On-page SEO has matured well beyond "put keywords in headings." Modern ranking systems evaluate relevance through semantic embeddings, entity recognition and context modelling. Here's the checklist we use across every on-page audit.

Title & Meta (1–6)

  1. Primary keyword near the front of the title. 2. Brand at the end. 3. Title length under 60 characters. 4. Meta description that earns the click. 5. No duplicate titles across the domain. 6. Title matches the dominant search intent.

Heading Architecture (7–12)

  1. One H1 per page. 8. H1 contains the primary topic. 9. H2s define logical sections. 10. H3s subdivide H2s — never skip levels. 11. Keywords in headings serve readers first, search second. 12. Headings reflect the SERP's question pattern.

Content (13–22)

  1. Search intent aligned. 14. Topical coverage comparable to top-ranking pages. 15. Original analysis, data or perspective. 16. Author with credentials surfaced on page. 17. Date of last review visible. 18. Sources cited and linked. 19. Internal links to supporting content. 20. External links to authoritative sources. 21. Mobile-first reading experience. 22. Scannable formatting (short paras, lists, bolding).

Entity & Semantic (23–30)

  1. Primary entity clearly named. 24. Supporting entities co-occur naturally. 25. Schema markup matches content type. 26. Knowledge graph alignment. 27. Synonyms and related terms covered. 28. Topical clusters interlinked. 29. Breadcrumbs with markup. 30. Author / Organization schema present.

Technical & UX (31–47)

  1. Page indexable. 32. Canonical correct. 33. Mobile-friendly. 34. CWV in green. 35. HTTPS. 36. No render-blocking resources above the fold. 37. Images with descriptive alt. 38. Image dimensions specified. 39. Image format (WebP/AVIF). 40. Internal links visible in rendered HTML. 41. Anchor text descriptive. 42. No orphan pages. 43. No broken internal links. 44. URL structure clean. 45. Open Graph tags. 46. Twitter card tags. 47. Hreflang where applicable.

None of these is exotic. The discipline is in shipping all 47 — not just the easy ones.