If you haven’t already read Technical SEO Essentials or have a strong background in SEO I recommend doing that first then coming back to this article. This article expands upon it and is concerned with everything to do on the web page. As always head over to Google Search Central for more detailed information.
Core On-Page Concepts
Page Rank
The idea of page rank is that all links pointing to a webpage are a vote and each vote tells the search engine where a page should be ranked. Much like a high school popularity contest. The more links (votes) the higher the ranking. The obvious issue here is people spamming links, so search companies introduced domain authority to combat this, making some sites' links more valuable than other sites to receive links from. The more authority the stronger the link. All this to say, we need to make it clear to the search engine that our website is more popular than the competing site in our niche.
High Quality Content Myth
Contrary to what most SEO “professionals” and Google say, high quality content is not a ranking factor. SEO comes down to relevance and authority. Search companies don’t have enough resources to sift through piles of pages so they rely on key phrases and other people linking to that content. A good example of this in action is Rhinoplasty Plano by Kyle Roof. The TLDR is he used lorem ipsum which is basically dummy text with his keywords. Ask yourself, is that high quality content? Hell no, meaning search algorithms are math based and not content based. If someone is selling their services on the basis of high-quality content, please run away. They will light your money on fire. Always test and verify results.
Manual Content Penalties
If the search engine companies human quality raters find you are violating their quality guidelines. They may issue a manual content penalty. This can be for a number of reasons such as keyword spamming, unnatural backlink profile, and etc. Once a penalty is put on your site you’ll stop ranking until they deem the issue to be “fixed”. Being in search engine “jail” it is very difficult to get out of.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT)
EEAT is basically a concept where if you write helpful content that satisfies a user's search query, the search algorithm will reward you. However, in practice this is rarely the case. What the search engine companies say and what it actually rewards is at odds and just like the high quality content myth. Yet again, it prioritizes sites with more authority. This is especially true for your money, your life (YMYL) search queries where if this could negatively impact someone's well being. Again, in SEO authority trumps all, which can be especially frustrating for newer sites.
Page Structure (More Technical SEO)
Having a proper page structure tells the search engine what the most important parts of the document are. A document for SEO purposes in order are:
Header Tag
At the top of the document and is where your navigation links are held, to navigation around the site. To help the user and crawlers find the pages or information they’re looking for.
Main Tag
Main is where content is found. This holds your heading structure (h1, h2, etc.), paragraph, article and sections tags. The heading structure is for the “importance of topic” and must be in numerical order. You start with your main topic in the h1 and slowly get more granular in your h2’s, h3’s and etc. until you’ve reached the max sub topic. Paragraphs, and lists are just ways we chunk different information under each heading. Articles and sections create a break between different headering.
Footer Tag
Any important navigation links or information that a user might need to access site wide. Again, help the user and crawlers find the pages or information they are looking for.
Topical Authority
Topical authority refers to how search engines perceive your website's expertise and credibility within specific subject areas. It's built over time by publishing content on related topics within your niche. When you hit particular keywords on your page the search engines begin to recognize your site as a reliable resource in that domain. This authority doesn't transfer easily across unrelated topics—a site known for fitness content won't automatically rank well for financial advice. Instead, topical authority works best when you focus on a core subject and its naturally related subtopics, creating a cohesive content ecosystem that signals expertise to both search engines and users. The stronger your topical authority, the better your chances of ranking for competitive keywords within that subject area.
Linking & Anchor Text
Linking is one of, if not the most powerful ranking factors. When writing your content, think about where to add internal links for your keywords as it pulls from other pages' authority. Combined with external links from reputable domains that also have your keywords in the anchor text is the fastest way to rank.
Writing the Content
Keyword Research
Before we do anything on-page we first have to know what people are searching for. If you are selling purple widgets and no one is searching purple widgets well you're not going to make any sales. So, we first need to test what keyword people are using when looking for in a service.
You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends and other paid tools to find the specific search volume and phases people use. Competitiveness depends on the phrase or keyword used. Come up with a list of keywords and adjacent keywords for your topic. This helps search engines understand the content and “figure out” what the page should be indexed for. The less competitive the keyword or phrase, the easier it is to rank so often niching down to specific qualifying keywords helps avoid competing with sites that have more domain authority.
For example, if we sell web development services it's better to say “web development services (my town)” then compete on the national term “web development services” as there will always be more authoritative websites ranking for that term. Niching down ensures we get the right search intent and capture the people who are actually looking for a service in that area.
Keyword Cannibalization
When writing your content it’s important to keep pages to one specific topic. Targeting the same topics and keywords on multiple pages lowers your relevance and topical authority, meaning you're competing with yourself for the same ranking spot. This practice is known as keyword cannibalization, it lowers your overall link equity as it spreads the equity across multiple pages. Remember, search engines rank pages not websites. By consolidating the link equity using canonicals into one really strong page, we increase our individual page rank in the SERP. Having one really strong page at number 1 is way more valuable than being 8, 9 and 10 as being first gets the most clicks!
Keyword Spamming
Keyword spamming is the practice of using keywords in an unnatural form. For example, You would say “Locks Web Solutions is the best at SEO. I really like Locks Web Solutions because they are great at SEO. They do SEO. SEO is their bread and butter. SEO, SEO, SEO”. You get the point. It's annoying and unhelpful and both search engines and humans hate it. This can lead to manual content penalties.
Recommended Keyword Placement
Use the keywords you want to rank for in url slugs, title & meta descriptions, image slugs & alt tags and anchor text. Search engines use more than just the text on the page. A pro tip is oftentimes, it's better to go back to existing pages and update them with keywords then creating new pages.
Conclusion
We have talked about the technical and on-page aspects of SEO. The final chapter will conclude with off-page SEO in which we will finish talking about the basics. If you have any questions regarding on-page SEO feel to contact us. We are not SEO experts so we don’t directly offer those services but we will help point you in the direction that you need to go. I have included an on-page seo check list for you below. Have a great day!