Updated:
by Wayne Smith
On-page SEO is fundamentally about establishing content relevancy. Without demonstrating relevance to a specific topic or keyword, a page is unlikely to appear in search engine results. While backlinks are undeniably important for SEO, their primary function is to amplify the relevance of content that is already optimized.
Solution Smith
Solution Smith specializes in on-page optimization, a key component of search engine optimization (SEO) within the broader field of digital marketing. For a website to be profitable, on-page SEO should be implemented after thorough marketing and keyword research.
What Is an Emergent Ranking Factor?
An emergent ranking factor is something that surfaces naturally based on how a system is designed to function. It’s not directly programmed—relevant content rises to the top because the system is built in a way that makes that happen.
When it comes to search engines, relevance and content quality are emergent ranking factors that should cause content to rise to the top.
Search Engines Can't Read Content
Search engines don’t actually "read" content like humans do. Instead, they look at signals—things like structure, clarity, topic coverage, and how people interact with the page. If a page checks all the right boxes, relevance naturally surfaces.
User/Search Intent Algorithms (like BERT or RankBrain)
There are four main types of search intent: Informational, Navigational, Commercial, and Transactional.
Micro-intents are more specific. These include content types like local listings, video results, file downloads, image galleries, and interactive tools (like calculators).
For effective SEO, the page should align with the user’s intent. Search engines use advanced algorithms to predict what people are really looking for—and they may test different types of results to see what performs best. Navboost is becoming a key algorithm used to A/B test various pages and content types based on user engagement signals.
Navboost: User Engagement SERP Refinement
Keyword Optimization
AI can improve search by helping search engines better understand content relevance. While it's still expensive to implement at scale, the cost is rapidly becoming more manageable.
Basic keyword optimization—though evolving—remains a core part of effective SEO. For the long game, using semantically related keywords and entities can help keep content evergreen and contextually relevant over time.
Even with AI, the page title, description, and above-the-fold content remain critical places for using keywords. People still scan these elements to judge relevance and decide what to click—and AI learns from those interactions.
The page title and description shown in search results directly impact a site's click-through rate. They should clearly reflect the search intent to attract the right audience.
LEDE: Above the Fold, Early in Content, and Predominant
Above-the-fold content and keyword prominence are key concepts in both website design and SEO. Query terms—or semantically related phrases—should be visible and noticeable within seconds of landing on the page. Typically, this means including them in both the main headline and the opening paragraph, often referred to as the LEDE. LEDEs help both users and search engines quickly understand the topic and relevance of the content.
Page Structure
Search engines have been analyzing page structure for a long time—going back as far as Inktomi (also known as HotBot). They look at where important keywords appear on the page and how prominently they’re used, such as in larger or more visible elements.
Headers, footers, and sidebars can be isolated from the main content by inspecting the page structure.
Today, search engines can even evaluate relevance in PDFs and digital books by using structural cues like headings, layout, and formatting.
Even without being able to read Romanian, structural clues in the document allow someone to identify its relevance to terms like "vizual," "Relevanța," and "Motoare de căutare" or "visual," "relevance," and "search engines." These cues are present in the headline and subheadings.
Mobile Friendliness
Today, Google renders pages as they appear on mobile devices to evaluate visual structure and usability. Ensuring that your pages display correctly on mobile is critical for on-page SEO and overall relevance.
Above-the-Fold Relevancy
Above-the-fold content optimization
Search engines prioritize content that appears above the fold—the portion of the page visible without scrolling—because it's the first thing users see. If this content doesn’t immediately appear relevant, users are more likely to bounce back to the search results.
Engaging page titles, crafted by researching what's already ranking in search, can improve click-through rates. Google’s NavBoost system uses this data—along with time on page, repeat visits, and navigational intent—as signals for refining search result rankings.
Supplemental Content
Supplemental content refers to elements like PDFs, images, links, videos, audio, and other media that enhance the main content. This content is often embedded from its own URL or hosted externally.
Image relevance can be improved using the alt attribute, descriptive file names, and structured data (schema). A well-optimized image contributes to the page’s overall relevance, and in turn, the page provides context that improves the relevance of the image itself.
Image SEO – Relevancy Optimization
Supplement content like links to other web pages or PDFs may be self-explanatory, but using schema on the page containing the content can unambiguously provide a clue to their relevance. Adding relevancy to the page and citation.
Structured Data (Schema)
Schema markup added to a page helps define its relevance by providing structured signals about the content. However, it's not necessary to include full schema markup for externally embedded supplemental content.
To avoid content cannibalization and maintain topical focus, it's best to include only the schema that directly supports the on-page content’s relevance to the supplemental media—whether that’s an image, video, or another embedded resource.
The relevance of the embedded resource itself is determined (upon confirmation) by the combination of all references to it across the web, including its own schema and how it's linked or cited elsewhere.
Schema types such as citation and mentions accept the CreativeWork property, which can include attributes like description, about, author, and more to clearly express content relevance.