How To Improve SEO Rankings With On-Page SEO

If you have content that's on your site but not ranking well, updating and optimizing this content is one of the most effective ways to improve SEO strategy performance without starting from scratch. Our goal in this article is to help you establish a framework for improving and optimizing rankings on existing content so you can get the most from your current pages.

The Quick Guide To Improve Your On-Page SEO

Here's the high-level takeaway on how to improve SEO rankings on your existing content, step by step.

Start with audience understanding - Identify user goals and questions and make sure you address their needs
Research user intent-driven keywords - Match content to keywords your audience is actually searching for
Enhance content quality - Improve depth, structure, and unique expertise as it relates to your user's goals
Optimize on-page elements - Strategically place keywords in headings, URLs, and the title tag / meta title
Build semantic relevance - Include related terms that demonstrate comprehensive topic coverage
Strengthen link structure - Link content internally within your site and externally to authoritative sources
Monitor and iterate - Use performance data to guide continuous improvements, don't just optimize once

Importance Of Goal Completion In Improving SEO Content Writing

You can't create content that ranks without first knowing what information your audience actually needs. When visitors find exactly what they're searching for on your page, they engage meaningfully, sending powerful signals to search engines that help improve your content's rankings. When a user finds the information they're seeking and ends their search journey on your website, this is called goal completion — and we want to optimize for it.

Start by asking: What problem is your reader trying to solve?

Before starting your keyword research or content creation, take a step back and consider the fundamental questions your audience is asking. This user-first approach helps to make sure you're building content that serves real people, not just algorithms.

User goal completion speaks volumes about whether you've met user expectations. As a result, your new content gets rewarded with improved rankings. Happy users and better rankings? Talk about a win-win.

Tips For User Goal Completion in SEO Content

Readers appreciate efficiency. Long gone are the days of burying the lead, so make sure to make the most important information easy to find, toward the top of the page. Today's readers need answers quickly, and search engines reward content that delivers.

Start by directly addressing your audience's primary question, then build out with supporting details and context. Here’s an example: Is your reader looking for an apple pie recipe? Then don’t bury the recipe at the bottom of a page largely dedicated to a wordy history of the fruit.

Structure also plays a huge role in readability. Make sure to structure your content for both quick scanning and deep research:

Use clear, descriptive headings that preview the content within each section
Break complex information into bulleted lists for easy digestion
Bold key points that deliver immediate value
Create a logical flow that guides readers from basic concepts to advanced applications

All that said, you don't want your content to be stretched too thin. Complete information matters! To make sure you've covered all the relevant information, map out all the key points you need to hit on before you start writing, such as:

Primary questions your audience is trying to answer
Supporting information that provides necessary context
Related concerns they'll likely encounter next
Proof points that build credibility for your claims

These tips help keep visitors engaged with your content rather than returning to the search engine results page (SERP). Returning to the SERP is a negative signal to search engines that shows your content wasn't good enough. Remember, the content that serves user goals most efficiently is the content that ultimately ranks best.

Where Keyword Research Shows User Goals

Now we know goal completion is important — but how do we know what our audience's goals actually are? While we can’t know the exact motivations of every reader, we can infer their goals and intentions from their keywords and search behavior. That’s why keyword research is so valuable.

Your audience's existing knowledge, revealed through their keyword choices, can dramatically influence how you present information. A search for "keyword density optimization techniques" hints that the reader already has foundational Search Engine Optimization knowledge and doesn't need basic definitions. Meanwhile, a Google search for "what is SEO" reveals only a basic understanding, requiring more fundamental explanations.

This ability to infer goals from keywords prevents the frustration of:

Overwhelming beginners with advanced concepts without the proper foundation
Boring experts with basic information they already possess
Creating content that fails to meet the specific need behind the search

Pay attention to the language complexity in popular search queries — it often reveals your audience's expertise level, goals, and expectations.

Decoding User Goals: The search results page itself tells you exactly what content format and approach works best for each keyword, further confirming the user goals you've inferred. Before creating content, analyze what's already ranking:

Are the top results how-to guides, comparison articles, or definition pieces? Each format addresses different user goals.
What depth of information do they provide? This indicates the comprehensiveness users expect.
Which subtopics appear consistently across multiple ranking web pages? These represent common user sub-goals.

Aligning Content With Inferred Goals: Technical jargon can either establish your credibility or create barriers to understanding, depending on the goals you've inferred from keyword research. For more specialized keywords, use industry terminology that demonstrates expertise. For broader queries, introduce technical terms with brief definitions, use analogies for complex concepts, and balance precision with accessibility.

Content Structure: Use your keyword research to infer user goals and inform your content's organization. This approach naturally incorporates semantic keywords and related concepts without forcing awkward keyword placement. By focusing on the goals behind keywords rather than just the terms themselves, you create content that satisfies both search algorithms and the people who ultimately read it.

Selecting Keywords For Improving Your SEO Content

If you don't already have any keywords in mind to optimize your content around, here’s an easy way to figure it out: Choose 1 primary keyword and at least 3-5 secondary keywords that match the goal of your content.

While we don’t dive deep into keyword research today, here are some quick tips for you to start finding your primary and secondary keywords:

Use Keyword Research Tools: Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner give ways to search for new keywords and see data like search volume and keyword difficulty. This is the perfect starting point to get search behavior insights and validate search volume.
Mine the Search Engine Results Page: Search engines often give 'related searches' that make perfect secondary keywords. Search your primary keyword, and scroll to the bottom to find the related searches. Do some clicking through related searches and note keywords that make for good secondary terms.
People Also Ask: Back on the SERP, take a look at the 'People Also Ask' (PAA) questions. Similar to the related searches, these are questions users ask related to your keywords. Place these questions in headings (and then answer the questions directly), and you may end up being shown in this PAA section yourself.

More Info On Keyword Research: While covering how to do keyword research in-depth is outside the scope of this article, here's a piece by Hubspot on how to do keyword research if you'd like to do some further reading.

On-Page Content Optimization Guidelines To Improve Rankings

You've identified your target keywords and understand what your users need. Now that you've done the foundational work, it's time to start actually optimizing your content to perform.

This isn't just about inserting relevant keywords throughout your content and moving on, though. Remember, we want to improve the overall value and quality of our content to users and search engines. Keyword optimization is just one piece of that puzzle.

1. Enhancing the Quality of Your Content

Start by focusing on what AI and large language models can't replicate: your unique expertise. Your subject matter experts hold insights that even the most advanced AI can't generate. Your unique insights are your competitive edge. Be sure to add it to your content.

Interview your team's specialists, gather case studies, and incorporate proprietary data that showcases your distinct understanding of the topic.

Beyond information quality, presentation matters tremendously:

Bold key points to guide skimmers through essential takeaways
Structure content with clear heading hierarchies (H2s, H3s, H4s) that tell a logical story
Break dense information into digestible lists or comparison tables
Add relevant images, diagrams, or infographics to illustrate complex concepts

Even the most valuable, accurate information gets overlooked if it's buried in a wall of text. Your readers are busy decision-makers who need to extract value quickly. Be sure to make it easy for them to navigate and absorb your great content.

2. On-Page Keyword Optimization

This is where those primary and secondary keywords come into play. With quality content as your foundation, you can now sprinkle in these keywords throughout headings and paragraphs.

Key places to incorporate keywords include:

Page title (H1)
First 100 words of content
Subheadings (especially H2s)
Image alt text and captions
Meta title

If you want to get more advanced with this, you can look at keyword density. Keyword density is simply the frequency or percentage at which a keyword is mentioned throughout a given article. In this case, we've mentioned "improve SEO rankings" 5 times, or ~0.6% of the total word count in this article.

Analyze competitors who rank well for your target terms and calculate their keyword density. Aim to match or slightly exceed this density to signal relevance to search engines without compromising readability.

However, here’s a word to the wise: Each placement should always feel natural and enhance the reader's experience. The goal is to optimize for both search engines and human readers simultaneously. If you're forcing keywords into the copy, you've probably gone too far.

3. URL Considerations: When to Update, When to Redirect

Your URL slug is one of the most important places you can put a keyword, but if you're optimizing already-published content, you may want to be careful with this. Search engines typically treat each URL as a unique page, so changing it could 'reset' any SEO progress you’ve already made with the page.

Generally, you’ll want to maintain existing URLs when updating content to preserve established domain authority and backlinks. However, in high-competition keyword spaces, creating a new URL that includes your target keyword could be worth the effort.

Consider URL updates when:

Current URL contains outdated years (e.g., "content-marketing-trends-2022")
URL references specific numbers that have changed (e.g., "7-tips" when you now have 10)
Your primary keyword strategy has significantly shifted

If you do decide to change your URL, always set up a 301 redirect. Implementing 301 redirects from old to new pages helps to maintain SEO value and prevent broken links. This preserves the authority you've built while improving keyword relevance, as Google has confirmed that redirects pass link equity to the new page.

Remember that each URL change comes with temporary ranking fluctuations, so reserve this tactic for truly essential situations where the potential gain outweighs the short-term disruption.

4. Semantic Optimization: Signaling Comprehensive Content

Semantic terms, or keywords that are contextually related to your primary keyword, help signal to search engines that you've fully covered a topic. Search engines now look for topical authority through related terms that demonstrate comprehensive coverage of a subject.

When optimizing content, include natural variations and related concepts that searchers (and search engines) expect to see. For example, an article about "email marketing" should naturally incorporate terms like "deliverability," "open rates," and "automation workflows". These keywords are important for search engines to see because these pieces of context are integral to the topic.

Tools like Semrush's Content Template tool can identify these semantic relationships for you, providing a roadmap of concepts to address. This approach ensures you're covering a topic thoroughly rather than superficially targeting a single keyword.

Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated at understanding context. By incorporating semantically related terms, you signal to algorithms that your content offers genuine value on the subject — helping both your rankings and your readers.

5. Title Tag and Meta-Description: Your First Impression in Search Results

Just like the URL, the title tag (also called the meta-title) is one of the most important places to put your keyword when trying to improve on-page SEO. Your title tag isn't just a label — it's one of the most influential ranking factors at your disposal. Including your target keyword here is essential, but that's just the beginning of effective optimization.

While meta-descriptions don't directly boost rankings, they dramatically affect whether users click through to your site. Think of them as your ad copy in search results—compelling descriptions can significantly boost traffic from the same rankings.

When revising on-page elements, take time to craft good titles and descriptions that both:

Accurately reflect your updated content
Create an engaging preview that stands out at the top of search results

This aims to increase visibility in searches and your appeal to human searchers. The result? Higher rankings paired with improved click-through rates. Increased click-through rates drive more qualified website traffic without needing to climb additional positions.

6. Internal and External Linking: Building Context and Authority

Links provide important context that helps search engines understand your content's place in the broader information landscape. A thoughtful linking strategy improves both user experience and search visibility.

Start with internal links. Connect your content to related pages on your site using descriptive anchor text. Rather than generic "click here" links, use phrases that clearly indicate what users will find, such as "our email deliverability guide" or "pricing comparison tool." This approach helps search engines map relationships between your pages while giving readers clear navigation paths.

This internal link building passes authority to your target page, potentially boosting its ranking position.

Next, take a look at external links by linking to relevant, authoritative pages on other websites that back your argument. For example, this link will take you to an article that backs up our suggestion to add external links to your content. See how that works?

This strengthens your credibility by linking to reputable external sources when citing statistics or making claims. From a search engine's perspective, quality, authoritative content links to other quality, authoritative content.

These outbound connections signal to search engines that your content is well-researched and trustworthy—qualities that increasingly matter in competitive rankings.

7. Monitoring and Continuous Improvement: Data-Driven Optimization

Optimization isn't a one-time task (or at least it shouldn't be). After implementing changes, track key metrics to understand what's working and identify new opportunities.

You can start by focusing on these critical indicators:

Rankings for primary and secondary keywords
Total number of ranking keywords (a sign of growing topical authority)
Organic traffic trends to the optimized page
Growth velocity over 3-month periods

Pages already showing steady growth likely don't need immediate attention. Don't fix what isn't broken! Instead, prioritize stagnant pages that haven't shown improvement over similar timeframes.

Look for opportunity gaps by analyzing impression-to-click ratios. A high impression count with relatively few clicks suggests either ranking positions with room to improve or meta titles/descriptions that aren't compelling enough to earn clicks.

This data-driven approach helps you allocate your optimization efforts where they'll deliver the greatest returns, creating a continuous improvement cycle that steadily builds your search visibility and traffic.

Start Improving Your SEO Rankings Today

Ready to transform your website content’s SEO performance with these proven on-page optimization techniques? While this guide gives you the framework to improve your rankings, implementing these strategies effectively requires expertise, consistent effort, and ongoing analysis.

At The Digital Ring, our team of SEO specialists has helped companies just like yours achieve sustainable organic growth through data-driven optimization. Don't let valuable traffic slip away due to under-optimized content. Reach out today to get started.

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