On-Page SEO Guide
What you control directly — and what actually changes rankings
On-page SEO is everything you do on the page itself: the words, the structure, the tags, the links. It's what you can fix without waiting for backlinks or algorithm updates. Get this right first.
Start with keyword intent
Before touching a tag or paragraph, understand why someone is searching for your target keyword. Four types:
- Informational: "how does a canonical tag work" — they want to learn
- Navigational: "Google Search Console login" — they know where they're going
- Commercial: "best SEO audit tool" — comparing options
- Transactional: "buy SEO audit software" — ready to pay
A landing page optimized for "how does robots.txt work" will never rank for "buy SEO software." Match your page type to the intent.
Title tags
Put your primary keyword in the title. Front-load it when possible. 50–60 characters. That's the rule, and it's the rule for good reason: Google truncates anything longer.
Good: "SEO Audit Checklist: 12 Checks Before Every Publish"
Not good: "The Complete, Comprehensive Guide to SEO Auditing for Modern Websites in 2024"
Google rewrites titles roughly 60% of the time according to Zyppy's 2021 study. When it rewrites yours, it's telling you something. Check what it replaces and why.
Meta descriptions
No direct ranking impact. Real click-through impact. Write the meta description as an ad, not a summary. What will make someone click yours instead of the result above or below it?
150–160 characters. Include the keyword (Google bolds it when it matches the query). End with a reason to click.
Heading structure
One H1. Always. Then H2s for major sections, H3s for sub-sections within those. The heading hierarchy should tell the story of the page — if you removed everything but the headings, a reader should understand the structure.
Include your primary keyword in the H1. Secondary keywords can appear in H2s naturally. Don't force it.
Content quality signals
Google's helpful content system demotes pages that exist for search engines, not people. Practically, that means:
- ✓ Answer the question the page is supposed to answer
- ✓ Add something that's not already in the top results
- ✓ Demonstrate first-hand experience or expertise
- ✗ Padding word count with information that doesn't help the reader
- ✗ Summaries of other articles with no original insight
Keyword placement
The first paragraph matters. Include your primary keyword within the first 100 words. Not forced — if it reads awkwardly, rewrite the intro.
After that, natural usage in headings, body copy, and image alt text. Keyword density as a metric is outdated. The question is: does the page clearly cover the topic?
Internal linking
Internal links pass PageRank between your pages. Every new piece of content should link to related existing content, and vice versa. Don't publish an island.
- ✓ Descriptive anchor text (not "click here")
- ✓ Link from high-traffic pages to new content you want indexed
- ✓ Update old content to link to new relevant posts
Image optimization
Descriptive filenames. Alt text that describes the image. WebP format for size. Lazy loading for images below the fold. Every image is an SEO opportunity that most sites ignore.
Structured data
JSON-LD schema markup tells Google the context of your content. The payoff is rich results — star ratings, FAQs, breadcrumbs — which increase click-through rates significantly. Articles from Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal consistently show 20–30% CTR lifts from FAQ schema alone.
Use the type that matches your page: Article, Product, FAQPage, LocalBusiness, WebApplication. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test before you publish.
Page experience signals
Google's Core Web Vitals are part of on-page SEO now. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID/INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Check them in PageSpeed Insights and Search Console's Core Web Vitals report.
On-page changes can cause CLS problems — adding above-fold elements, changing font stacks, or injecting ads. Test after every significant layout change.
Prioritize your fixes
The audit order matters. Fix HTTPS first (it affects everything). Then title tags and meta descriptions (direct SERP impact). Then content quality. Then structured data. Technical issues like canonical and sitemap last — important, but rarely the reason pages don't rank.
Run a free audit on your page to see which of these you're missing right now.