How to Do On-Page & Technical SEO: A Step-by-Step Website Optimization Guide

Before changing titles, headings or metadata, understand why somebody would search for the topic.

Consider a search such as:

how to improve technical SEO

The person probably wants practical instructions.

Compare that with:

technical SEO services

That search has a much stronger commercial intent. These queries should not automatically lead to the same page.

Your keyword should influence the page, but search intent should determine what the page becomes.

One page should not try to rank for every keyword related to your business.

Choose one primary subject and then support it with closely related ideas.

For example, an article targeting on-page SEO and technical SEO might naturally discuss:

• On-page SEO checklist
• Technical SEO checklist
• Website SEO optimization
• Indexing
• Internal linking
• Canonical tags
• Core Web Vitals

Those terms belong together because they support the same topic.

What you should avoid is repeatedly inserting the exact keyword into every paragraph.

Search engines need context. Readers need useful content.

Keep the writing naturalIf the writing feels unnatural because of SEO, the optimisation has gone too far.

Three basic elements should be reviewed on every important page.

For this article, the title is clear immediately:

How to Do On-Page & Technical SEO:
A Step-by-Step Website Optimization Guide

A useful URL is:

/academy/on-page-technical-seo

Avoid URLs such as:

/academy/post?id=84729

A useful meta description might be:

Learn how to improve on-page and technical SEO,
including titles, internal links, crawlability,
indexing, sitemaps, canonicals and site performance.

Think of the title and description as part of the search result experience, not simply places to insert keywords.

Your page should be understandable even when somebody scans only the headings.

H1: Main Page Topic

H2: Major Section

H3: Supporting Point

H2: Next Major Section

Normally, the H1 represents the primary page topic.

H2 headings divide the article into meaningful sections, while H3 headings can break larger sections into more specific ideas.

Do not create headings just to insert keywords.

A useful heading should tell the reader what comes next. This improves readability while giving search engines clearer context around the page.

Internal links help visitors move through your website and help search engines discover relationships between pages.

Imagine a software company has these pages:

Software Development
Custom Web Development
Mobile App Development
AI Development
Academy Articles

These pages should not exist as isolated islands.

A relevant Academy article could link naturally to a service page. A service page might link to a deeper technical guide. Related articles can link to one another where useful.

Anchor text should also describe the destination.

Internal linking is one of the simplest ways to improve website SEO while also improving navigation for actual users.

Now we move from on-page optimisation into the technical foundation.

A page cannot generate organic search traffic if search engines cannot properly access or index it.

Check whether important pages:

• Return a valid HTTP response
• Are reachable through internal links
• Are not unintentionally marked noindex
• Are not inaccessible behind authentication
• Are not incorrectly blocked from crawling
• Point to the correct canonical URL

Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool is particularly useful here.

It can help you understand whether Google has discovered a page, whether it is indexed and which canonical Google recognises.

Duplicate or very similar pages can sometimes exist under multiple URLs.

/product
/product?source=facebook
/product?source=email

If these URLs represent essentially the same content, a canonical tag can indicate which version you consider the primary one.

<link rel="canonical"
      href="https://example.com/product">

Canonicalisation helps consolidate duplicate URL signals and gives search engines a clearer indication of the preferred version.

Your important pages should generally use consistent internal links and canonicals rather than sending conflicting signals.

These two files solve different problems.

A simple robots.txt example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/

Be careful with broad rules. One incorrect instruction can prevent crawlers from accessing important parts of a website.

Also remember that blocking crawling through robots.txt is not the same thing as reliably requesting that a URL remain out of Google's index.

For most sites, the sitemap should update when pages are published or removed and should be submitted through Google Search Console.

Technical SEO is not only about whether a page can be indexed. The website also needs to work well for visitors.

• Mobile usability
• HTTPS
• Page loading performance
• Core Web Vitals
• Intrusive popups
• Layout stability
• Broken resources
• Heavy images
• Excessive JavaScript

Core Web Vitals help measure aspects of real-world loading, responsiveness and visual stability.

But do not optimise performance simply to chase a perfect testing score.

The objective is a website that loads quickly, responds properly and allows users to reach the main content without unnecessary friction.

Structured data gives search engines additional machine-readable information about the content of a page.

Appropriate schema types might describe:

• Articles
• Organizations
• Breadcrumbs
• Products
• Local businesses
• Events

For an Academy article, Article or BlogPosting structured data may be appropriate.

Structured data should accurately represent information that genuinely exists on the page.

Adding schema does not guarantee enhanced search results, so it should not be treated as a shortcut to rankings.

Validate eligible markup before deployment and monitor issues through Search Console.