What is on-page SEO?

Title tags and meta descriptions

The title tag is the main source Google uses for the title link, the clickable headline in search results. Google calls title links "critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it's relevant to their query," and says they're "often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click." Its advice: give each page "distinct text that describes the content of the page," keep it "descriptive and concise," and don't repeat the same words.

Google sets no length limit. It truncates title links "as needed, typically to fit the device width." We aim for about 60 characters so most titles show in full, but that's our rule of thumb, not Google's. Google can also build the title link from other text, such as the page's main heading or the text of links pointing to it.

The meta description is a short summary in the page's code. Google "sometimes" uses it for the snippet below the title, when it gives "a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page." Otherwise Google writes the snippet from the page itself. Make each one unique, because "identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful." Write it as a plain pitch: what's on the page and why it's worth the click.

Heading structure

Give each page one clear H1 that matches its main topic and title tag, then use H2s to break the page into sections and H3s for points within them. Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends that you "break up long content into paragraphs and sections, and provide headings to help users navigate your pages." The same guide is candid about what doesn't matter: "from Google Search perspective, it doesn't matter if you're using them out of order," and "there's also no magical, ideal amount of headings a given page should have." Headings still count, since Google lists them among the sources it uses to write a page's title link in search results. Keeping them in order is mainly for people: as the guide puts it, semantic order "is fantastic for screen readers," and it makes every page easier to scan.

Body content and keyword usage

Write to answer the searcher's actual question, not to hit a keyword count. Google says its "language matching systems are sophisticated" enough to connect a page to a search "even if you don't explicitly use the exact terms," and that "keyword stuffing is against Google's spam policies."

What Google says it wants is substance. Its guide to helpful content asks whether a page provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis" and whether it shows "first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge." A useful test: could someone with no experience in your trade have written this page in ten minutes? If so, it's generic. A page that could only come from someone who has done the work, with real jobs, real prices, and real problems solved, is the kind of page those questions describe.

Internal linking

Internal links connect one page on your site to another. They help visitors find related pages, and they help Google find and understand your pages: Google uses links "as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl." Its rule of thumb is that "every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site." A page with no internal links pointing to it, called an orphan page, is hard for visitors and Google alike to find.

The words you link with matter too. Google says good anchor text "is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it's on and to the page it links to," and flags generic text like "click here" and "read more." Its test: read only the link text, out of context, and see whether it still makes sense.

Image optimisation

Give every meaningful image an alt attribute that describes it. Google calls alt text "the most important attribute when it comes to providing more metadata for an image," and says it "improves accessibility for people who can't see images on web pages." Describe the image in the context of the page, and don't stuff keywords into it: Google warns that doing so "may cause your site to be seen as spam."

Images also affect speed. Google notes that "images are often the largest contributor to overall page size." Three fixes from Google's web.dev guides cover most of it. Use newer formats like WebP or AVIF, which "generally provide better compression than older formats." Set width and height on every image, since "images without dimensions" are one of the most common causes of layout shift. And lazy-load images further down the page, but "don't lazy-load images that are likely to be in-viewport when the page loads, especially LCP images."