A definitive guide written by Ryan Walsh on how you can improve your on-page SEO

Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 03/12/2024

This is a comprehensive guide, using our 10 years of SEO knowledge to explain fully how you can improve your business’s search engine optimisation. It’s a long one, so now’s the time, as “Brick-Top” once said in snatch, to “put the kettle on.”

 

In this guide, we will walk you through the following:

• What on-page SEO is all about
• How to optimise your business content marketing for search engines
• How do you create what are called “SEO-friendly URLs?”
• Why your page titles need to be short, snappy and to the point
• Why, since Google’s Helpful content update and Google E-EAT- well, your written work must cut the mustard
• Your website must now be super helpful, like when you meet a friendly, knowledgeable, helpful sales assistant who goes the extra mile.
• Why you shouldn’t go overboard adding keywords or be even too focused on keywords

 

Let’s get the important stuff out the way first: What is SEO, why is it important, and should you invest?

As business owners, we are constantly bombarded with bright ideas to promote our business. So, we can get blind-sighted when a new idea is presented. We look at it and wonder, “What is it? How is it going to help me? Is this just another money-making scheme?”

Well, search engine optimisation, if done right—and that’s the pivotal and key factor—can be an absolute game changer for a business.

If completed incorrectly, the business can be removed from Google. However, if done right, your business appears in front of shoppers when they are looking for the products or services you offer, so what better way to promote and advertise your business than that?

There are three main ways your business can achieve this: Google Business listing, which is for local SEO, organic search engine optimisation, and Google Adwords, commonly known as PPC.

 

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is the art, if you like, of optimising a page so it appears higher in Google’s SERPs while balancing that with offering helpful and useful information.

Now, this could include optimising title tags, writing first-class content marketing, adding internal links, adding SEO-friendly URLs—the list goes on and on.

However, a word to the wise before we continue: on-page SEO is important if you want your company to appear on page one of Google. The main thing, the crucial factor to remember, is that you should write helpful and valuable content; this is key.

You can tweak meta titles and page titles and add as many internal links as you like until you’re blue. Still, this will not do anything unless the content and the information you’re offering are first-class and well-written. So it’s like flogging a dead horse, meaning you’re trying to get something to perform when it can’t unless the written work is of a very high standard.

 

 

Does using on-page SEO still cut the mustard in 2024?

Have a gander at Google’s “How Search Works” report

If you’re serious about improving your company’s SEO, and if you are reading this rather lengthy article, then we can only presume you are, you need to do some light reading.

 

You need to have a good read about the following:

– What Google E-EAT means
– What Google Helpful Content is all about
– Also read Google’s “How Search Works”

Just as if you wanted

Even with massive Google algorithm updates, such as “Google’s RankBrain,” that’s A. With artificial intelligence incorporated into Google’s algorithm, on-page SEO remains essential. The Google “How Search Works” report shows that on-page SEO, such as adding keywords in a white-hat way, is still crucial.

To improve a business SEO today, you must consider the following:

 

User experience

For example, when you walk into a shopping centre, you want a nice pleasant experience. You want the place to be light, airy, and modern when you’re looking to purchase a nice pair of Levis jeans.

Well, you have to carefully consider improving a business’s UX on your website as well. So this means, in a nutshell, how can you improve the shopping experience? How can you make it easier for your visitors to find their desired products or services?
Improving the UX could be as simple as improving the main menu, making the website faster, or changing the font so it’s easier to read.

 

Bounce Rate and Dwell Time

 

How long does a shopper spend on your website? Picture this: you own a car dealership and bought yourself a Del Boy-style jacket from only fools and horses.

Now, if someone is spending a long time in your forecourt, browsing and looking at all the motors you have for sale, they are interested in what cars you have for sale.

Now, if they leave in less than 60 seconds, you know you’re selling cars that don’t interest many people.

So this is the same for your company website; you need to improve the dwell time, which means retaining the shopper for longer. You do this by writing super helpful content marketing; on-page SEO must be good.

 

Search Intent

An SEO agency such as ours must optimise the website so you’re drawing in as many shoppers as possible, and you do this by writing content marketing, which answers shoppers’ questions and queries. This is called search intent.

So, for example, if you sell luxury plant-based hair shampoo, you will most likely be writing blog posts like “What are the benefits of using organic vegan plant-based shampoo for your barnet?”.

 

Page loading speed

It would be best to make your company website as fast as possible. Here’s the thing: again, it’s a bit of a car; you can make it fast by ditching things such as the air conditioning. Yet this comes with the comfort of enjoying using your vehicle.

You’re not, after all, going to want an F1-style car to do the weekly shop; it’s impractical.
This is the same for your website; you can make it so fast that it becomes AMP, an accelerated mobile page. But then the page becomes so essential that it may not offer the information the shopper wanted.

So, you have to balance offering a good user experience to your shoppers and also, at the same time, being fast.

 

Click-through-rate

You should aim to improve the click-through rate. This can be achieved by obtaining more featured snippets and also improving the writing of the meta titles and meta descriptions.

 

How to optimise titles and descriptions

According to search engine Google, title tags still assist with improving a page or blog post’s rankings.

It’s the same with your meta description. Basically, in a nutshell, you’ve got two lines of text plus a title to sell what’s on that page. Why should the customer select your business? For instance, do you offer next-day delivery when your competitors don’t? Often, shoppers are in a rush, so adding this to your meta description is often all that is needed, sometimes to start improving the CTR.

 

How do you improve the CTR of a page?

Carefully write your page titles and title tags because Google gives an obvious idea of what the page is about. Many SEO consultants say that it’s essential to put the keyword at the beginning of the title tag, so for instance, if you sell drones, you may want to put “Drones- which one should we purchase”- as the page title.
It then tells Googlebot and Google’s algorithm precisely what that page is about.

 

Your content marketing must cut the mustard.

 

For your content marketing to cut the mustard, it must:

Unique

Don’t use AI, and don’t copy anyone else’s work. Instead, the work must come from your grey matter and satisfy Google E-EAT. In a nutshell, the work must show you have a lot of experience, expertise, entrepreneurialism, and trustworthiness.
So gone are the days of writing 700 words of complete waffle; the work must now be detailed and informative, like this work here.

 

Very valuable

So, your content marketing today must be super valuable and cut the mustard. Do not, therefore, think that SEO can be written in 30 minutes flat, slapped on the website, and done. Thank you very much. I am off for a refreshing pint.

 

Hold your horses, and do not order that pint just yet.

That’s because you need to spend longer in the office writing high-quality content marketing that’s not just on par with your direct competitors but better than them.

Here’s the thing: Google’s algorithm ranks your business according to how well it believes you have answered the query. So, there’s no way a piece of content marketing will rank higher than another business if it doesn’t answer the question better than that competitor.

So you have to push the boat out; the work has to be better.
Googlebot needs to say that this work is good quality, better than a lot of work, and rank you accordingly.

 

 

Optimised for search intent

 

Show off your level of expertise.

Are you a whiskey expert?

An expert on parts for an aeroplane?

Or an expert on running trainers?

Well, whatever you sell, your business needs to write content marketing that has a high Google E-EAT score. To do this, you must show a high level of knowledge about what you are writing about.

Now, our best advice is, and it’s a key takeaway from this whole article if you like: don’t substitute quantity with quality.

Take your time and write a good article, better than your direct competitors’. So, if you’re writing about whiskey, make sure you write a blog post explaining why your whiskey is the best and how you go the extra mile to give it that taste.

So, again, aim to be the best and write detailed, informative guides. Don’t rush the work; aim to write the best content marketing piece possible.

 

Make it functional, make it valuable.

Just think of the internet for a second

There are only so many services and products that a business can sell.

Now think of how many companies worldwide are selling those products

Now, how many blog posts are written daily? Millions is the answer.

Rolled off a production like a car.

So, how does your business’s content marketing compete with all this competition? Well, the simple answer is that it must be better. Because of the sheer amount of competition, the work must really stand out—it must be head and shoulders better than the direct competitors.
So here’s some food for thought on how to do that:

 

Make the work more detailed:

Aim to make your written work more detailed than your direct competitors, add more relevant facts and statistics

Make the work more interesting
A direct competitor might have written work that

 

How to optimise your content marketing to improve the SEO

 

Search engine crawlers

Google uses “Googlebot” to crawl and index a page, so first things first, you have to make sure that Googlebot can crawl and index the page—otherwise, it will never appear in Google’s results. So, the work must be able to get indexed.

 

Google and H1 tags

For most blog posts and main pages, you should add a well-written H1 tag to explain what that page is about.

 

H1-H6 tags

By adding H1 through to H6 tags, you can structure your content. This is especially useful if it’s a long-winded, mammoth article of, say, 3,000 words. You can help the reader skip to the parts that they want to read. You also help Googlebot better understand what the page is about. For example, if all the keywords are related to fine wine, then it’s clear to Google’s algorithm that the page is about wine.

 

Outbound links and why you should cite your sources

It’s essential to cite your sources, so for example, when completing research, when writing your article, you may have found some statistics that you want to add to the article, so why not add these, but also add an outbound link to that page?

That does a couple of things to improve your SEO. It can help Google’s algorithm determine how well-researched your work is. For example, suppose you mention many facts and statistics from highly regarded businesses and universities. This makes it clear that the work is well-researched and, therefore, is likely to rank higher in Google.

 

Try and get as many rich snippets as possible.

Rich snippets really stand out in the SERPs. That’s because, for example, your business might have its star rating highlighted. This could show, for instance, in Google search engine results pages, that your restaurant has 4.8 out of 5 customer reviews.

For example, if your business has a lot of featured snippets, it’s more likely to have a higher CTR rate. This is important as it can help improve the click-through rate, so you may want to add schema markup to your website to increase the chance of getting more featured snippets.

 

Review Schema

Your web developer can actually add schema to, say, product reviews. This greatly improves the chances of the page becoming a featured snippet in Google’s SERPs.

 

UX signals

In this section, we will discuss UX signals, why they are important, and how to improve them.

 

Dwell time and bounce rates.

It is essential to improve your business dwell time and bounce rates, so let us explain what these mean:

 

Dwell time

So, dwell time is how long you keep a visitor on your website.

If the website is a piece of cake, the shopper will likely stick around for longer. If the website is slow, difficult to use, and poorly designed, a shopper will not spend long on the website. This causes bounce rates to increase, which can hurt the business’s SEO.

 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate simply refers to a percentage that indicates how many visitors left your website without visiting another page. There are many reasons why a bounce rate can be high; it could be something as simple as your company website being too slow, for instance.

So, by working with web designers to improve page speed and using Google’s Page Speed SEO tool, you could make your website faster, which may reduce the bounce rate.

 

Use original pictures

When a business has its website designed, it may use stock images. These are images that you can buy that relate to your company. For example, if you own a fencing business, you may buy stock images of garden fencing.

Stock images are often used because they accelerate a web designer’s ability to design a website. Rather than waiting for bespoke photos of, say, your team building the fence, you can just purchase stock photos.

However, many SEO agencies have stated that they see better organic SEO results when web designers use 100% bespoke text and photos that are unique to the business.

This makes sense because, let’s say, you run a fencing company business; if those pictures of garden fencing appear on over one hundred companies’ websites because they have also purchased stock images, the website is not bespoke. It’s been built quickly, and therefore, the fencing work does not relate to the work that the company has carried out. Instead, the photos have just been purchased. This means that Google’s algorithms will likely deem that page lower quality than another page, all with bespoke images of your company building fencing for actual companies.

 

So, the point we are trying to make is that there are many ways to improve on-page SEO, and one of them is to use 100% bespoke photos rather than buying stock photos.

 

 

Internal link and anchor text

It’s essential to add internal links to your company website for the following reasons:

– Can help to spread link equity to different pages
– Can improve dwell times
– Can help Googlebot to read the anchor text and know what the page is about.

So, internal links are a perfect way to keep shoppers/readers on the website longer. You’re most likely to have written, let’s say, in excess of 100 blog posts for your business. Now, the topics that you’re writing about are likely to overlap.

If you sell car care products, waxes, scratch removal, and leather care products, then the guides you have written on your website will likely overlap. So, let’s say a copywriter at your chosen SEO company has written a comprehensive blog post about removing scratches from the door or a slight bump from a shopping trolley. They may write about another product you sell, such as car waxes, so you can also provide a link to that page.

This gives a clear signal to Googlebot that you are writing about car care products because the anchor text, which is the text you click on to follow the link, is all about car care items.

 

Don’t over-optimise the anchor text.

Don’t overoptimise the anchor text by cramming it with keywords you want to improve your SEO for. This will not work.

 

Use Google PageSpeed Insights

Use Google PageSpeed Insights to provide suggestions for how to make your website faster. Often, the web designer and SEO team will need to work together on this to help improve the page speed. Sometimes, it could be something as simple as changing website hosting companies.