On-Page SEO

Reading the results page before writing anything

On-page work starts on the search results page, not in a document. Google has already decided what kind of page satisfies a query, and you can read that decision directly. Search your target term and look at what is ranking. If the first ten results are comparison articles and yours is a product page, no amount of title tweaking will fix the mismatch. You need a different page type.

We check three things in that review. The format that dominates, whether that is a guide, a list, a tool, a category page or a service page. The angle the top results take, which tells you what the searcher is really after. And the features on the page: a snippet, People Also Ask boxes, a shopping row, a video carousel. Each feature changes how much organic attention is left and what shape your content needs to be to claim any of it.

• Page type: guide, comparison, service page, category, tool or definition
• Depth of the ranking pages, so you match the level rather than guess it
• Which results features appear and who currently owns them
• Whether the query has mixed intent, which usually means two pages, not one

Title tags and meta descriptions that earn the click

A title tag has two jobs and most sites only do the first. It has to tell the engine what the page is about, and it has to make a person choose your result over nine others. Front-loading the main term helps with the first job. Adding a specific reason to click, such as the deliverable, the location, the price basis or a clear differentiator, does the second.

Length matters because Google truncates around 580 pixels, not a fixed character count. Wide characters eat that budget faster than narrow ones, so a title of sixty characters in capitals can cut where one of sixty-five in lower case does not. We write to the pixel budget and check how it renders. Google also rewrites titles it considers poor matches, and the most common trigger is a title that repeats the same keyword in several forms.

Meta descriptions do not affect rankings. They affect click-through rate, which affects how much traffic the same ranking earns you. Treat them as ad copy: state the answer, name the specifics, and match the phrasing of the search so the bolded terms confirm relevance at a glance.

Heading structure and answer-first writing

Headings are a map, not decoration. One H1 that states the subject, then H2s that each cover a distinct sub-question, then H3s only where a sub-question genuinely splits. Skipping levels or using headings for visual size breaks the map for screen readers and for the systems that extract answers.

Answer-first means the direct answer sits in the first sentence or two under each heading, with the detail below it. This serves three audiences at once. A reader scanning gets what they came for. A search engine looking for a snippet has a clean block to lift. An AI system summarising the page has a sentence it can quote without inventing anything. Building up to the answer with preamble loses all three.

The practical rule we apply: if you deleted every paragraph except the first one under each heading, would the page still answer the question? If not, the structure is working against you.

• Question-shaped H2s that match how people phrase the search
• A direct answer of roughly forty to sixty words under each one
• Detail, examples and caveats underneath, never above
• Lists and tables where the content is genuinely list-shaped or comparative

Internal links and anchor text

Internal links do two things: they pass authority between pages, and they tell search engines what a page is about through the anchor text pointing at it. Most sites do the first accidentally and the second not at all. Anchors reading "click here" or "learn more" waste the strongest on-page signal you fully control.

We map links by topic. Every supporting page links up to its main page with descriptive anchor text. Main pages link down to the supporting pages that cover each sub-topic. Related pages at the same level link across where a reader would genuinely want to move between them. That structure makes the relationship between pages explicit rather than leaving engines to infer it from the menu.

Placement matters too. A link inside body copy, surrounded by relevant text, carries more weight than the same link repeated in a footer on every page.

Keyword cannibalisation and how to spot it

Cannibalisation is when several of your own pages compete for the same search. The symptom is distinctive: rankings that flip between two URLs week to week, or a page that sits stubbornly at position eight while a weaker page on the same topic ranks eleventh. Neither page accumulates enough signals to break through, because links and relevance are split.

We diagnose it from Search Console by looking at which URLs receive impressions for the same query. Then we pick one of three fixes. Consolidate the pages into one stronger page and redirect the loser. Differentiate them so each targets a genuinely distinct intent. Or keep both and make the secondary page point clearly at the primary with internal links.

Optimising existing pages usually beats writing new ones

The fastest on-page wins usually sit on pages you already have. Pages ranking between positions five and fifteen already have enough authority to be considered. They are losing on relevance, format or click-through, all of which are on-page problems. Moving one of those pages up a few places often produces more traffic than publishing three new pages that start from nothing.

The process is repeatable. Pull the queries a page already receives impressions for. Find the ones where impressions are high but clicks are low, which points at a title and description problem. Find the ones where the page ranks but the content barely addresses the question, which points at a coverage gap. Fix both, then wait for a re-crawl and measure.

• Pages at positions five to fifteen, ranked by impression volume
• Queries with high impressions and low click-through, for title work
• Sub-questions the page ranks for but never actually answers
• Images given descriptive alt text and file names, which also earn image search traffic