What is on-page SEO?

What belongs on the page

A page should make its intent obvious in the first screen. The title tells the SERP what the page is. The H1 tells the user what they landed on. The first answer block should solve the main question without a long warm-up. Then the body can add nuance, examples and proof.

Headings matter because they create a hierarchy. A human scans them. Google uses them as context. AI systems can lift them as answer boundaries. If headings are vague, the page becomes harder to quote.

Internal links are part of on-page SEO

Internal links are not just navigation. They tell engines which pages belong to the same topic and which page is the main answer. A cluster page should link to sub-questions. Sub-question pages should link back and sideways to related questions. That is the cocoon structure you described, and it works because it reduces ambiguity.

Anchor text matters too. "Read more" is weak. "Technical SEO audit" or "how long SEO takes" gives useful context. I try to make links sound natural but specific.

The AI search angle

For AI Overviews and answer engines, on-page SEO needs more extractable blocks: definitions, comparison tables, step-by-step lists, short FAQs and visible sources where freshness matters. The page should not make a model rewrite everything from scratch. It should hand over clean pieces.

The best on-page SEO feels obvious to the reader. That is the point. If a buyer can understand the answer faster, the engine usually can too.

My working checklist

• Put the direct answer near the top.
• Use one H1 and descriptive H2s.
• Add internal links to related questions.
• Make schema match visible content.

Related SEO questions

This answer belongs to the same SEO wiki cocoon. Start from the SEO Wiki hub, then use these related answers to move sideways through the cluster.