Lesson 1

What On-Page SEO Is (and What It Isn’t)

What you’ll learn

By the end of this lesson, you’ll understand:

What on-page SEO actually refers to
Where it fits within the wider SEO picture
What this course will (and won’t) help you improve

What on-page SEO is

On-page SEO refers to everything you can control directly on a web page to help search engines understand what that page is about.

This includes things like:

  • The page title
  • Headings
  • Written content
  • Images and their descriptions
  • Internal links to other pages on your site

On-page SEO is about clarity, not tricks.
You’re helping search engines interpret the same page a human visitor sees.

What on-page SEO is not

On-page SEO does not include:

  • Backlinks from other websites
  • Google Ads or paid traffic
  • Server configuration or hosting performance
  • Keyword tools, rankings software, or dashboards
  • “SEO hacks” or shortcuts

Those areas may matter in other contexts, but they are outside the scope of what a website admin can safely control — and outside the scope of this course.

Why on-page SEO matters

Search engines don’t “see” a page the way humans do.
They rely on structure, context, and signals to understand what a page is about and when to show it.

Good on-page SEO:

  • Reduces ambiguity
  • Helps pages match the right searches
  • Makes content easier to read and maintain
  • Prevents accidental SEO mistakes

Importantly, it also helps people — clearer pages perform better regardless of algorithms.

A simple way to think about it

If you remember one thing, remember this:

On-page SEO is about making your page unambiguous.

One page.
One topic.
Clearly expressed.

Everything else in this course builds on that idea.