What Are The Key Aspects Of SEO On Page Optimisation?
On-page optimisation focuses on optimising elements visible and invisible to the user on a webpage to improve their search engine rankings. This involves optimising meta tags, headings, content, URL structure, and internal linking.
By adhering to best practices, such as incorporating relevant keywords and ensuring a seamless user experience, on-page optimisation enhances a webpage’s visibility to search engines.
On-page SEO is important because it helps search engines understand the website’s content and relevance to a user’s query. It also contributes to the overall user experience and can drive more organic traffic to the website.
In summary, on-page optimisation is a critical aspect of SEO that involves fine-tuning individual webpages to improve their visibility and rankings on search engines. By implementing various on-page techniques, websites can enhance their user relevance, user experience, trust, authority, plus expertise (EEAT) to gain organic traffic.
On-Page Optimisation Technique Basics
On-page SEO techniques include amongst other activities these cornerstone activities. Many of these activities cross over into technical SEO. I have included the activities together as they are linked. An SEO practitioner should do both. If the on and off page and technical optimisation tasks are divided in your business, you should make sure everything is aligned first before implementation. Ensure from their side, it is error checked.
- SEO Keyword Research: Identifying relevant keywords for the content and the intent of the site owner as well as opportunities for finding gaps or niches to expand into. Keywords form the foundation of SEO. These are specific words or phrases that users enter into search engines when looking for information.
SEO professionals conduct keyword research to identify relevant keywords with high search volume and moderate competition. Keyword research should also include what keywords and keyword strategies your competitors are doing. A keyword competitor is any website holding the top positions for your keywords – it may be a blogger or influencer to an industry based Wiki, affiliate or information only website.
By strategically incorporating keywords into web content, meta tags, and headings, websites can increase their visibility and attract targeted organic traffic. - Content Optimisation: Creating high-quality, unique, and helpful content that matches user intent. When optimising content for SEO, it is important to write for humans first and then for search engines, include engaging headings, subheadings, implement SEO basics, create topic clusters, internally link content, cover the topic in-depth, include semantically related keywords, post content regularly, update content for freshness, and optimise for speed.
Content optimisation is crucial for all types of content, including text, images, videos, and news. Each type of content requires tailored optimisation processes to improve its visibility and effectiveness - Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Meta tags are HTML tags that provide information about a webpage’s content to search engines and users. They are essentially invisible to the web site visitor, and only display in the browser tab for the title, and in in the search engine results for the title and meta description.While meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, they can impact a page’s click-through rate (CTR) in search engine results, which can positively impact a page’s ability to rank.
They do play a crucial role in influencing how a website appears in search results and have a massive impact on click-through rate (CTR). They are a pitch that convinces the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for. Optimising meta description summarizes the content of the webpage for search engines and users and if enticing enough, it will promote a click through and therefore more traffic, even verses a higher ranking page in the SERPS. - URL Optimisation (Technical SEO): URL optimisation is the process of creating search engine-friendly URLs that are concise, relevant, and easy to understand. By incorporating relevant keywords and structuring your URLs properly, you can enhance your website’s visibility and increase its chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Keywords play a crucial role in URL optimisation. Including relevant keywords in your URLs helps search engines understand the content of your web pages and improves the chances of your website being discovered by users searching for those specific keywords.
However, this is mainly at the SERP level that the page appears more appetising with a ‘sexy’ looking URL. Nowadays, URL optimisation should follow the site hierarchy with directories making it easier for content teams to gauge from the URL the keywords they ought to optimise on the page ;D.
Under URL optimisation comes a deeper technical part called canonicalisation. In the context of SEO, it refers to the practice of selecting a preferred URL when multiple URLs contain the same or similar content. This technique involves the implementation of a canonical tag, commonly known as “rel=canonical.” By using this tag, website owners can inform search engines that a specific URL represents the primary or master version of a page.
One of the primary benefits of canonicalisation is its ability to address problems related to duplicate content. When multiple URLs display identical or substantially similar content, search engines may struggle to determine which version to index and display in search results. This can lead to ranking signal dilution and potential penalties. By employing canonical tags, website owners can guide search engines towards the preferred URL, consolidating the ranking signals and ensuring that the correct version appears in search results.
Canonicalization plays a crucial role in enhancing a website’s overall SEO performance. By consolidating ranking signals and avoiding duplicate content issues, websites can maintain a strong presence in search engine results pages (SERPs). When search engines understand the primary version of a page, they can allocate indexing resources more effectively, resulting in improved crawl budget allocation and potentially higher rankings.
Another aspect to consider is the impact of canonicalisation on URL structure. By utilizing canonical tags, website owners can streamline their URL structure and prevent unnecessary indexing of similar content under different URLs. This helps to maintain a clear and concise website architecture, making it easier for search engines to understand the relationships between different pages and content sections.
Image Optimisation for SEO (Semi Technical SEO): Image optimisation in SEO is a crucial practice that involves creating and delivering high-quality images in the ideal format, size, and resolution to increase user engagement. It also involves accurately labeling images with metadata so search engine crawlers can read them and understand page context. Using descriptive filenames and providing alt text for images, reducing file size creating links from images are just some of the basics of this practice.
Resizing Images (Technical SEO): Resizing images to the appropriate dimensions is crucial for improving the page load time and the overall user experience. By resizing images to fit the dimensions of a webpage, you can avoid unnecessary loading time and conserve bandwidth. Additionally, resized images ensure that they appear at the correct size and resolution, improving the visual appeal of a website.
Optimising Image File Names: Using descriptive and keyword-rich file names for images can improve their visibility in search results. By including relevant keywords in the file name, you can increase the chances of your images being discovered by search engines.
For example, instead of using the default file name “image1.png,” you can use a filename that includes descriptive keywords, such as “landscape-picture.jpg.” This will help search engines understand what the image is about, making it easier for users to find your content.
Using Image Alt Tags (Technical SEO): Alt tags provide alternative text that describes the content of an image. While images may not display for all users or in search engine results, alt tags ensure that the content is still accessible to those with visual impairments or those who cannot view images. Additionally, alt tags can help improve the accessibility of your website by describing the images to screen readers.
Making Images Mobile-Friendly (Technical SEO): Ensuring that images are responsive to different devices and screen sizes is essential, especially in light of Google’s mobile-first indexing approach. With the majority of people now accessing the internet via mobile devices, it is crucial that your images adapt to different screen sizes seamlessly. Responsive images will automatically scale to fit the dimensions of a device, providing a consistent and optimized user experience across devices.
Adding Image Structured Data (Technical SEO): Including structured data for images can help search engines display them as rich results, such as in Google Images. Structured data allows search engines to understand the content, context, and relevance of your images, enabling them to display them in visually appealing and informative ways. By adding structured data to your images, you can enhance their visibility in search results and differentiate your content from competitors.
Creating Image Sitemaps for SEO (Technical SEO): An image sitemap can increase the chance of your images showing up in search results. This sitemap contains a list of URLs for your images, along with additional information such as the image’s title, description, and alternate text. By creating an image sitemap, you make it easier for search engines to discover and index your images, increasing the chances of them appearing in relevant search results.
Choosing the Right Image Format for Image Optimisation (Technical SEO): Selecting the appropriate file type, such as JPEG, PNG, or WebP, can impact image quality and page load speed. JPEG is best for images with a wide range of colors, such as photographs or complex graphics. PNG is a good choice for images with less color depth, such as logos or icons. WebP is an emerging image format that offers improved compression and quality, resulting in faster loading times and with Google’s new Search Engine Console, plus Screaming Frog’s reminders, using the new format is the way to future proof your website.
Choosing the correct format for your specific images can help optimize your website for performance and maintain image quality. There are others they suggest consistency of colour of your images in a web page, plus if its 100% original and not a stock photo, makes it best for optimisation.
Internal Linking (Semi Technical SEO): Internal linking is a crucial aspect of SEO, as it helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of a website. By connecting your content through internal links, you provide search engines with an idea of the importance and relevance of various pages on your site.
When a webpage receives multiple links from authoritative pages, it indicates that those pages deem the content on that page to be valuable and relevant. This sends a signal to Google that the page is worth ranking higher in search results.
By strategically placing internal links within your content, you can help pass some of this authority to your less important pages as well, improving their search engine rankings.
Additionally, internal links help create a cohesive user experience. By providing links to other relevant pages on your site, you make it easier for visitors to navigate and find the information they need. This can enhance the overall usability of your website and improve user satisfaction.
When crafting your internal linking strategy, it’s important to consider the following factors:
Link Relevance (Off-page SEO): Ensure the links you include are relevant to the content they point to. This will help search engines understand the context and relationship between the linked pages.
Anchor Text: Use descriptive anchor text when linking to other pages on your site. This tells search engines what the linked page is about and helps them better understand what the content is about.
Domain Authority (Off-page SEO): Consider the authority of the pages you are linking to. Higher-authority pages will tend to have a stronger impact on your search engine rankings if the recipient website links back. Google looks to see about outgoing links and their relevance to your content. Although, linking passes relevance to another site, it can aid yours. A good example was during the pandemic and linking to official pages with up to date information. At that time in the pandemic pages which helped official pages saw an uplift verses those that did not.
Internal Link Placement (Semi Technical SEO): Place internal links within your content where they are logical and easy for users to click on. This not only improves user experience but also helps search engines understand the relevance of each link.
Link Structure (Semi Technical SEO): Utilise a hierarchical structure for your internal linking. This will help search engines understand the importance and relevance of different pages on your site.
By strategically placing internal links within your content, you can provide search engines with valuable information about your website and improve its search engine rankings. Additionally, internal links create a better user experience by making it easier for users to navigate and find relevant information on your site.
UK & INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL MARKETING EXPERT at anthonyleaton UK
Over 12 years’ experience in diverse digital marketing settings within international start-up and corporate environments. Proven ability to deliver conversion and traffic uplift results through hands-on execution of multilingual and international SEO, email, content, social media, PPC, broadsheet PR, web-development, email marketing, and CRM strategies and campaigns.
Latest posts by A. Leaton (see all)
- AI in SEO: Maximising Your Online Visibility - 21 October 2025
- Effective SEO Reindexing Techniques: A Guide - 21 October 2025
- Local SEO Course Passed - 2 February 2025