On-page SEO
Every page should be the best answer to one question.
On-page SEO is the work of deciding what a page is for, then making that obvious to the person reading it and to the machine ranking it. Most pages fail because they try to be about five things and end up being the best answer to none of them.
What we actually change on the page.
Intent match
What does someone typing this query actually want: to learn, to compare, or to buy? A page written for the wrong one of those three loses to a worse-written page that got it right.
Title and meta description
The title is a ranking factor and the description is an advertisement. We write them as two different jobs, because a page at position two with a dull title earns fewer clicks than a page at position four with a good one.
Headings and structure
One H1 that states the subject, H2s that map to the questions people ask, and a hierarchy that survives being read as an outline. This is also what makes a page quotable by AI answers.
Copy that answers first
The answer goes near the top, not after nine paragraphs of context. Burying the answer is how you lose both the reader and the featured snippet.
Internal links
Links from the pages that already have authority into the pages that need it, with anchor text that says what the destination is about rather than saying click here.
Images and media
Descriptive file names, real alt text, compressed files, and explicit dimensions so nothing shifts while the page loads.
The mistake we see most often.
One page trying to rank for everything. A single services page stuffed with every discipline, every city and every industry, on the theory that more keywords means more chances. It does the opposite. Search engines cannot tell what the page is for, so it ranks weakly for all of it instead of strongly for any of it.
The fix is unglamorous. Split it. Give each real question its own page, link them together properly, and let the parent page do the job of routing rather than the job of ranking for everything at once.
How we apply this to ourselves. The page you are on exists because our own SEO page was carrying eight disciplines in one document. Each of those disciplines now has somewhere to live, and the parent page links to them rather than competing with them.
How the work runs.
- Map queries to pagesEvery target query gets assigned to exactly one page. Where two pages compete for the same query we merge or redirect rather than letting them split the signal.
- Rewrite for the questionTitles, headings and opening copy rebuilt around what the searcher wanted, not around what we wanted to say.
- Fix the internal linksAuthority routed deliberately from the strong pages to the pages that need help.
- Measure position, not vanityWe track the query, the position and the click-through rate. A page that moved from eleven to six matters. A page that gained impressions and no clicks needs a better title, not more content.
What it costs.
On-page work is part of the SEO discipline rather than a separate product. The level you choose sets how many pages get built and revised each month.
- SEO Hyper$399 / month
- SEO Starter$699 / month
- SEO Advanced$1,249 / month
Related disciplines.
Questions people actually ask.
What is the difference between on-page and off-page SEO?
On-page is everything you control on your own site: the copy, the titles, the structure, the internal links. Off-page is everything that happens elsewhere and points back at you, mainly links and mentions. On-page is where you should start, because it is entirely within your control and it is what off-page effort will eventually be pointing at.
How many keywords should one page target?
One primary question, plus the close variants of it that mean the same thing. If two queries would be satisfied by genuinely different pages, they need genuinely different pages.
Does keyword density still matter?
No, and it has not for a long time. Writing to hit a percentage produces worse copy that ranks worse. Cover the subject properly and the words take care of themselves.
How long should a page be?
Long enough to answer the question and no longer. Padding a page to reach a word count adds nothing a reader wants and nothing a search engine rewards. Some questions deserve four hundred words and some deserve three thousand.
Should I rewrite old pages or publish new ones?
Usually rewrite first. An existing page already has history and links, so improving it tends to move faster than starting from zero. New pages are for questions you do not yet have a page for.
Not sure which pages are competing with each other?
We will map your queries against your pages and show you where you are splitting your own signal.