Probably the simplest of SEO hack and yet people either over do it or not work on it properly at all.

I had a client who was ranking somewhere in the low-end of the second page of search results (16-18). Competition were some well-established service sellers but still there was room in the first page rankings as per my quick research.

Took me 15 minutes to optimize the homepage for the Seed Keyword. Fixed Meta, Title, H tags, streamlined the sequence of H tags, Image Alt texts.

Within 24 hours, the Page was ranking 3rd. Client was crying happy tears and I warned him. This is temporary, we will monitor it for 3 days. After 3 days, it dropped down and hovered between 7-8.

This confirmed my doubt that the home page Content is not upto the mark and need some quality changes.

Conclusion: FIX your On-Page Optimizations today. The basic optimization it takes less then 15 minutes to fix. Over 8 years of my experience in the industry, I can't remember the countless times I have had encountered such clients.

Thank for allowing me to vent out. Cheers.

(copy pasting my post from r/SEO for more reach)