What is on-page SEO? An updated guide for 2026

What is on-page SEO?

So why does it matter? At the simplest level, we want people to have a good experience on our website. We want them to find everything they need, remove any blockers and eventually convert. Search engines want this too. Google in particular is very user-first, wanting people to find what they need as quickly and easily as possible. Because of that, many of the user-first on-page elements double as ranking factors we can optimise for.

What has changed in 2026 is who is reading your page first. It is no longer just a person and a crawler. AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude now sit between your page and a huge share of searchers, summarising answers before anyone clicks. Good on-page SEO is now the same work that gets you cited inside those answers, not just listed below them.

Why on-page SEO matters more, not less, in the AI era

It would be easy to assume that AI search makes on-page work pointless. The opposite is true.

Yes, the click landscape has shifted. Ahrefs has reported that AI Overviews cut click-through rates for top-ranking content by roughly 58%, up sharply from the year before. Google answers more questions on the results page itself, and a growing share of searchers go straight to a chatbot. This is the “zero-click” reality maturing into something bigger.

But here is the part that keeps on-page SEO central: AI engines do not invent their answers from nowhere. Google AI Overviews are a summary layer sitting on top of normal Google ranking. Studies have found a very high correlation, around 92%, between pages that rank in the top 10 organically and pages that get cited in AI Overviews. You cannot skip the fundamentals and leap straight to being “the answer”. Strong on-page SEO is the price of entry for AI visibility.

So the goal has widened. We still optimise to rank, and we now also optimise to be understood, trusted and quoted by machines. The industry has labels for the newer side of this work, generative engine optimisation (GEO) and answer engine optimisation (AEO), but the good news is that most of it overlaps with on-page SEO done well.

The 6 core on-page SEO elements to optimise

1. Audience-led keyword research
2. Helpful, answer-first content
3. Title tags and meta descriptions
4. A clean heading structure
5. E-E-A-T signals
6. Links, URLs, site structure and images

Let’s work through them.

Start from the ground: what does your audience actually want?

To write good, helpful and unique content, you have to start inside the mind of your reader. And there is a concrete way to do that: keyword research.

Marketers often treat keyword research as a means to an end. Find the highest-volume terms, slap them in high-value places. But good keyword research tells you far more. It is one of the best tools you have for understanding:

• The questions people have about your goods or services
• The specific language people use to describe them
• Related topics you should cover and consider
• What matters most to your audience

Talking in your audience’s language leads to better understanding. Knowing their questions lets you answer objections before someone even has to search for them. Knowing what matters most gives you a steer on what belongs higher up the page. All of this builds a better experience and the kind of content search engines favour.

In 2026, lean into how people phrase things conversationally. AI search has pushed queries longer and more natural, and AI engines often break a single question into several smaller sub-queries behind the scenes, a behaviour sometimes called query fan-out. Content that covers a topic fully, including the obvious follow-up questions, has a much better chance of being pulled into an answer.

One practical heads-up: in late 2025 Google removed the &num=100 parameter that many SEO tools relied on to pull 100 results at once. That changed the volume and shape of the data some keyword tools report, so if your historical numbers look a little different to a year ago, that is part of why. Treat search volumes as a guide, not gospel.

Bonus tip: when researching your audience, look at discussion forums like Reddit. It is very human, and there is a lot of great unfiltered insight there. As a side benefit, those communities are increasingly surfaced inside AI answers too.

Use your research as a base for great content

On-page content

Now that you understand what readers want, deciding what to include gets a lot clearer. In each section, work in a few core keywords, but write naturally. The aim is to read well for a human, not to cram in as many keywords as possible.

Two things deserve extra attention this year.

First, answer the question early. AI retrieval systems, and Google AI Overviews in particular, weigh the opening of a page heavily. Aim to answer the primary question clearly in roughly the first 150 to 200 words, then expand. Burying the answer under three paragraphs of preamble works against both skim-readers and machines.

Second, go deep and go connected. Topic clusters and semantic SEO matter more than ever. Cover related subtopics across your site to serve different stages of the customer journey, and make sure each page demonstrates real depth rather than skimming the surface. Thin content that merely mentions a topic struggles now. The page that wins is the best page for the query, not just a page about it.

If you want to be cited by AI engines specifically, give them something worth quoting: specific numbers with sources, original research, clear definitions and consistent facts about your business across your site and other channels. Reference-grade content gets referenced.

Title tags and meta descriptions

Title tags are a moderately significant ranking factor and the first thing a user sees in the results. They tell search engines what the page is about and they shape how AI search refers to your brand. So they are worth getting right:

• Keep them to roughly 50 to 60 characters and concise, or Google may rewrite them
• Include your primary keyword, close to the beginning if you can
• Include the year for content that benefits from feeling current, technology tutorials being the classic example
• Avoid duplicate titles. Every page is unique
• Try to stand out while staying clear. Show a little personality, or use the numeral “5” if everyone else is writing “five”
• Make it engaging. Give someone a reason to choose your page
• Study the live results to understand and match intent. Ahrefs has a useful tool for this under Keywords Explorer, in the SERP Overview

Meta descriptions, unlike title tags, do not directly influence your Google rankings. Google will also rewrite them if you leave them blank or it does not like yours. For that reason, focus your effort on pages with higher traffic and search volume potential. They still matter, because they speak to the human deciding whether to click.

Some pointers for meta descriptions:

• They get cut off after roughly 120 characters on mobile and 160 on most desktops, so be concise
• You are writing for humans, so give them a reason to click. Aim for something compelling
• Keep words and sentences simple. Most people are skimming
• A short, snappy first sentence is ideal
• Match intent. If they want information, summarise the answer. If they want to buy, give them a reason to buy from you
• Including your target keyword early helps people see the page matches their search, especially as Google bolds the matched term

Headings

A good heading structure is great for readers. An intuitive layout lets people skim and find what they came for. Search engines and AI tools also use heading tags to understand what a page covers and how in-depth it goes, which feeds directly into whether your content is easy for a machine to parse and quote.

A clean structure nests logically:

• <H1> for the page’s main title, ideally just one. For example “T-shirts”
• <H2> for subtopics, the subheadings. For example “Blue t-shirts”
• <H3> for a subheading under an H2. For example “Blue t-shirts with collars”
• <H4> nested under an H3, and so on

It sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many pages have a muddled mix of headings. Headings are no longer the heavyweight ranking factor they were in the early 2000s, but they remain a strong signal of good user experience, and increasingly a signal of well-structured content that AI engines can lift answers from cleanly.

Include elements of E-E-A-T to improve trustworthiness

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) has kept climbing in importance. Search engines and AI tools want to show searchers correct information, and Google’s March 2026 core update leaned even harder on demonstrable first-hand experience and credible sourcing. This matters most for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics, so take extra care with anything touching health, finance or safety.

Some ways to strengthen trust in Google’s eyes, and in the eyes of the AI engines pulling from your pages:

• Publish your own research, testing and case studies. Share genuine first-hand experience
• Cite studies and content from reputable sources
• Add “About the Author” sections to demonstrate expertise
• Link to the author’s profile, where credentials and qualifications are clearly laid out
• Build brand authority through quality content and backlinks from other sites
• Work to earn a positive reputation
• Make contact information and customer service very easy to find

A useful rule of thumb for 2026: if five pages explain the same idea in similar words, the one with real experience, proprietary data and a named, credible author is the one that earns the ranking and the citation.

Using links, internally and externally

Where it adds real information, link to related places on your own site. Internal linking helps readers, crawlers and AI tools discover and understand your site. It also signals which pages you consider most important, by how often you link to them, and spreads authority around the site.

It is not enough to link only to yourself, though. Google has said that linking out to other sites can create a more valuable experience for users. Choose those links carefully and send people to relevant, authoritative sources.

Whichever type of link you use, write descriptive anchor text rather than “click here”.

Consider your URL structure, but site structure matters more

This is an old faithful. A clean, user-focused URL has never gone out of style. Google uses URLs to discover content and as a supporting clue to understand a page and where it sits on your site. When you write one, make it descriptive and easy to read. Avoid unnecessary words, dates and numbers to keep it simple. And if you ever change a URL, always set up a 301 redirect.

More important than the URL itself is your site hierarchy, the relationship between your pages. This is often called click depth. Pages that take fewer clicks to reach from the homepage tend to carry more weight. A shallower structure is usually preferred, because it reflects how both users and crawlers move through your site. This is also where good navigation design earns its keep, though what counts as “good” depends entirely on the type of site you run.

The cherry on top: optimised images that support your content

Images add a lot of value. They compress a great deal of information into very little cognitive load, they are highly shareable and they bring extra traffic through image search. As AI search becomes more multimodal, clear and well-labelled images also help machines understand your page. When you add one, consider:

• Use descriptive file names to give Google context. For example blue-tshirt.jpg rather than IMG_1532.jpg
• Write clear, descriptive alt text. This improves accessibility for people using screen readers, which is genuinely important, and it gives search engines and AI tools another clue about the image so they know where to rank and cite your content
• Compress images for faster loading

A quick word on freshness

One small habit that pays off in 2026: keep evergreen pages visibly current. A clear “Last updated” date, refreshed statistics and current examples all signal freshness to both readers and AI systems, which favour recent content for fast-moving topics. Adding a short “What changed this year” note to a perennial article is an easy win. (This very guide is a good example.)

Putting this into practice

Crafting a page that is user-first, AI-ready and actually converts is a lot to juggle. The encouraging part is that almost everything above is the same work pulling double duty: rank well for people, and you are most of the way to being trusted and quoted by the AI engines too.

If you have questions about any of this, or you would like a hand putting it into practice, get in touch with our team of experts.