Have you ever met someone who’s tried to explain what they do for a living, but no matter what they say, you don’t get it?
Now imagine you’re Google, and the person you’re talking to is your website.
On page SEO is basically the explanation your website is trying to give to Google to explain what your website or page is about, and why you should be ranked higher than everyone else.
If Google doesn’t understand your explanation, it’s not going to rank your page. And that’s why on page SEO is so important.
The good news?
You have complete control over your site’s on page SEO, and can make changes quickly to make your site easier for search engines to understand.
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Benefits of improved on page SEO
If Google doesn’t understand what your website is about, it’s not going to introduce you to other people (customers) in SERPs.
It’s like if you’re at a party and you’ve forgot someone’s name. You’re not going to introduce them to other people because it’s a bit embarrassing if you get their name wrong.
Remember, Google and search engines are trying to match user intent to web pages. So if they can’t work out if your page matches the right intent, they’re not going to show you.
Just some of the benefits of improving your on page SEO include:
Better visibility in SERPS
If search engines understand your website, you’re more likely to rank.
Better user experience
On page SEO fixes (titles and headers etc) have the added benefit of making your pages easier to read for people.
More conversions
If your on page SEO helps your website perform better, makes your website rank higher, and makes it easier for customers to understand what you do, you can expect more conversions from your website traffic.
What are the most overlooked parts of on page SEO?
When most people think of “on page SEO”, they’re mind immediately goes to keywords and content.
The “interesting” stuff.
But, creating loads of content that’s relevant, answers customer questions and meets Google’s EEAT requirements can take a long time.
Instead, there are a few quick win, on page SEO changes you can make to help speed things up.
Build more internal links
Internal links are like the country roads connecting towns on a map. With internal links pointing between pages, search engines have a much easier time finding and crawling pages.
Internal links can also help you spread authority around your website and create topic clusters that help build topical authority.
If you have a pillar page (like this one we wrote about SEO for businesses), it should link to supporting topics that go into more detail about some of the themes on the pillar page.
It’s also worth linking relevant blogs to service pages and creating internal links that point users to other helpful content and your services.
Say you’re a loft conversion company and you have a blog about the latest loft conversion trends. You should link from that blog to your service page.
Remember, Google is looking to rank websites with expert content that’s trustworthy.
Linking pages helps build this authority because it’s easier for search engines to understand your content and what your site is about.
If you have a page with lots of links, building internal links from this page can also help the authority of surrounding pages.
Improve images
Compress large images or video files that could slow your website down.
You can read why site speed is so important for SEO.
Alt text should also be used along with relevant file names to help search engines understand images and improve accessibility.
Say, for example, you have an image on your website with the file name IMG_0223 (because that’s the file name when you uploaded it).
The file size is 3MB, and there’s no alt text.
Search engines aren’t going to be able to figure out that what image is about, and, because the file size is large, it’s contributing towards slowing down your website.
You can use tools like tinyPNG to easily compress image files for websites.
It’s better to make the file name something more descriptive. Say like “loft-conversion-liverpool”.
Then add alt text (including in a keyword) to describe what’s in the image, like “complete loft conversion in Liverpool with dormer window”.
Here’s an example of alt text we’ve written for images on our own website:
Add schema markup
Search engines use structured data like schema markup to understand what your page (or elements of your page) are about and rank them in search results.
Let’s say your page includes FAQs at the bottom. But you don’t have FAQ schema.
This means Google won’t properly understand this element of the page, and you could miss out on appearing higher up in a rich snippet.
You can use free tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or SEO tools like Rank Math to insert schema code into the webpage’s header for you:
There are lots of different schema types you can use, but on service pages, you typically look at:
FAQPage
Service Page
Local Business
Updating thin content
Thin content is anything that doesn’t go into any expert level of detail and has essentially been written just to rank in search engines, and not help customers.
Google is on a mission when it comes to thin content, and sites that have historically relied on it (or those using ChatGPT to write their posts) have been hit hard in recent Google updates where content doesn’t match intent or isn’t useful.
When deciding if content is thin, ask yourself, “does this answer all the questions, or provide all the information a reader would need to understand this topic?”
If they’d still have questions after reading it, you can improve your content.
This doesn’t mean writing 1000s of words of filler to take your word count from 200 to 3000.
You can use bullet points, FAQs, comparison tables or any other type of content to answer questions and provide information, just be sure you’re providing the information the user needs.
Using an SEO copywriting agency can be a great way of getting in-depth, well research content on your site that meets Google’s EEAT requirements.
Mobile responsiveness
More than 70% of web traffic generated by Google now comes from mobile.
And Google (and other search engines) are increasingly pushing “mobile first” indexing, which means they’re mostly looking at the mobile version of your site first before indexing and ranking it.
Web development is catching up with this trend. Most good web development agencies create websites as mobile first now anyway.
It means having a design that’s reactive, text that’s easy to read on any device, and buttons that are easy to use.
You can check your website’s mobile performance in Google Search Console to flag if there are any usability issues that could be damaging your site’s SEO:
What should you prioritise in your on page SEO checklist?
It can be a lot to think about when it comes to fixing your on page SEO. Our recommendation would be to work through this priority list to help you get off to the best possible start:
Update title tags
Use your primary keyword in your title tag (for example: estate agent St Helens)
Keep your title tag under 60 characters so it doesn’t get cut off
Improve meta descriptions
Make sure they’re fewer than 155 characters
Focus on a benefit to the reader and a CTA to encourage them to click
Organise header tags
Make sure you only have one H1 per page
Use H2 as section headers
Follow clear hierarchy from H3-H6 within each section
Check keyword placement
Make sure your keyword is in your H1 and title tags
Use your keyword (or variations) in headers and throughout the content (but only when it’s natural to do so)
Check pagespeed
Use Google’s pagespeed insights report to see how fast (or slow) your website loads.
Compress file sizes where you can.
Reduce scripts from unused plugins that could be slowing your site down.
Read more about page speed for SEO.
Check your URL structure
Keep your URL short and simple:
/loft-conversion-liverpool/
Review and update thin content
Make sure your content is answering customer questions and providing all the information someone could need on a topic.
When is your webpage fully optimised?
I don’t think it’s possible for a page to be “fully optimised”.
Things change so quickly in SEO, and new updates come along that mean you have to constantly review your site’s performance and look for improvements.
Having said that, if you can look through a webpage and find most of these things, then you’re probably in a good place:
- Title tag includes a keyword and clearly states what the page is about
- The content is detailed and provides all the information a reader could need
- Your page headers are structured properly
- Your pages load quickly
- You have internal links pointing to and from other relevant content
- You’ve added schema markup on pages that need it
- Google Analytics and Search Console show people are finding your pages, staying on them, and converting
Your full on page SEO checklist
Need some help with your site’s on page optimisation?
Now you’ve got this checklist you should be in a better place to review your site’s on page SEO and give yourself a better chance of ranking in SERPs.
If you think you might need some help, get in touch with our team.
Our UK SEO agency is here to help clients rank highly in SERPs and get found by more customers so they can turn SEO into a reliable source of revenue for their business.
Get in touch for a free SEO audit and let’s see how we can get your business out ranking the competition.
