On-page SEO is the bread and butter of any good SEO strategy.
It’s easier to implement on-page changes and get more immediate results compared with off-page techniques, and arguably it’s an area you have more direct control over, so it’s always the best place to start when you’re looking at improving your search engine ranking and gaining more organic traffic.
Let’s delve into the specifics of on-page SEO, and look at the dos and don’ts.
What’s the Difference Between On-Page and Off-Page SEO?
On-page and off-page SEO might sound like technical terms, but actually, they’re quite self-explanatory. On-page SEO should be thought of as anything you can do on the pages of your website to improve online visibility and rankings, while off-page SEO is anything you can do outside of your website to boost SERP rankings.
On-Page SEO Examples
- Content
- Keywords
- Internal and external linking
- Meta tags
- Page speed
- Headers
- Images
- Mobile usability
- URLs
Off-Page SEO Examples
- Social media
- Link building
- Content marketing
- Public relations
On-Page SEO Strategies
On-page SEO is essential for every business that wants their website to rank well on search engine results pages.
So according to my very complex and specific calculations… that’s pretty much everyone.
On-page SEO strategies are designed to make it easier for users to find your website with the help of search engines, and one of the best ways to do this is by improving the user experience. Since search engines prioritise UX, it makes the most sense to focus on this above all else.
This works for your website on two levels, because users will return if they get a good user experience, and new users will find you if Google recognises the good user experience and consequently ranks it highly in SERPs.
To improve your user experience, and implement other on-page SEO strategies to help gain more traffic, you can:
Write for Your Audience
Search engines should be thought of as tools that work for those inputting search queries. They want to provide results to users that are the most helpful and the most relevant to the search query. Therefore, to rank well on SERPs, you should write content with your target audience in mind, rather than focusing on what you think search engines want.
By creating high-quality, useful, or interesting content for the reader, you will by default be creating content that search engines deem suitable results for users.
On top of this, you’ll also want to consider keywords.
What is Content SEO?
When discussing content in terms of the online world, we’re referring to any consumable information that can be found on the web. The news article you read on your mobile this morning?
That was content.
The product information for the shoes you bought online last week? That was content. The TikTok your best friend just sent you? Also content.
This article you’re browsing right now? You guessed it: content!
Content is effectively what we’re all online for.
Without it, we’d have nothing to read, watch, or listen to.
Content is also how search engines find websites and determine if they’re relevant to a user’s search request, so from this angle, we can see that content is not only critical to keep your audience engaged, it’s also essential for helping your website get picked up by search engines. It refers to how we can optimise content so that search engines find it more easily, and rank it highly in their SERPs.
However, with the rise of AI-generated search results, content must also be structured clearly and provide direct, useful answers to increase its chances of being featured in AI overviews.
Essentially, any content that is created with the intention of attracting traffic via search engines, is content SEO.
So that’s probably everything you’ve ever published on your website. This is why a content SEO strategy should be a priority for anyone doing business online.
Research and Implement Keywords
Keywords are an important part of any on-page SEO strategy.
They let search engines know what your content is about and therefore enable it to be served to users when it matches relevant search terms.
Researching keywords will help you determine what type of content to create by revealing what search terms are popular, and how difficult it is to rank well for those search terms. Once you’ve settled on your keywords, you need to use them in your content.
Keywords still play an important role in helping search engines understand what your content is about and how it relates to a user’s search query. However, today’s search engines rely more on understanding search intent and topic relevance, meaning your content should cover a subject comprehensively rather than focusing on a single phrase.
You should perform keyword research to gain an understanding of what topics are popular among your target audience, and the level of competition you’ll be up against for ranking for particular keywords.
Once you’ve devised a list of keywords, then you need to create content that includes them in a way that makes sense and feels natural. Never stuff your content with keywords, this can be spotted a mile off by Google and you’ll be doing your rankings more harm than help.
Stuffing pages full of keywords is not beneficial, and actually, search engines will penalise you for this. Instead, use keywords naturally within your content and ensure your sentences make sense.
Your keyword should feature in the title (H1) of your page’s content, as well as in the first paragraph, and subsequent headings.
Structure Your Content
Web page content should be structured to make it easier for search engines to scan, and this also makes it more user-friendly for human readers.
Increasingly short attention spans mean that long essays and difficult-to-digest material are the enemy of a well-ranking website. Instead, break your content up into manageable paragraphs or short sections that are easy to skim read, helping users to quickly find the information they are looking for.
Improving user experience in this way can go a long way to making your website be viewed more favourably in the metaphorical eyes of the search engine.
Using headings and subheadings will break your content down to make it more search engine and human-friendly. Headings (H1) are the headlines of your content, while subheadings (H2) should cover subtopics. H3 subheadings can be used to look at your subtopics in greater detail.
Personally, I would not advise going beyond H3 as it tends to complicate the structure of a website.
The structure of your site and your content are important to help both Google and your users understand how to navigate it.
Organising your content in a way that is easy to navigate will help search engines determine what you’re about and what your most important areas are. A good structure also makes your website easier to index and can help your rankings on Google.
To structure your site, think about it as a ladder with your main features taking the top spots, and lower priority pages at the bottom.
If you’re selling products, your product pages should be the most important. If you’re a news outlet, the breaking news stories from today are most important. You can help to signal which pages are more important by creating lots of internal backlinks to them from other pages within your site.
Each page of content also needs to be structured in a way that is easy to consume.
This means using headings, and subheadings, and breaking information down into manageable chunks.
Create Copy That Helps Users
Copy is the written content that forms the basis of the information on your website.
You should always create copy with the intention of giving your users or customers what they want or need. Write with people in mind, not just search engines.
In 2026, this also means demonstrating real experience, expertise, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), as search engines prioritise content created by credible sources with genuine insight.
When you create a good experience for your users, this will be rewarded and recognised with better SERP rankings.
However, if you’re creating mindless copy stuffed with keywords that offer little to no value to your readers, you’ll experience high bounce rates, no return visitors, and search engines will strike you from the top of their results. Google says it best: “Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.”
Optimise Your Images
Image SEO is the Brussels sprout of the SEO world; often overlooked and underrated. Like the neglected vegetable, it’s only appreciated by a minority of website owners, and this makes it the perfect opportunity to get ahead of your competitors.
Image SEO, on the other hand, is not quite so delicious, but there is a recipe for success.
Image SEO Explained
Image SEO is a way of optimising images so that they’re easier for search engines to understand, ultimately helping your website rank better in search engine results.
It encompasses such considerations as image file size, image file type, and image titles and alt text.
How Can Image SEO Help Your Website Rank Better?
Optimising your images for search engines makes them easier for crawlers to find and interpret.
Consequently, your web pages get a boost on SERPs because they are more discoverable.
Not optimising your images for search engines can harm your overall SEO, as you’ll be missing out on opportunities to rank higher on search results pages, which crucially, can negatively impact organic traffic to your site. Let’s not forget that image SEO also helps webpages to load faster, which will help with page performance and brand perception.
Incorporating Image SEO Strategies
Get into good habits when preparing images for your website and image SEO will become a breeze. This includes setting correct dimensions of images before you upload them, and choosing appropriate file names.
Scale Images
The dimensions of your images should be correct before you upload them to your website.
While you can upload them as they are and rely on your CMS to resize them for you, this won’t make the image size any smaller. By setting the correct dimensions beforehand, you avoid the scenario of having needlessly large file sizes, which can slow down your loading speed and affect SERP rankings as well as causing a poor user experience. Find out the ideal pixel size for your image and alter this before uploading.
Compress Images
Since page speed is one of Google’s ranking factors, you want to do everything you can to ensure your pages are loading as quickly as possible.
Large image files can negatively impact loading speed, and while altering the dimensions before uploading can help with this, it isn’t always the answer. For pages that have a lot of images, consider compressing images to reduce size and loading time without affecting image quality. Some website plugins enable you to compress page images in bulk, or alternatively you can use tools for individual image compression.
Don’t Forget Alt Text
Alt text is the words used to describe an image, and it serves two important purposes.
First off, the text can be helpful to visually impaired users who are unable to see the image, or it can describe the image to users who cannot load the image.
Secondly, the alt text helps crawlers ‘read’ your image to understand what it’s about, which will positively affect rankings. Google itself explains the significance of alt text, stating “the most important attribute when it comes to providing more metadata for an image is the alt text”. When creating alt text imagine you are describing the image to someone who can’t see it. A few words are rarely enough; be as specific as you can.
Fitting File Names
Using appropriate file names helps to give search engines clues to what your image is about. Similarly to alt text, this helps Google read your image and appropriately index it, boosting search rankings.
Avoid using generic file names for your images such as ‘image0045.jpg’, which give no indication to search engines what the image could represent. Instead, name files according to their subject matter and use hyphens or underscores to separate words, for example, ‘convertible-red-car.jpg’.
Consider Captions
In many cases, web pages are structured in a way that makes the images self-explanatory. For example, on a fashion product page selling a jacket it would be unnecessary to caption the image ‘brown jacket’. However, there are some instances where captions can be useful to help users and crawlers understand the context of the image.
Use Original Media
Using original images over stock images is always going to give you an edge over your competition. Google prioritises original content, including images, so you should always use your own photos or graphs where possible. Original media will help you to stand out from competitors and also make your content more share-worthy.
Sitemap Images
Google recommends using a sitemap for images to help ensure they get found. You can add image sitemap tags to your existing sitemap, or create a new sitemap purely for your images. Either of these image SEO options work well for Google.
Use Supported File Types
In order to ensure a good user experience with images that load properly and are not blurry, you need to be using image formats that are supported. BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG files are all supported by Google. Ensuring the extension of your file type matches the name of your file will also help to eliminate loading issues.
Utilise Keywords
Keywords are not just for written content, they’re also useful for images. Including keywords in your image file names or image alt text will help the images get found in a Google image search, which is another way to increase organic traffic to your website.
Optimise for Mobile
With Google’s mobile-first indexing, Google bots crawl the internet from the perspective of a mobile browser. This means it’s vital that your images look good on a mobile device.
Using responsive techniques will allow your images to be resized accordingly by the browser, depending on what type of device the page is being viewed on.
Include Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks within content that point to other pages on the same website.
They are useful for helping search engine crawlers find and index more pages from your website, and they also work as signals to help search engines determine how the pages in your site relate to each other.
Both of these factors contribute to helping a website rank better on search engines. Internal links also serve as a way of helping users find more relevant content, and ultimately keep them on your website for longer.
Create links in your content that point to other relevant pages on your site to help your users find the information they’re looking for, and to direct Google crawlers when they’re indexing your site.
Internal links can encourage readers to stick around on your site for longer, giving you a better chance of conversion. They also work as a means of navigation for your site.
Include External Links
External links are hyperlinks within the content of a website that point to other websites.
Using external links in your content is an excellent way to build trust between your business and your users, by referencing reputable sources. Including external links can help your website rank highly in search engines because it improves user experience while also building authority.
When including external links in your content, be sure to only use recognised and respected websites, and avoid stuffing the content with links because this can look spammy and be off-putting for readers.
Why Outbound Links Matter
When you’re trying to grow a website, one of the strongest indicators you can receive is a quality backlink. Yet so many webmasters have a reluctance to using outbound links to other domains, other websites. They feel as though linking out is going to harm them in some way, as if giving readers a route to another site is going to destroy their traffic and kill their conversion rate.
The reality is, linking out to other sites is almost as important as gaining links into your site. It’s not going to hurt you unless you link out to sites serving malware or spam, and even then, you may be able to get away with a link used as an example. It’s only when your site is full of such links, like what happens when you’re hacked, that it becomes a problem. Linking to regular sites, even sites of moderate value? Perfectly acceptable.
Here are a few good reasons to link out from your website.
It Shows Your Users You Aren’t Making Up Information
The Internet is not a vacuum. Your information comes from somewhere. If it’s a case study you’ve performed, you can link to supporting documents. If it’s a case study or a blog post on someone else’s site, you can use outbound links to show your readers where your information is coming from.
That’s really all it is; sourcing your information. In a sense, it’s no different from what you would do writing an academic paper. When you reference information, statistics, or quotes, you should link to the source of those quotes. This is particularly important when you’re trying to broadcast breaking news or a controversial opinion; support with facts is all but essential.
All too many sites earn a bad reputation for never backing up their statements, making their posts little more than rambling without support.
It Positions You as a Member of a Larger Community
When you link to another page to cite their information, it acknowledges that you consider that site to be a valid source of accurate information. Your users can trust that you have a source. If they’re active in the industry, they may know the source themselves and know how reputable it is.
When you link to another page to respond to something they said in a post, you’re striking up a dialogue. This puts you on relatively equal footing with the site in question. If they choose to respond with another post of their own, the dialogue continues, and you gain validation from the event.
The point is, your industry is very likely made up of websites that are at least aware of each other. Often, the best practice is to treat those websites like partners, even if they’re competitors. Antagonism gets you nowhere. Treating these other sites as colleagues and compatriots is a much better practice.
It Pretty Much Can’t Hurt Your Reputation
As mentioned in the opening, some people fear linking to any site that’s anything other than a top-tier authority. The risk of linking to a site of low quality or poor reputation is too great, they think. They would certainly never link to a site that may disappear and be replaced by a dodgy viagra website, gambling site, or parked domain.
Fortunately for webmasters, the occasional link pointing to a bad site is no problem. Google realized that websites come and go all the time. It’s always possible that old, highly valuable links you posted now point to parked domains, from an old rebranding and expired domain or any other reason.
You are given a certain amount of leeway with such links, and even an intentional link – as long as you’re not trying to profit off the spam site – is perfectly fine. The only case where you can earn a negative action from linking out to poor sites is when you post a bunch of dofollow links to malware-infested sites, spam sites, or otherwise poor domains. The only reason this earns you a penalty is that Google considers it a sign of a hacking and wants to protect your readers.
Optimise HTML Tags
Your HTML tags, such as title tags and meta description tags, can be optimised to improve your on-page SEO.
Title tags should be relevant to your content and include your main keyword, while meta descriptions should tempt potential visitors to click through to your site.
If your HTML tags aren’t pertinent to your content, search engines will create their own, or they may overlook your site altogether.
Title Tags and Meta Description Optimisation
Click-worthy title tags and meta descriptions can increase traffic to your website from search engine results.
To optimise these for mobile devices, consider their length. Title tags should be between 50 and 60 characters long, otherwise they won’t fit and Google will re-write it for you. For meta descriptions, keep the character length under 140.
Update Your URLs
URLs help search engines understand what a page is about, and therefore with an optimised URL your page is more likely to be considered for a relevant search query.
Often, websites will automatically create their own URLs for new content, so it is imperative that you change these before new pages are published. Avoid whole sentences, publishing dates, and random numbers.
Instead, incorporate hyphens to separate words so they are more easily readable, use your keyword, and ensure the URL is relevant to the page.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
One of my lesser-known talents is my psychic ability. Here, I’ll prove it with a prediction. I predict you’re reading this on a mobile device. Am I right?
Ok, confession time. I believe in psychics about as much as I believe in my labrador’s ability to resist leftover roast chicken that gets accidentally dropped onto the floor. What I do believe in is research, science, and statistics.
These days, people spend on average 53% of online time on a mobile device, therefore my psychic prediction had a 53% chance of being correct.
If you’re reading this on a desktop, you’re in the minority. And, since most of us consume the majority of our online content on our mobiles, it’s no surprise that mobile SEO forms an essential part of any good SEO strategy.
In fact, Google now prioritises the mobile version of a website with mobile-first indexing. If your SEO isn’t up to scratch on your mobile site, your ranking is at risk.
What is Mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO is the process of optimising websites for search engines on mobile devices. It encompasses a lot of the same practices as regular SEO, though there are a few extra things you should consider when enhancing a mobile user’s online experience.
Since the main difference between desktop browsing and mobile browsing is the size of the screen, most mobile SEO best practices revolve around adapting the website design and content to work well on screens of different dimensions.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
You can check if your website is mobile-friendly using Google Lighthouse. This free SEO tool will tell you if there are any issues with your mobile site, for example, if there are links too close together.
You can then use this information to make updates to your site to enhance the user experience on mobile.
Configuring Sites for Mobile
When configuring a website for mobile you have three main options. These are responsive design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs. Let’s look at each of these options and assess how they compare to each other:
Responsive Design
Responsive design is a method of configuring your site for mobile that’s considered the easiest to use from both a developer and user point of view. It’s also the type of configuration that’s recommended by Google.
With a responsive design, you can deliver the same page to both desktop and mobile users.
The HTML code remains the same, but the CSS automatically alters how the page looks on each device, rendering it in a way that is most appropriate for the screen size. This can decrease load time because it means users don’t need to be redirected based on their device, and it also means pages can be shared using a single URL rather than a mobile-friendly URL.
Responsive designs also minimise the chance of mistakes appearing on mobile sites, and they are significantly easier to maintain compared to alternative options.
Dynamic Serving
With dynamic serving, the URL remains the same, but the HTML changes depending on the user’s device.
If you’ve ever been directed to a desktop version of a website on your mobile device, even though a mobile site exists, this was a result of dynamic serving. It’s fairly common for the wrong version of a website to mistakenly appear, which of course is a thumbs down for user experience.
Separate URLs
You can have separate URLs for your mobile and desktop sites if you want the two sites to appear distinctly differently.
Typically this involves using the word ‘mobile’ or simply an ‘m’ in the URL designed for use on mobile devices.
For example, the desktop URL could be yourwebsite.com, while the mobile-friendly version could be mobile.yourwebsite.com.
This option of mobile configuration is not recommended by Google, since it can cause plenty of SEO issues that take time and effort to resolve. Most notably, it requires HTML tags to be correctly used to communicate to Google which pages are for mobile and which are for desktop, otherwise, content can be assumed to be duplicated. This can harm your SERP ranking, and create an unnecessary job for your website manager or developer.
Tips for Mobile SEO
To ensure your website is mobile-friendly, consider trying out these top tips:
Mobile-Friendly Content Creation
When you’re creating content for your website, have mobile users in mind.
Since mobile devices have smaller screens than desktops, the information a mobile user sees will be quite different from that of a desktop.
A paragraph that looks manageable on a desktop might look like an essay on a mobile device. Aim to keep sentences short to make content easy to read on a mobile.
Headers and subheaders will also make it easier for mobile users to skim content. Remember to break up paragraphs with empty space and images so your readers don’t feel overwhelmed with text.
Page Speed
Page performance, or the speed at which your website loads on a mobile device, is taken into consideration when Google is ranking relevant results. You can check how well your page is performing using PageSpeed Insights by Google.
Simply input your URL to get an audit of how fast your website has been loading on both mobile and desktop devices.
Voice-Friendly Keywords
Voice searches are becoming increasingly popular among mobile users, and this can affect the types of keywords you need to use in your content.
Users typically use a more casual approach when using voice searches compared with a typed search.
For example, when typing a search into Google you might input ‘pizza delivery near me’, whereas when using the voice command you might say something like ‘where is the nearest pizza delivery place to me’. This change in user behaviour can mean long-tail keywords are more effective for mobile SEO.
Avoid Pop-Ups
On mobile devices, pop ups can completely dominate the screen and damage the user experience. For this reason, pop-ups are usually best avoided on mobile devices, unless they only occupy a small portion of the screen.
Since Google prioritises user experience, the use of pop-ups can negatively affect your SERP ranking, and of course dissuade visitors from coming back to your site.
To Sum Things Up
On-page SEO is what most website owners or developers concern themselves with when they’re optimising a website. It forms the foundation of any good SEO strategy, and it covers a multitude of areas.
If your site is lacking in any of the on-page SEO areas mentioned above, it’s time to delve deeper into that area and see what changes you can implement to improve your SEO game.
Since this process can be time-consuming, it’s always helpful to have an SEO specialist on hand to keep things running smoothly. Get in touch today.
