the searcher's attention & indicate what is special about the page. Match the content angle with topic. To illustrate, consider the query “how to manage projects.” Some angles for this query are: In excel And prioritize tasks In teams In jira 3: Follow on-page SEO best practices If you’re optimizing old content, do a Site Audit. It will help you catch all the missing tags, unoptimized images, and more. Cover sub-topics that you see in top 10 results (can also be done using surferseo) Make your content easy to digest. A para should have 3-4 lines max, content should be skimmable & use images to break walls of text. Make your target keyword part of the title Match the H1 tag with the title tag. Use H2–H6 tags for subheadings. Write a compelling meta description because it may entice readers to choose your page among others. Create a user-friendly URL like “/outreach-tool” instead of “/outreach-tool-2022-09-09” Optimize images (filenames and alt tags) - Images help Google understand what a page is about too. Moreover, images can rank in Google Image Search. Prefer original images, only use relevant images and avoid generic names of images. Link to relevant internal and external resources - Both internal and external links help Google understand the context. Optimize for featured snippets - provide the answer to the main question early in the text and structure your content in a brief, organized, easy-to-understand language.