SEO Fundamentals Cheat Sheet

Covers essential meta tags, structured data with JSON-LD, key on-page ranking factors, and a technical SEO checklist.

2 PagesBeginnerMar 10, 2026

Essential Meta Tags

Title, description, canonical, and social preview tags.

html

<head>  <title>Concise, Unique Page Title (50-60 chars)</title>  <meta name="description" content="A compelling 150-160 character summary of the page for search snippets.">  <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page">  <meta name="robots" content="index, follow">  <!-- Open Graph for social sharing -->  <meta property="og:title" content="Page Title">  <meta property="og:description" content="Page description">  <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">  <meta property="og:type" content="article">  <!-- Twitter Card -->  <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"></head>

Structured Data (JSON-LD)

Helping search engines understand page content.

html

<script type="application/ld+json">{  "@context": "https://schema.org",  "@type": "Article",  "headline": "How Grid Works",  "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Doe" },  "datePublished": "2026-07-01",  "image": "https://example.com/cover.jpg"}</script>

On-Page SEO Factors

Elements you control directly on each page.

Title tag- the single strongest on-page ranking signal; keep it unique per page
H1- one per page, describes the primary topic, ideally includes the target keyword
Internal linking- links between your own pages pass authority and help crawlers discover content
Image alt text- describes images for accessibility and for image search results
URL structure- short, descriptive, hyphen-separated paths, e.g. /blog/css-grid-guide
Content depth / E-E-A-T- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals search engines weigh

Technical SEO Checklist

Site-wide factors that affect crawling and indexing.

robots.txt- controls which paths crawlers are allowed to access
sitemap.xml- lists indexable URLs to aid discovery; typically submitted via Search Console
Core Web Vitals- LCP, INP, and CLS, performance metrics that factor into ranking
Canonical tags- prevent duplicate-content penalties across similar or duplicate URLs
Mobile-friendliness- Google indexes the mobile version of a page first (mobile-first indexing)
HTTPS- a baseline ranking signal and a prerequisite for many modern web APIs

Pro Tip

A canonical tag is a hint, not a directive: Google can and does choose a different canonical URL if your internal linking, sitemap, and redirects disagree with the tag, so keep all three signals consistent.

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