There are many on-page SEO ranking factors to be considered when optimising pages for search engines. There is a great post by Rand Fiskin from SEOmoz which not only summarises the main areas to target but also provides a ranking to their importance. A must read for anyone interested in SEO.
The post outlines the approach to take to optimising
- HTML Head Tags
Page Title
Meta Description
Meta Keywords
Meta Robots
URL structure
Body Tags
Keyword use and keyword density
H1 tags
Alt tags
Image names and filenames
Internal linking
Whilst these factors will have an impact they are not as important as
- The trust and authority of the domain
The quality of the content
The quality and relevance of inbound links (especially the anchor text) to the site
