For basic you can find more in this book http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Here is a list of excellent free basic SEO Guideline 1. Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization - SEOMOZ 2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide by Chris Beasley 3. My Guide to SEO and Success - Jim Westergren There is an official Basic SEO Guide from Google here - Google's SEO Starter Guide - Google Webmaster Central Blog but I would recommend to read the 3 above first. This official guide is good but not as best as the 3 above.
Please simply search out the following query on the search engine " Google starter guidelines" to get enough information regarding the on page optimization of the websites.
I have started seo learning 2 years back, all by myself...I was just the regular reader of some site like, seomoz, seobook, searchenginecolloage, googletrafficguru.com I am very passionate in implementing new things. Whatever I have learned or read I always try to implement thing on my site. This is the best way to learn SEO.
The more people will post here, more will you be confused. You can focus only on http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf as posted by ega_bagus thanks to him.