What Is On-Page Technical SEO & Why Does It Matter?8 min read

Most users will arrive at a web page via their smartphone. Depending on the industry it can be as high as 70% of the overall traffic.

As a direct result of this, search engines (especially Google) places priority over mobile-friendly sites in their search engine rankings.

As a site grows the challenge is to make it easy for the search engines to find the information.

The layout or structure of a site is hugely important, as it enables the crawlers to find relevant pages. Those pages that are hidden away and cant be found cannot therefore be indexed.

Adopting a clean and descriptive URL structure is not only friendly to visitors but also provides the search engines with triggers to understand the content of that page.

Best practice is to avoid long or complicated URLs wherever possible.

Your page title tag is the single most important element in helping Google to understand what your page is about.

Each page should have a unique title, so as not to try to compete with other pages you have on your site.

Although no longer (for Google) a ranking factor, your meta description plays an important role in the SERPs.

Users make a very quick decision on which sites to click on. This decision is influenced by the information they read in your meta description.

Structuring your page correctly will include the usage of sub-headings.

These H1, H2, etc tags are very useful to both search engines and visitors alike as they make it easier to understand the important elements of your page.

Properly optimised images load faster, fact.

Best practice is to upload the correct size of image and ensure that it is compressed (reduction of un-essential data). Tools like https://tinypng.com/ are great for this.

You should also ensure that each image has relevant ‘alt’ text attached to it – as this helps your images to become indexed and can drive additional traffic to your site.

Take the opportunity to go further with your content and help the search engines to learn more about it by utilising structured data markup.

www.schema.org will provide Google with added context about your content.

When carried out correctly can lead to richer search results being triggered, with your content being found in feature snippet sections like “People Also Ask”.

You should always be looking to deliver the highest possible content quality to your visitors. Failing to do so is not only damaging to your SEO efforts but will also put potential new customers off of doing business with you.

An over reliance on AI, especially ChatGPT is dangerous territory. Ideally, content that you provide on your website should be based around your own personal perspective. This creates more credibility and ultimately trust in your brand.

Keywords are still hugely relevant in helping search engines to understand your content.

However, avoid the pull of keyword stuffing. Better still, focus on providing valuable content to your visitors and you will be rewarded.

Linking to related pages within your website structure is a super way of helping both visitors and search engines to navigate around your site.

You can steer the user to relevant content which will likely ensure they stay on your website longer.

An increase in ‘dwell time’ is definitely a cool metric in Google Analytics to be focusing upon.

Installing an SSL certificate will ensure that your website is seen as secure by both its users and the search engines.

This means that they are confident that you have taken steps to protect their data, which builds trust with your visitors.

On the other hand, an unsecure site is seen as risky to visit. Often you will see a warning from Google, suggesting that this could lead to visiting a harmful website.