On-Page SEO: Headings, URLs and How Much to Write

On-page SEO is everything on the page itself that helps people and search engines understand it. The title tag and meta description are what people see in Google. This guide covers the rest of the page: the headings that form its outline, the address it lives at, and how much to write.

None of these is a big ranking factor on its own. Together they decide whether a visitor finds the answer quickly and whether Google can tell what the page is about.

Headings: the outline of the page

Readers skim headings to decide whether to stay. Screen readers use them to jump between sections. Search engines use them to understand what each part of the page covers.

HTML has six heading levels, <h1> to <h6>, but most pages need three:

• H1: the title of the page, what the whole page is about.
• H2: the main sections.
• H3: sub-sections inside an H2.

Think of a book: the H1 is the book's title, the H2s are chapters, and the H3s are sections within chapters.

H1 Bathroom Waterproofing in Ahmedabad
  H2 Signs your bathroom needs waterproofing
  H2 Our waterproofing methods
    H3 Chemical coating
    H3 Membrane waterproofing
  H2 Prices
  H2 Frequently asked questions

One H1 per page

Use one H1 that clearly states the page's topic, usually close to the title tag. Google has said it can handle several H1s, but one clear H1 makes the structure obvious. Common problems:

• No H1 at all, because the theme styles the page title with a <div> or <p>.
• The logo as the H1 on every page, so every page has the same main heading.
• Several H1s, because a page builder uses H1 for every big piece of text.

Don't skip levels

Go down one level at a time: H1, then H2, then H3. Choose the level for the structure, then style it with CSS to look however you want.

Rankdesk's blog category pages broke this rule when I first built them. The page had an H1, like "Technical SEO guides", and each guide card used an H3 for its title, because H3 was the right size visually. There was no H2 between them. Rankdesk's own audit flagged it. The fix was a single H2, "All Technical SEO guides", above the cards. It's hidden visually because the page already makes the grouping obvious, but it's there for screen readers and crawlers.

Write useful headings

• Make them descriptive. "How much does waterproofing cost?" tells the reader what's below. "Section 2" doesn't.
• Use related phrases naturally. H2s are a good place for the other ways people search, like "terrace waterproofing cost". Don't force the same phrase into every heading.
• Questions work well, especially when the answer follows straight after. A question heading with a short, direct answer underneath is the format Google most often uses for featured snippets and "People also ask".
• Keep them short. A heading is a signpost, not a paragraph.

Headings aren't for styling

Don't use a heading tag just to make text big, like a phone number, a slogan or a "Call now!" banner. The reverse is also a problem: section titles that are only bold paragraphs look like headings but don't work as headings for screen readers or search engines.

Themes also put headings where you wouldn't expect: the site name, sidebar widget titles like "Recent posts", and footer columns. These add noise to the outline. Check a few page types (home, product, blog post) because each template can behave differently.

URLs: the page's address

Compare two addresses:

• https://example.com/index.php?id=4821&cat=7
• https://example.com/sarees/red-banarasi-silk

The second tells you what the page is before you open it. People see URLs in search results, browser tabs and shared links. They're a small ranking factor, but they affect trust and clicks, and they're hard to change later, so get them right at the start.

Rules for good URLs

1. Describe the page in a few words. /bathroom-waterproofing, not /services/our-premium-waterproofing-solutions-for-your-home.
2. Use hyphens between words. Not underscores (red_silk_saree) or joined words (redsilksaree).
3. Lowercase only. /Sarees and /sarees can be different pages.
4. Include the main phrase once. /silk-sarees/silk-saree-red-silk adds nothing.
5. Drop filler words like "and", "the" and "of" when the URL still reads well.
6. Leave dates out of guides. /blog/2026/10/how-to-choose-a-saree makes a lasting guide look old next year. Rankdesk's guides all live at /blog/topic-name for this reason.
7. Keep folders shallow. /sarees/banarasi/red-silk shows the hierarchy. Two or three levels are plenty.
8. Use English letters for the main site. Hindi or Gujarati characters work, but they turn into long codes like %E0%A4%B8... when copied and shared. A transliterated slug such as /hi/silk-saree is easier. See the Hindi and Gujarati keywords guide.

Setting URLs on your platform

• WordPress: Settings, Permalinks, choose "Post name", then edit each page's slug in the editor.
• Shopify: the URL handle is in each product's search engine listing section.
• Wix and Squarespace: edit the slug in each page's SEO settings.

Changing a URL that already ranks

Only change it if the old one is truly bad. When you do, add a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one, update your internal links and sitemap, and check the old address lands on the new one in one step. The canonical tags and redirects guide explains how.

How much to write

"How many words should a page have?" Ask five people and you'll hear 300, 1,000, 2,000 and "as many as possible". Google has said plainly that word count isn't a ranking factor, yet thin pages really do struggle. Both are true.

Google ranks pages by how well they meet the searcher's need. "Shree Textiles phone number" needs one line. "How to start a saree business" needs a detailed guide. Long pages often rank well because covering a topic properly takes words, not because Google counts them.

Why thin pages struggle

• They often don't answer the question fully, so people go back to the results.
• They give search engines few clues about what they cover.
• Hundreds of near-empty pages, such as product pages with one line, or city pages where only the city name changes, can make a whole site look low-value.

I learned the last point on this site. Rankdesk started with 35 short guides of around 600 words, several covering neighbouring topics like robots.txt, noindex and sitemaps separately. Each was accurate, but none was complete, and readers had to open three guides to solve one problem. I merged related guides into longer ones that answer the whole question, and redirected the old addresses to them.

Deciding how much to write

1. Look at what ranks. Search your phrase and open the top results. If they're detailed guides, a short page won't compete. If they're product pages with a short description and many photos, that's the format people want.
2. List the questions the page must answer. For a service page: what it is, who it's for, how it works, how long it takes, what it costs, why choose you, what to do next. Answering each one sets the length naturally.
3. Cut what doesn't help. Long introductions, repeated points and filler written to reach a number make the page worse.

Typical lengths by page type

These aren't targets, just the range for pages that do their job:

• Contact page: short. Details, a map and directions.
• Product page: enough to describe the product fully: material, size, use, care and delivery, plus photos and reviews. Often 150 to 400 words of unique text.
• Service page: usually 400 to 1,000 words, with photos of real work.
• Category page: a short introduction above the products, and a buying guide below if it helps.
• How-to guide: as long as the steps require, often 1,000 to 2,000 words.

What matters more than length

• The answer comes early. Give it near the top, then the detail.
• First-hand experience. Real photos, prices, examples and mistakes you've seen. Google's guidance puts weight on content that shows real experience.
• Easy to scan. Clear headings, short paragraphs, lists and tables.
• Accurate and current. Update prices, rules, dates and screenshots, and show when the page was last updated.
• Original. Copied manufacturer descriptions or competitors' text give Google no reason to prefer your page.

Fixing a thin page

1. Add the questions customers ask about it, with clear answers.
2. Add specifics: price ranges, timelines, materials, areas served.
3. Add proof: photos, a short example of real work, reviews.
4. Add a short FAQ section at the end.
5. Link to related pages and guides (see the internal linking guide).

On-page checklist

• One H1 that describes the page, close to the title tag
• H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, with no skipped levels
• Descriptive headings that use related phrases naturally
• No headings used only for styling, and no fake headings made of bold text
• A short, lowercase, hyphenated URL with no date
• Enough text to answer every question a customer would ask, and no filler
• Real photos and specifics, and a visible "updated" date on guides

The Rankdesk SEO audit shows a page's full heading outline, flags missing or multiple H1s and skipped levels, shows the final URL after any redirects, and warns when a page has very little visible text.