If a whole website is a library, on-page SEO is about labeling one single book well: its cover, its chapter titles, and the summary printed on the back. These are things you can change inside one page's own code. Here is where each one lives.

Where on-page SEO parts live: search results vs. the page itself On the left, a search result preview shows the title tag and meta description. On the right, a page mockup shows headings, an internal link, and alt text on an image. In the search result: Your Page Title Here = the title tag example.com/your-page A short line about it. = the meta description On the page itself: Page Title Here Big Heading = an h1 heading Smaller heading = an h2 heading Read more → = an internal link alt = alt text, hidden in the image's own code
The title tag and meta description mostly show up in the search result, before someone clicks. Headings, internal links, and alt text live inside the page itself.

Title tag

The title tag is the big, clickable blue line you see in a search result. It is also the text shown on the browser tab. Give every page its own clear title.

Meta description

Right under the title in a search result, there is often a short line of text called the meta description. Search engines may show it, or swap in different text instead. It does not directly change your rank, but a good one can make someone want to click.

Headings

Headings, like <h1> and <h2>, work like a book's chapter titles: they show what the whole page is about, and what each smaller section covers. Clear headings help a reader skim, and they help a search engine understand the page's structure too.

Internal links

Internal links are links from one of your own pages to another one of your own pages. They help a visitor — and a crawler — find more of your pages, and they show which pages are related to each other.

Alt text for images

Alt text is a short description written into an image's own code. A visitor usually never sees the text itself, but a search engine reads it to understand the picture, and a screen reader speaks it aloud for someone who cannot see the image.