The Essential SEO Improvements Every Website Should Make

Where to Start With SEO

The good news is that the fundamentals have not changed as dramatically as the noise around them suggests. Whether your website is brand new or has been running for ten years, the same core principles determine whether it ranks well or not. This guide walks through the most impactful improvements you can make, from the basics to the areas that are increasingly shaping how Google evaluates and surfaces content in 2026.

1. Keyword Research and Search Intent

Everything in SEO starts here. Before optimising a single page, you need to understand what your potential customers are actually searching for and, critically, what they expect to find when they search for it.

Each page of your website should be built around a primary keyword and a set of related secondary keywords. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush to find the terms your audience uses most frequently and to assess how competitive those terms are.

Beyond search volume, pay attention to search intent. A user searching “best running shoes for flat feet” is in research mode. One searching “buy Brooks Ghost 16 size 10” is ready to purchase. The page you serve them needs to match what they came looking for. Google has become very good at understanding intent, and pages that answer the question people are actually asking consistently outperform those optimised purely around keyword density.

2. On-Page Optimisation

Once you know what each page is targeting, make sure the page itself signals that clearly to Google.

Title tags

Should include your primary keyword and give users a reason to click. Keep them under 60 characters to avoid truncation in search results.

Meta descriptions

Do not directly influence rankings but they do influence click-through rates. Write them to sell the page, not just describe it. Keep them under 150 characters and treat them like ad copy.

Headings

Should be structured logically with an H1 containing your primary keyword, supported by H2s and H3s that cover related subtopics. This helps both users and search engines understand the structure and scope of your content.

URLs

Should be clean, descriptive, and free of unnecessary parameters or random strings of numbers. A URL like “/seo-services-nottingham/” tells both users and Google more than “/page?id=4782/”.

Image alt text

Is frequently overlooked but matters for accessibility and SEO alike. Every image should have a descriptive alt attribute that explains what the image contains, incorporating relevant keywords where natural.

3. Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals

Great content on a poorly performing website will only get you so far. Technical SEO ensures that Google can find, crawl, and index your pages without obstacles, and that users have a decent experience when they arrive.

Core Web Vitals

Are Google’s framework for measuring real user experience on a page. There are three metrics to focus on: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint, which measures loading speed and should be under 2.5 seconds), INP (Interaction to Next Paint, which measures responsiveness to user interactions), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift, which measures visual stability, that is, whether elements jump around as the page loads). Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking factor, though they act as a tiebreaker rather than a primary signal. When content quality is comparable between two pages, the one with better performance scores will typically rank higher. Use Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights to check where your pages currently stand.

Mobile-first indexing

Is now fully in place, meaning Google primarily uses the mobile version of your website to determine rankings. If your site performs poorly on mobile, that is affecting your rankings across all devices, not just on phones.

HTTPS

Is a basic requirement. If your site is still serving pages over HTTP, that needs resolving immediately.

Crawlability

Covers fixing broken links, removing 404 pages, ensuring your sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console, and making sure your robots.txt is not inadvertently blocking important pages from being indexed. These are the kinds of issues that quietly suppress performance without any obvious symptoms.

4. Content Quality and E-E-A-T

Google’s quality guidelines centre on a framework called E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The extra E for Experience was added in December 2022, reflecting Google’s increasing emphasis on first-hand knowledge rather than just technical expertise.

In practice, this means your content should demonstrate that the person or organisation behind it actually knows what they are talking about. Author bios, clear attribution, cited sources, original insights, and real-world examples all contribute positively. Thin content, vague generalisations, and text that could have been written by anyone about anything contribute negatively.

Regularly auditing your existing content is just as important as producing new material. Pages with declining traffic, thin word counts, or outdated information are candidates for either a meaningful refresh or consolidation with related content. Duplicate content, where the same or very similar content exists at multiple URLs, should be addressed through canonicalisation or redirects, as it confuses Google and splits ranking signals.

5. Topical Authority and Content Depth

One of the most significant shifts in how Google evaluates websites over recent years is the move towards rewarding topical authority. Rather than looking at individual pages in isolation, Google increasingly assesses how comprehensively a website covers a given subject area as a whole.

A website that publishes one article on SEO is harder for Google to trust on the topic than one that covers keyword research, technical SEO, content strategy, link building, and local SEO in depth. The more completely you cover your area of expertise, the stronger the signal you send that your site is a genuine authority on the subject.

Building topical authority requires a deliberate content strategy rather than publishing articles at random. For a full breakdown of how it works and how to build it, read Eliza’s guide to what topical authority is and why your website needs it.

6. Internal Linking and Site Structure

Internal links, links between pages within your own website, serve two purposes. They help users navigate to related content, and they pass authority signals from established pages to newer or less prominent ones.

A well-structured internal linking strategy ensures that your most important pages receive links from multiple places across the site, that orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them) are addressed, and that related content is connected in a logical way that reflects the topic clusters you are building.

One effective approach to site structure is the pillar and cluster model, where a comprehensive overview page links out to more detailed posts on specific subtopics, each of which links back to the pillar. This reinforces topical authority while improving crawlability and user experience simultaneously. For more on how to build this kind of content architecture, take a look at The Power of Pillar Content.

7. Schema Markup and Structured Data

Schema markup is code added to your website that helps Google understand the context of your content, not just the words on the page. It is what powers rich results in Google Search, things like star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, product prices, and event details appearing directly in the SERP.

Beyond rich results, structured data helps Google’s systems interpret your content more accurately, which increasingly matters as AI-generated search features pull information from pages to generate summaries and answers. A page with clear, correctly implemented schema is better positioned to have its content cited and surfaced than one without it.

For a practical guide to what schema markup actually does and how to implement it without getting it wrong, read Why Schema Markup Actually Matters in 2026.

8. Optimising for AI Overviews and Generative Search

The way Google surfaces content has changed significantly with the rollout of AI Overviews in the UK in 2024. Rather than simply ranking pages, Google now generates AI-written summaries at the top of many search results, drawing on content from across the web.

This introduces a new layer to SEO that sits alongside traditional ranking work. Pages that are clearly structured, factually accurate, genuinely authoritative, and directly answer the questions users are asking are better positioned to be cited within AI Overviews. This is an area known as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), and it is becoming an increasingly important part of any comprehensive SEO strategy.

For a full guide to optimising your content for generative AI search, read How To Optimise For Generative AI Search.

9. Backlinks and Off-Page Authority

Links from other reputable websites pointing to yours remain one of the most powerful ranking signals available. A strong backlink profile signals to Google that your content is trusted and worth recommending to users.

Quality matters considerably more than quantity. A handful of links from relevant, authoritative websites in your industry carry far more weight than hundreds of links from low-quality directories. Focus on earning links through genuinely useful content, original research, partnerships, and PR rather than chasing volume through shortcuts that risk a penalty.

10. Monitoring and Measuring Performance

None of the above is useful if you are not tracking what is and is not working. Google Search Console should be your first port of call for monitoring which pages are ranking, what queries they appear for, click-through rates, and any crawl or indexing issues Google has flagged. Google Analytics provides the traffic and conversion picture. Run these alongside each other.

SEO rarely moves in a straight line. Algorithm updates, competitor activity, and seasonal trends all cause fluctuations. If you notice unexpected drops in visibility or traffic, our guide to navigating SERP volatility covers how to diagnose what is happening and respond without making things worse.

SEO Is Not a One-Time Task

Every point in this guide is an ongoing discipline rather than a box to tick once and forget. The websites that perform consistently well in organic search are the ones that treat SEO as a continuous process of improvement, monitoring, and adaptation.

If you want support in auditing where your website currently stands and building a strategy to improve it, our SEO team would be happy to help.