What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO covers everything you can control on a single page to help it rank: the title, meta description, headings, content, images, internal links, and structured data. It's the most cost-effective SEO work you can do - no link building, no waiting for backlinks, just edits to the page itself.
The 18-point checklist
Title and metadata
- Unique title tag under 60 characters with primary keyword near the front. Generate with our free meta generator.
- Meta description 140-160 chars, written for click-through, includes keyword once.
- One H1 per page that includes the primary keyword.
- Canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL.
- Open Graph and Twitter Card tags for social previews.
Content quality
- Match search intent - informational query gets a guide, transactional gets a product page.
- Comprehensive topic coverage - answer the primary question plus 5-10 sub-questions.
- Original perspective - first-party data, screenshots, examples Google can't find anywhere else.
- Skimmable structure - short paragraphs, lots of H2/H3, bullet lists, bold key terms.
- Updated regularly - refresh top pages every 6-12 months. Stale dates kill rankings.
Technical on-page
- Fast LCP (< 2.5s) - preload hero image, defer non-critical JS.
- Mobile-friendly - responsive layout, no horizontal scroll, tap targets > 44px.
- Image alt text describing the image, not stuffed with keywords.
- Modern image formats (AVIF/WebP) with explicit width and height.
- Structured data (Article, Product, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList) via our schema generator.
Links
- 2-5 internal links to the page from related existing content, with descriptive anchor text.
- 3-8 outbound links to authoritative sources where genuinely useful.
- Clean URL slug - short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, includes the keyword once.
How to audit a page
Run our free SEO audit tool against any URL - it checks all 18 items automatically and ranks fixes by impact.
On-page SEO is the one part of SEO where you're playing offense alone. No competitor can stop you. Every page deserves the checklist.
Keep learning
Got a quick question instead of a deep-dive? Browse the content & keywords section of our SEO FAQ for short, plain-English answers - or jump to the full SEO FAQ hub. When you're ready to apply this to your own site, run a free SEO audit and we'll prioritize the fixes that matter most.