The Basics
If your website isn’t properly optimized on-page, your
efforts off the website (link building, content marketing, social media)
probably won’t yield substantial results. Not that they won’t generate anything
at all, but more than half your efforts may end up going down the drain.
There’s no clear rule book that says: do X, Y, and Z in
on-page optimization and your rank will rise by A, B, or C. On-page
optimization is based on tests, analytics and errors. You learn more about it
by discovering what doesn’t work than what does.