On-Page SEO Made Simple – How to Climb to the Top of Google?

Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Alex Lindley and Rita Cidre for their valuable course on SEMRUSH in shaping the research and insights of this article.

Do you want your website to climb higher on Google without burning your hard-earned money on ads?

The secret lies in on-page SEO.

By fine-tuning elements like keywords, meta tags, and image optimization, you’re not just making your site search-friendly—you’re making it user-friendly too.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the essentials of on-page SEO, from smart keyword research to applying EEAT principles, so you can boost visibility, attract the right audience, and rank where it truly matters.

What is On-Page SEO and Why Should You Care? 

On-Page SEO is all about making your website understood by both search engines and humans.

Your site should be able to speak two languages clearly: human and algorithm. Content discoverability depends on search engine rules, and we need to play by those rules. Otherwise, your site will come up as an amazing restaurant that nobody can find because it’s not present anywhere on the map.

Search engines predominantly want what most business owners want, which is connecting the right audience with businesses that provide value. Their business model mostly depends on that!

For example, you recently decided to spend the night at your best friend’s place. 

And you suddenly realize, they use air humidifiers in their homes. Since, you are planning to spend the night & you’re a health conscious soul; you instinctively want to search up about it on Google. 

You asked them whether they run the humidifier on just water or they also pour essential oils? 

They tell you, they use Lavender. 

And just like that, your query that you will search up on Google will be: 

“Are lavender-based essential oils in air humidifiers safe for long-term exposure?”

Here’s what Google responds back with: 

Here we can see Healthline appearing at the top searches.

Let’s go a bit deeper to study how they have structured the content? 

And what’s really making Healthline’s info on this particular topic rank at the top! 

Here’s what we found; this article really ranks well on Google because it fully satisfies the search intent by acting as a one-stop guide to essential oil safety, covering topical, internal, aromatherapy, pregnancy, and child-related use along with risks and precautions. It’s backed by strong E-A-T signals — expert authorship, medical review, credible sources — and structured with clear, scannable sections, lists, and FAQs that boost user experience and snippet potential. 

You can check the complete article here. 

Your Roadmap to Better Rankings

Analyze Your Site for On-Page SEO 

Without a roadmap, you may struggle with ranking your website atop in searches. 

If you don’t know what’s working and what’s not, you’re missing the big picture in search engine marketing. The best way to do that is by analyzing your site using an SEO analyzer. 

It will provide you with a detailed insight on what on-page SEO elements are missing. 

Set the HTML Tags 

Why is setting the HTML tags important for your website? 

When sending a website live, or publishing a post or a web page, Google sends out crawlers to read the web page. They don’t technically read the human-written content; they read the HTML code of your website. Therefore, anything that encloses within the HTML tag is what Google recognizes. 

Your first step to ranking your website is to add relevant HTML tags to your website’s meta data. Start with writing a befitting meta title and meta description for your specific article. Besides writing optimal meta information, you also need to write a slug well-optimized with your primary keyword. 

Pro Tip: “When writing your website’s slug, make sure the words are separated with hyphens & not underscores.”

Your slug would appear as:

https://rankhive.ae/what-is-technical-seo/

And not like: 

https://rankhive.ae/whatistechnicalseo/

https://rankhive.ae/what_is_technical_seo/

There are also Alt tags which you need to add to the images on your specific article. 

Every image that you upload on your website, make sure there’s an alt tag pre-defined within the images. This way, the images are better optimized on relevant keywords for Google to recognize them. 

Search the Best Keywords  

No content becomes discoverable until it is optimized on the right keywords.  

Since, our search was specific to “essential oils safety,” I searched the following query, “are essential oils safe” on the UberSuggest free tool. 

The tool gave me the search volume and the geographical location with the most searches.

I also learned the SEO difficulty for the specified keyword.

The “Paid Difficulty” for the page was 2, while the cost per click (CPC) was $0.05. This data helped me decide whether I want to run ad campaigns on this keyword for awareness or consideration.

Furthermore, I found a Search Volume History chart that gave me complete data on how the content gains exposure over time. My particular query started getting hits around March 2025 and climbed decently.

I also found plenty of other keyword ideas to map within my specific content. Most of these keywords showed up as suggestions, questions, prepositions, and even comparisons with specified search volumes.

Last but not the least, I found interesting content topic ideas that performed well with estimated visits, backlinks, and social shares.

All of this data gave me complete insight into how I can optimize my content to rank better in searches.

Writing & Implementing Meta Title, Description & H1 

Back in the days, you needed to have a flair to write… just to write meta titles and descriptions that actually rank. Fast forward to today, we have AI writing assistants to help you craft the perfect metadata. 

In my case, I have used ChatGPT to create my meta title for the article.

Since my query was related to Essential Oils, I wrote a relevant prompt and asked ChatGPT to provide 5 meta title options to complement my article. Here’s what ChatGPT delivered: 

The one particular title that really clicked was “Are Essential Oils Safe for Daily Use? What to Know”.

Since, Meta Title alone won’t cut it, I will also need to add a Meta Description to go with it. 

Here’s a befitting meta description which I tweaked a little after prompting ChatGPT to create one. 

“Discover if essential oils are safe for daily use. Learn about risks, benefits, and safety tips for skin, kids, pregnancy, and aromatherapy.” 

Pro Tip: “Meta descriptions don’t play a central role in ranking; however, they do describe what the content topic is actually about.”

Last but not the least, we need to ensure the keyword is also creatively optimized within the H1 title tag. 

Writing Good Content 

Search engines have become incredibly smart. They now understand the value of good content. Google is one of them — a search engine that favors content created for the people, by the people. 

However, with the rise of AI and the abundant use of AI tools to create content, it has become a challenge to produce content that feels personalized, engages users, and delivers real experience.

So, what approach should one take to create valuable content?

The first step should be to understand the user’s search intent. According to SEO, there are four different types of search intent that users rely on when making a query. These keywords are categorized as: 

• Informational
• Commercial
• Transactional 
• Navigational 

In our specific case, our query was a long-tail keyword: “Are lavender-based essential oils in air humidifiers safe for long-term exposure?” which falls within the informational category.

By searching this particular keyword, we came across a number of articles covering whether essential oils were safe or not. The bottom line is this: your content must include the relevant keyword to match the user’s search intent; only then will it be optimized to appear in Google’s top searches.

Meeting search intent is only the tip of the iceberg — the real deal comes later. The part of the iceberg submerged under the ocean is how strategically you map those keywords within the body of your content.

The real art of on-page SEO lies in how effectively you map the keyword. 

When placing them, make sure your content makes sense to both readers and search engines.

Often, people run into trouble when they add the keyword too many times within the content. The overuse of keywords is what we call a black-hat SEO tactic known as keyword stuffing. 

Search engines are sophisticated enough to now understand the context and relevance. The key here is to strike a balance between the keyword placement & the content flow. 

Pro Tip: “Add keywords in your subheadings and headings but they may appear naturally & strategically.”

Meet the EEAT 

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Let’s explore why the EEAT principle matters. Google’s most important product till date is its Search Engine. Google wants customers to receive valuable information—content that makes them trust Google more than any other source delivering ineffective or incomplete details.

To ensure Google provides the most valuable content to its viewers, it performs a Search Quality Test. This is where Google hires evaluators to go through the content and check if it meets the guidelines Google has laid down to ensure content is reliable, relevant, and optimized for users.

Experience – Quality content reflects the creator’s first-hand experience with the subject matter. This means the insights shared aren’t just theory—they’re tested, practical, and authentic, which makes the content far more engaging and relatable.

Expertise – Content must demonstrate a strong level of knowledge in the topic. Search Quality Evaluators often check whether the content is written with depth, credentials, and qualifications to establish that the information isn’t surface-level but backed by proven knowledge. For instance, someone searching for financial advice would trust certified professionals more than random unverified blogs.

Authoritativeness – Beyond experience and expertise, content must show recognition from the broader community. This could mean being cited by reputable sites, linked in industry publications, or endorsed by experts in the field. Authoritativeness signals that the content creator or brand is a go-to source for accurate information, not just another voice in the noise.

Trustworthiness – At the end of the day, credibility is everything. Content that’s transparent, fact-checked, and free of misleading claims earns trust. Including proper references, maintaining accuracy, and presenting information with integrity ensures readers rely on it without hesitation. For example, a healthcare article without medical disclaimers or credible sources would never rank high in Google’s eyes, no matter how well-written it is.

Final Thoughts – On-Page SEO Is Your Launchpad

On-page SEO isn’t some mystical hack, it’s about making your site easy for both people and search engines to understand. From structuring clean HTML tags to optimizing keywords with intent, from crafting meta data that clicks to writing content that actually serves users, each step is a piece of the bigger puzzle.

The sites that win on Google are the ones that balance discoverability with credibility – backing up every claim with EEAT signals and ensuring content feels personal, useful, and authentic.

If you’ve made it this far, you already know the secret: SEO success doesn’t come from chasing shortcuts, it comes from consistency, clarity, and user-first strategy. So start small—analyze your site, optimize your pages, and map your keywords with intent. Every tweak you make today is one step closer to Google’s first page tomorrow.

Now the ball’s in your court: will you let your site stay invisible, or are you ready to fine-tune it into a ranking powerhouse?