Increase Your Google Rankings and Double Your Site Traffic In Just 10 Steps (part 2)

1. Add hyperlinks. Google loves both internal and external linking. Link to other areas of your site within a post. Link outside your site, as well (to related sites, of course). Linking itself is probably 10-20% of good SEO.
2. Add images. Not only do images help your post really stick out and improve conversation when you make them clickable versions of your CTA, but Google loves images. The best thing you can do with an image is add alt-text with your keyword. This improves your SEO and it makes your post visible when people Google Image Search. By simply having one of the few pictures for your targeted keyword, you can even beat out your best rivals.
3. Go easy on keyword density. Keyword stuffing will hurt you. Too few mentions of your keyword will also hurt you. You've got to find that middle ground. Where is it? It's pretty much at or around 2 to 3 percent. I would say never go under one percent and be wary of going over 5 percent. You can check keyword density with many of the tools online or a wordpress plugin (if you're using a wordpress blog, that is).
4. Put your keywords in every title and header you can. While you can overdo it on putting keywords in your posts, you really can't overdo it when putting keywords in your post title or headers. Do your best to squeeze in your keyword in your H1 to H3s.
5. Put your keyword up front and make it prominent with bold text. Try to put your keyword in your first sentence, if possible. Bolding it makes it stand out to both readers (similar to how link color can improve conversions. and to Google. .

SEO is a slow process, but the accumulution of articles with good SEO techniques will get you to the first page of Google before you would expect. I've ranked #1 for competitive keywords in a matter of months on blogs with less than 20 articles using the above techniques.