Everyone is in a lather about AI-driven search, and how it’s affecting SEO. Or maybe it’s called GEO or AIO or optimising for LLMs or ‘discoverability’ or ‘getting found everywhere’.
Whatever. At the core of all this is, whether it’s a human or a robot searching, on-page SEO and relevancy is more important than ever before. Up to this point, you may have been optimising for page rank and clicks. But now, you are also optimising for brand discovery.
This means not only making your content easy to scan and understand, but also sending signals to Google’s (or other) AI that you are a trustworthy, authoritative source that it can cite in overviews at the top of the search page or in response to a query.
Here’s how to go about it.
Optimising for search engines
Thanks to AI, search engines (and especially Google) have evolved at pace over the past year (or even week!). This obviously presents new challenges, but the basic techniques for on-page SEO still hold strong.
Remember: EEAT
Once, it was just simple EAT – Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – the three key quality indicators that Google used to assess online content. These have traditionally been gauged by looking at the depth of the content, any credentials attributed to the author, the website’s overall reputation and often number of backlinks to a page.
In 2022, Google added an extra E for Experience to make ‘EEAT’. This means it now also looks for the content creator’s firsthand involvement or story around the topic discussed. To learn more about website authority, it’s worth checking out Ahrefs’s concise but thorough guide.
Essential on-page SEO tactics to get your site seen
With on-page SEO, the basics still matter. If you nail all the following items, then you will have laid solid foundations for more advanced techniques and AI searches.
Keyword research
Use Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs and Answerthepublic to find words and terms/phrases around the keyword you want to rank for, and include them in your text.
A tool like Ubersuggest is also invaluable when it comes to Keyword Gap Analysis – seeing what keywords your competitors are getting traffic for, but you’re not. This will give you a list of hot topics you can use for future articles.
Target keyword positioning
Make sure to include your keyword in your page title tags, meta description, URL, header tags (H1, H2, etc), image alt text and naturally throughout the content, so Google knows exactly what your article is about.
Relevant subheadings
As well as featuring your keyword(s), are your H2s and H3s also dealing with related topics or queries? This will help your content feature in searches for more niche angles around your subject keyword so that you show up semantically. You’ll get plenty of ideas for these from Answerthepubic.com.
Clear structure and scannable layout
This is important for both AI page crawlers and human readers alike. As you work your way through your blog topic, divide the content up into suitable sections, each with a clear sub-heading. This helps readers to easily understand the gist of your article at a glance, and signals to AI that your content is accessible.
Internal linking
Adding references in the form of links to other helpful content on your site really helps both to back up your article and signal your expertise, authority and trustworthiness on the subject (EAT again). For example, as well as wondering how to do on-page SEO, you may also be wondering about a simple, no-jargon, basic approach to SEO inspired by the KLF, so I’ve linked to an informative article in that key text.
External links
Include links to other high-authority online sources to bolster your page’s trust signals. For example, to augment this blog post you’re reading on on-page SEO, we can link to this comprehensive on-site SEO article from Moz, who are well-established and respected in this field. And if you’re wondering about the return on investment of SEO, there’s another external link to an informative article on the subject. Just make sure that clicking it opens a new window, so that readers don’t entirely navigate away from your page.
Optimised media
As well as better-written, well-structured content that goes deeper into the topic than your competitors, you also need to include images or video to help your page be seen as useful. Google knows people consume visual information more quickly, so will reward your page if you feature it. This helps especially with AI overviews.
Schema markup
OK, this isn’t completely on-page, but it is something easy to add in the backend as you or your client is uploading the content, and it will help a lot with AI SEO. Schema markup is a short piece of code you add to your header section that tells Google and other search engines what your page is about. It’s like a clear signpost. You can go to Schema.org, search on your type of content and get the schema to copy and paste.
In a WordPress site, you simply paste it into the ‘header scripts’ section in the CMS. Want a quick shortcut instead of searching and wondering what categories to include? Just show an AI your article and ask it to generate the schema for you.
Don’t just optimise for machines – SEO is for humans, too
In the rush to make sure content ticks all the right boxes to get seen by search engines, it’s easy to overlook one simple fact: machines don’t buy your product or book a call. Humans do.
For effective on-page SEO, think less about injecting keywords and proper language, and go all-in on making your content conversational and friendly. You might find that it’s easy to include your target keyword(s) naturally in the text anyway if you write as if talking to a friend.
Conversational text has two big pay-offs:
- Being relatable helps you build a connection with your reader.
- AI likes it, too. As people talk to AI using more questions and whole sentences, this has spread to search queries. And so Google and its AI favour content that responds in the same way.
And remember, to increase your chances of a result from your page, you’ve got to include a call-to-action (CTA). You’d be surprised how many writers miss that bit out. People need signposts for what to do next, or they wander off.
Your handy on-page SEO content checklist
Run your eyes quickly down this list before you hit ‘Publish’. Have you got everything covered?
- Keyword research
- Target keyword placement
- Relevant subheadings
- Clear structure and scannable layout
- Internal links
- External links
- Evidence of experience and expertise
- Optimised images & media
- CTA included
Summary
While traditional on-page SEO is still alive and kicking, you need to take a few more steps than before to ensure your content is seen as useful, relevant and authoritative by Google’s AI. These days, the game isn’t only about ranking high in search results. It’s also about using your content to work with AI and position your brand so that you show up for queries all around a customer’s decision-making process.
Ready to take the first step to being more visible in search engines?
(and put your business and yourself forward in a way customers/users will like?)