On-page SEO Services for WordPress sites.

I can help you improve your on-page SEO resulting in higher rankings and more new business.

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On-page SEO services for WordPress sites: It’s not rocket science.

On-page SEO is all the stuff you do to your site’s content to get your pages ranking higher.

It is not rocket science, but it does need to be done in a measured and consistent way to get the best results and avoid making things worse.

I have been optimising WordPress sites for over 15 years, and my businesses generate all their new business leads through excellent on-page SEO.

One of the main issues with on-page is that there is a seemingly endless list of things to do, most of which seem insignificant, but the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.

SEO tip: On-page is one aspect of SEO that should never be done before you have a site audit, and your technical SEO is as good as it can be.

How can I help with on-page SEO for WordPress?

On-page is interesting as there’s a lot you can do yourself.

This is why I offer two options when assisting clients with on-page SEO.

Hands-on: I will do it all for you, and you can leave me to get on with it
Hands-off: I will tell you what you need to do and leave you to get on with it.

This approach means I can work with clients with quite limited budgets and who want to offload everything.

If you have 1000 images on your website with missing ALT tags, do you really want to pay me £100+ per hour to sort them out? No, you don’t—you can simply do them yourself when I tell you to (or I can write a simple function to do that for you).

Once we’ve had a chat about your objectives, we can work out the best way that I can help you – I don’t have a cookie-cutter approach to on-page like a lot of agencies do, I approach it from a creative perspective (I am a qualified designer) and this brings more to the party than following a generic approach.

What happens during an on-page SEO project?

The first thing I do is to establish a plan and a timeline.

On-page SEO projects typically last months, not days or weeks, because the results take time to surface.

It is generally accepted that on-page SEO should take three months to start delivering improvements in search results, so I have a three-month minimum on retained projects.

What I do on your site will depend on your niche, current content, the keywords you target, and how competitive they are.

The plan.

This will be unique to your objectives and will cover everything that will be delivered and when it will happen.

I usually do these in a shared spreadsheet and keep that updated with progress.

The schedule.

This is where my on-page SEO work is flexible.

With a larger budget, you will probably want more monthly hours so the work gets done quicker (but not too quickly*).

If you have a smaller budget, you might want the same amount of work done but must spread it across fewer hours monthly to keep it affordable.

Both of these approaches work for on-page, but one takes longer than the other.

*SEO tip: You don’t want to do things too quickly. SEO needs to be monitored to assess what works and what doesn’t. If you change too quickly, you will have no idea what worked and what did not.

What does on-page SEO cover?

Here’s a list of the most common aspects of on-page SEO. I will run through all of these on your site.

Content quality, length and relevance.

Content is the most important part of on-page SEO, so it has to be excellent; good content will not suffice.

Ideally, all your content will be of a high standard, but if not, I will work through each page and post on your site to improve it.

Title tags.

Page titles are crucial for on-page SEO, so as I work through the content, I will also optimise your title tags for every piece of content.

Often, as most people start with the content’s title, these are generally well written, but if they need fixing, I will sort that.

A note about your content.

I will need to change your content, and some clients get (understandably) twitchy about someone else editing their stuff. Everything comes over to you for approval before it goes live; you can give feedback and edit content changes.

Meta descriptions.

Yes, Google changes your meta descriptions to suit the search intent better, but before it does this, your meta descriptions inform the index, so these short synopses can pack a ranking punch.

As these are often considered behind the scenes, I usually just rewrite these, but if you need internal sign-off, the above point covers this.

Heading tags.

Did you know you should never follow an H3 with an H2? Most people treat headings as design elements rather than from a semantic perspective, so it’s important to get these all in order.

I am also a huge fan of one site-wide size for each heading tag – one size here and another size there suggests a scrappy approach to Google.

Keyword optimisation.

Rewriting your content often includes this process, but getting your keywords into your content is crucial.

It’s a balancing act between natural writing and optimisation and should be approached with care and creativity.

Keywords must be considered and aligned with your objects and search intent.

URL structure.

I cover this in my technical SEO service, too, but getting keywords into your URLs is a no-brainer, so much so that most clients have already done this.

URLs do two things: first, they help search engines understand the structure of your site, and second, they help reiterate the keywords in the content, so they will all need a once-over.

Internal linking.

Another one is covered by technical SEO, but here we go through the links and check that you are using optimised anchor texts, even link distribution, and a structured approach to internal linking.

Luckily, I have my own plugin for that, which makes it easier.

This process should never be automated.

Image optimisation.

I have found that using keywords in image ALT tags is a beneficial move for on-page SEO.

The technical SEO will handle the image sizes, and the on-page SEO will examine the ALT tags.

I go through them all, so if you have loads, it might take a while (or I can show you what to do, and you can do it).

Mobile-friendliness.

The technical aspects of this are covered in technical SEO, but how is your content working on mobile? Is that list styled best for mobile and what about your table data?

These considerations relate to your actual content rather than mobile behaviour, so I take a look at this too.

Page speed.

Content can affect page speed, so this is not just one for technical SEO. Do we have pages that are just too big? Can we split content if the page’s content is slowing down its load?

Are there too many images on the page or videos that can go? This stage looks at content versus speed.

User engagement.

How long do users stay on the page? Can we do anything to increase dwell time and engagement with the page (without slowing down load speed)?

Keeping people on the page longer is good for SEO (avoids bounces back to the search) and increases conversion rates.

The longer the person is on the page, the more likely you get a conversion, so this is looked at carefully.

Structured data.

You may have content that is ambiguous or complex and needs schema to help search engines better understand it.

Where required, I will look into this and suggest how best to approach adding schema to your content.

This is usually done in the theme, so development work will be required, but luckily for you, I can also do that!

External links.

It seems weird, doesn’t it? You work so hard to get users onto your page, and then you add an external link that sends them elsewhere.

SEO is built on backlinks, so adding external links to authoritative content that supports your content is a must.

External links are a crucial aspect of on-page SEO, so they must be there.

Social media.

On-page, this is about making sure your content can be easily shared. Off-page SEO also takes in social in regard to sharing links to your content across your own networks.

Social sharing can result in organic, quality backlinks, so it’s important that your content can be shared.

Conversion rate optimisation.

Not strictly on-page SEO, but if you are working hard to get visitors onto your page, you want to make damn sure they are converting.

Does your content have clear calls to action? If not, I will get that fixed up.

Tracking and reports.

SEO absolutely has to be partnered with tracking and reporting. Each keyword we are chasing gets its tracking.

Position changes and historical data are all there for you to see—they are not hidden behind complex reports, just a list of keywords and performance.

Tracking content performance.

If you don’t know where your keywords are surfacing, how do you know if your on-page SEO is any good?

I can’t stand it when SEO people provide average keyword position data or complex reports that don’t actually tell you anything.

Google Analytics is now pretty much useless unless you have a degree in Rocket Science, so I use simple apps to track your keyword performance.

One keyword can bring you enough new business.

As I work primarily with smaller businesses, one well chosen keyword that we get ranking top-three can often bring in all the new leads needed.

You will know about new business leads; they take time to service.

You have to do a quote or proposal or, at the very least, spend some of your valuable time dealing with the lead, only to discover that 60% of all the quotes, proposals or prices you give people result in nothing.

Average site conversion rates for service businesses in the UK are 2–5%.

So 3000 visits to your site could result in six new leads.

With an average quote-to-customer conversion of around 30%, this will net you two new pieces of business each month.

This all depends on what you do—box-shifters can serve 100 times as many clients as service-based businesses, but if you have 20 keywords that rank in the top ten for your 10 main services and each one delivers 3000 visits per month, this could potentially bring you all the new business you can handle (400 per month in this example).

SEO tip: Obviously, every business is different, and many businesses are all about growth, so the above example might not be right for your business, but you get the point.

Anyhow, back on topic: It’s better to carefully choose 20 keywords that will bring you new business than grab 1000 from a Google Ads keyword tool and track all of those.

I track each of these keywords for my clients, checking the positions daily and providing a transparent and easy-to-understand report.

You can see an example of this here.

There are many keywords in this report that rank well outside of the top ten, but the ones that rank 1–3 bring me more work than I can service (luckily I also run an agency, so my team do the work).

This is why I treat keywords like mini advertising campaigns as essentially that’s what they are; your organic Google listing is an advert for your business that’s exceptionally good and 100% free.

Choosing the right keywords for on-page SEO.

Making sure you choose the right keywords to rank for is half the SEO battle.

Choose your keywords carefully; otherwise, you’ll be chasing ghosts.

The keywords you want to rank for will probably be based on the services you offer (products are different; I will cover these in a separate article).

To explain this fully, I will use one of my sites, daveforeman.co.uk, which is about my WordPress development work, as an example. You’ve already seen the SEO report for this site above (download that here).

For my site, where I sell my services as a WordPress Freelance developer, the main keyword I chose to chase was ‘WordPress freelancer‘. Here’s why I chose that keyword:

Obvious intent: Someone searching this term wants to find a WordPress freelancer, so the search intent is clear, and there is an intent to hire.
Not overly competitive: It’s hard, but not impossible, to rank for this keyword.
Commercial value: Whoever uses this term wants to pay someone (me) for my service; good conversion rates.
Location flexibility: The user is not bothered by where I am; they want a solution; this is not a local search.
Niche: The searcher wants a freelancer; it’s more niche than a term like ‘WordPress developer’ (I rank 39th for that).
High conversion rate: I receive daily enquiries for this keyword, as the visitors to my site find what they searched for.

SEO tip: Something to remember here is that keyword rankings create other keyword rankings. As I rank for a ‘WordPress Freelancer‘, I also rank for ‘WordPress developer near me‘, ‘WordPress developer UK‘ and so on.

Choosing the keywords is part of common sense, research, and expectation management.

If your service is in an extremely competitive niche, and the keywords are all very competitive, it’s going to take a serious amount of work to get you ranking (it’s going to be expensive).

This makes keyword selection a fine art, and it needs to be considered carefully, but I can help you with every aspect of this process for your WordPress site.

Want more new business from organic search?

I can help you improve your on-page SEO, which can lead to increased search visibility, more traffic to your site, and more new business leads.

Get in touch to arrange an initial meeting to discuss your objectives.

Book a free 30-minute consultation call

Creativity is important for on-page SEO.

Creativity in SEO is becoming ever more important as competing businesses try to stand out in a saturated search market.

SEO is often seen as purely a technical profession, but it’s far from it.

Three types of creativity are required for effective on-page SEO:

Creating engaging, original and authoritative content.
Being clever with how this content is structured, optimised and ordered.
Employing creative thinking to select keywords.

I’ve covered these topics in more detail on my blog, so you can read more about them there, but the key point here is that you don’t want someone doing your SEO who just follows the same process for everything.

SEO tip: SEO is often seen as quite technical. It attracts people with that mindset: process-driven, box-checking, non-creative types who don’t always have creative thinking in their skillset. This lack of creativity means you get a cookie-cutter approach that will only get you so far.

Creative SEO brings a more rounded approach to your SEO campaign. Both the technical and strategy aspects are approached creatively, and this has significant benefits for driving new leads.

Search engines prioritize relevance and user satisfaction over technical precision alone, so choosing to work with a creative SEO expert can significantly increase your reach and impact.

Getting started with on-page SEO for your WordPress site.

If you want to get started improving the SEO of your WordPress site, here are the next steps.

I appreciate that choosing an SEO expert is very challenging, and you don’t always find that freelancers or agencies who rank first are the best fit for your business.

To this end, I appreciate that I have to invest some of my time talking to new clients and providing some reasons to work with me.

Here are the steps to starting an SEO project with me:

Get in touch with your current site URL
I’ll run a SEM Rush and ahrefs audit on your site (no charges)
I will share this with you with some notes and thoughts (no charges)
We’ll have a 30-minute meeting to discuss (no charges)
I will send you a non-disclosure agreement for temporary access to check your site build, theme and plugins (no charges)
I’ll report back on my findings (no charges)
I will put together a proposal for you once you have completed my WordPress SEO briefing document (no charges)
We can have another 30-minute meeting to discuss (no charges)

That’s around three hours of work I put in to show you what I can do, check if we can work together, and then prepare a proposal for you.

After this point, we follow the process at the top of this page, and that’s when I start to bill for work.

WordPress on-page SEO FAQs

I’ve covered some of the most commonly asked questions about on-page SEO below. If you have a different question, get in touch.

What exactly does on-page SEO involve for WordPress sites?

On-page SEO covers everything done directly on your website to improve its visibility on search engines, from optimising content and headings to adding relevant keywords and enhancing internal linking.

It’s all about making your content as appealing to search engines as it is to your audience, ensuring that each page contributes positively to your overall ranking.

How long will it take to see improvements from on-page SEO?

Typically, on-page SEO takes around three months to begin showing measurable results. The process is gradual as search engines re-evaluate your site, so patience is key.

I recommend a three-month minimum for retained on-page projects to give the work time to deliver the full impact.

Can I do on-page SEO myself, or do I need a professional?

You can manage certain aspects on your own, like adding ALT tags or updating content.

I offer two options: a “hands-on” approach where I handle everything or a “hands-off” one where I guide you on what needs doing, saving you time and cost. Many clients find a mix works best.

What’s included in your on-page SEO checklist?

My on-page SEO covers critical aspects such as content quality, title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, internal linking, image optimization, and mobile-friendliness.

I’ll work through these systematically to ensure your site is optimised effectively without missing any small yet impactful details.

Do you need to make changes to my content for on-page SEO?

Yes, content revisions are often necessary.

Optimising content to include keywords and improve readability enhances your rankings.

Any changes I make will be sent over for your approval before going live, so you have complete control over the edits.

Is on-page SEO only about keywords?

No, it goes beyond keywords.

While keyword optimisation is essential, on-page SEO also focuses on how content is structured, how users interact with the site, and the technical elements that improve user experience, like page speed and mobile accessibility.

Each element adds up to a more SEO-friendly site.

Why do I need a site audit before starting on-page SEO?

A site audit identifies any technical issues that may hinder your SEO efforts.

It’s vital to ensure your site is technically sound before diving into on-page SEO; otherwise, you risk optimising content that may not perform well due to underlying issues.

How flexible is your on-page SEO schedule?

I offer flexible scheduling to match your budget and priorities.

If you need faster results and have a larger budget, I can increase the hours worked each month.

Alternatively, smaller budgets can spread the work over a longer period while still achieving quality results.

What tools do you use for tracking and reporting SEO progress?

I provide transparent tracking for keyword positions and on-page performance using simple, accessible tools, not complex reports.

This way, you can see precisely how each targeted keyword performs without digging through unnecessary data.

Will I need to update my on-page SEO regularly?

Yes, on-page SEO is not a one-off task.

As search engines update their algorithms and your competitors make changes, regularly updating your on-page SEO ensures you maintain and improve your rankings.

I typically recommend revisiting on-page elements every few months to keep your site performing optimally.

Do you really need 100/100?

Sometimes, 95/100 is not enough for some clients.

You know I said I was straight-talking, right?

Often, achieving 100/100 in speed scores is damn near impossible, and in these cases, getting the score as high as it can go without rebuilding the site is all I can do.

If you have a shit website, there’s only so much I can do; as I mentioned earlier, I am an SEO expert, not a magician, so I will do everything I can, but there are limits.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

When we get your scores as good as possible, it’s time to move onto on-page SEO and stop obsessing over an extra one or two percentage points.

It’s also important to remember that many other factors could prevent your site from ranking higher than whether you score 93% or 95% on the tests.

Get over it and move on to sorting your on-page and content. An extra 2% doesn’t make a difference in ranking 20th or 2nd—it doesn’t.

A lot of SEO does not mean being perfect; it’s about being better than your competitors.