What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO is all about making your website work smarter for both search engines and your visitors.
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On-page SEO involves optimizing your content, headlines, meta tags, images, and internal links so your site is easier to find, more engaging, and more likely to turn visitors into customers. By improving these elements, we help your website rank higher in search results, attract the right audience, and provide a seamless experience that keeps users coming back.
Technical & Content Fundamentals
I usually carry out a full on-page SEO audit and fix issues that impact visibility, search rankings, and user experience. This column contains technical fundamentals and content-level fixes.
Content Optimization
- Ensure content matches user intent and target keywords
- Improve readability and structure with headers and formatting
- Eliminate thin, duplicate, or outdated content
- Add missing topic depth to improve relevance
- Optimize page word count for competitiveness
Keyword Optimization
- Target the right primary and secondary keywords
- Natural keyword placement (no stuffing)
- Optimize for semantic relevance and related terms
- Match search intent for each page
- Fix keyword cannibalization issues
Meta Tags & HTML Elements
- Write compelling SEO-friendly title tags
- Optimize meta descriptions for clicks
- Use proper H1 and logical H2–H6 structure
- Add relevant schema markup where applicable
- Fix broken or missing tags
URL Structure
- Create clean, readable SEO-friendly URLs
- Remove or canonicalise long or messy URLs
- Fix duplicate URLs and canonical issues
- Implement keyword-friendly slugs
Internal Linking Strategy
- Create a logical internal linking structure
- Add contextual internal links to boost authority
- Fix orphan pages (pages with no internal links)
- Optimize anchor text for relevance
- Check and repair broken internal links
Image Optimization
- Compress images for faster loading
- Add descriptive alt text to images
- Use appropriate image file types and sizes
- Optimize image filenames for relevance
- Implement lazy loading where appropriate
Performance, UX & Indexing
This column focuses on user experience, mobile, performance, indexing and structured data — all critical for ranking and conversions.
User Experience Enhancements
- Ensure clear page layout and readability
- Improve call-to-action placement and clarity
- Fix intrusive pop-ups and clutter
- Enhance engagement metrics (time on page, scroll depth)
- Reduce bounce rate through better UX/content
Mobile Optimization
- Ensure mobile-friendly layout and responsive design
- Fix touch targets, spacing, and viewport issues
- Enhance mobile navigation and internal linking
- Check and improve mobile loading speed
Page Speed & Technical Health
- Reduce CSS/JS bloat and unnecessary third-party scripts
- Enable caching, compression and efficient delivery
- Improve Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID/INP, CLS)
- Fix redirect chains and eliminate render-blocking resources
Indexing & Crawlability
- Ensure pages are indexed correctly and intentionally
- Fix noindex or robots.txt issues that block important pages
- Remove or canonicalise duplicate/low-value indexed pages
- Create and optimize XML sitemaps
Structured Data & Schema
- Add schema markup for improved search visibility
- Implement FAQ, Local Business, Product, Article schema where relevant
- Test and fix schema/structured data errors
