On-Page SEO: Questions To Ask Your 'Expert'

SEO is a convoluted field that can be difficult to understand as a non-expert. We have some tips on things to ask your developer or SEO expert as they change your site.

Watercolor image background with "On-Page SEO" as wording in the middle

Introduction

If you've been thinking about getting your site optimized, it's probably time. But before you start looking at the "how to" sections of Google and blogging about the merits of keyword density, let me tell you what to ask your prospective on-page SEO expert. We'll go over a bunch of questions that could help make sure your website is ready for search engine optimization, as well as give you some things to look for during an audit so that you know what (and how) to optimize on your own site.

What does an on-page SEO audit entail?

An On-Page SEO Audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your website’s current state and the steps necessary to improve it. It incorporates aspects like keyword research, title tags, headings, meta descriptions, content length and structure as well as backlinks.

From a technical perspective, an on-page audit will cover elements such as HTML code validation (to make sure you don’t have any errors), URL structure (to ensure every page has its own unique URL) and internal linking (making sure your website links internally).

Which factors impact the cost of a website audit?

The size of a website, the number of pages, and the number of links are all factors that impact the cost. The more links there are, for example, the longer it takes to crawl your site. Additionally:

Images: The more images you have on your site, the longer it will take for Googlebot to download them as part of its indexing process.
Plugins: There's no doubt that plugins can help make a site easier to manage but they also take up space and add more code to be read through by Googlebots. Remember that they impact both crawl rate and overall load time—so if you're thinking about adding new functionality (or updating an old plugin), think twice before doing so unless absolutely necessary!
Redirects: These can come in handy when transitioning from one domain name or folder structure over another but should only be used when absolutely necessary since redirects can impact crawl rate (and therefore indexing speed).

How are you going to refine my website's content and Meta Data?

This is the most important question you can ask your SEO expert!

The content on your website should be relevant and compelling, but it also needs to be well-written. This means using the right keywords in the right places, making sure all of your product pages include a full description of what’s being sold, and actually writing out descriptions for each product instead of just having bullet points. It also means making sure you have enough images attached to every page! When someone searches for something related to one of your products, they want an image that shows exactly what they’re looking at—and if there aren’t any images on page one, then someone else will win the traffic by default.

In addition to good content quality, there are still some things that need improving within meta data tags: accuracy and consistency across all pages (including social media profiles), regular updates with fresh keywords added into titles/metatags/descriptions as needed (this could mean monthly checkups or quarterly reviews), optimization toward search engines like Google & Bing (not just humans!), etc...

What is your approach to Technical SEO?

The first thing you need to do is figure out what the heck technical SEO is. If you’re not quite sure, that’s okay—it can be pretty confusing.

You see, technical SEO encompasses many different things, including how search engines crawl your site and how they index it; how users interact with your website (load time etc); and whether or not your site has any errors or accessibility issues that could hinder it from performing well in search rankings.

As a result, there are so many factors at play that it can be difficult for an expert to determine which ones are most important for improving your rankings. In my experience as an expert who does this kind of work relatively often, here are some questions you may want to ask:

Are you going to optimize my site's images?

If you're interested in optimizing images for SEO, your first step is to learn what that entails. First off, alt tags are incredibly important—they tell search engines what an image is about. If you have a picture of a cat on your page and it has no alt tag, then the search engine will just see an empty box. It won't know how to categorize your page or what content is included within it. Similarly, file names are also very important; they help Google understand which image goes with which piece of content on your website (assuming these files aren't being used randomly).

The next step is using image descriptions: if there's one thing that gets overlooked more often than any other when it comes to SEO optimization, it's this one! Image descriptions should be used whenever possible because they allow searchers who find your website through Google Images (or any other source) to click through and view all those beautiful pictures without having any idea where they came from originally (or even why). This can lead directly into sales conversions if done correctly!

Can you help me with Internal Linking?

Internal linking is a strategy that helps Google better understand your site's structure and how it works. This helps you rank higher in search results, because Google knows that your website has relevant content that users want to find.

Internal links are the backbone of the internet. They're what make it possible for us to navigate through thousands of pages on websites like Facebook, Twitter or Wikipedia without ever having to leave those sites' homepages! On internal links:

How do I link between pages on my website?
What content should I link back to?
How can I use internal links effectively?

What are we going to do to increase our site's page speed scores?

To be clear, page speed is not the end-all, be-all of SEO that some make it out to be. Google has clearly stated that it is one of the last factors it utilizes to affect rankings: if one site and another are neck-and-neck in everything else, site speed is effectively the tie breaker. That being said, site speed is an important underlying factor in your visitors' experience, so if it is slow enough to cause users to leave early, or not explore the site as much as possible, it could be playing a larger role in your search rankings.

We've written a full breakdown on technical speed upgrades for WordPress websites.

You can use tools like Google's own page speed testing software to see how your site performs. Make sure you test internal pages, such as blog posts, service pages, or other important traffic-generating pieces to ensure that they are up to snuff.

How are you approaching changes to our heading structure?

Search engines aren't perfect; they need some guidance as to what is on your page, and how it is organized. HTML - the front-end code of your site - can help guide search engines to logical endpoints by assigning specific headings. For instance, if you have a service page for roofing installation, you can use a Heading 1 (H1) tag to denote that (ie. "Check out our roofing installation services"). From there, you can use Heading 2 to denote sections within the page (ie. "Our Roofing Installation Process", "Pricing for Roofing Installation") to help search bots further.

If anything, search engines love it when websites make it easy for them to understand the content. By setting up a proper heading structure, you can ensure that all of the time and money you spent building out content doesn't go to waste.

On-page SEO will help your site rank higher, but it can be complicated.

On-page SEO is all about the content, structure and code of your site. The better it is, the higher your website will rank.

But it can be complicated. In fact, there are over 200 factors that affect how well you rank in Google search results – and some of them are difficult to understand.

On-page SEO is a huge part of getting good rankings on Google Search – but what does that actually mean? Here's what we mean when we say on-page SEO: