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SEO · AEO · GEO — Zero to Expert

On-page basics

BeginnerDuration ~20 min video + 45 min hands-onTools Your site’s CMS/editor, Your chosen keyword from 1.2

Why this lesson

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On-page SEO is everything you do on the page itself to help it rank — and it’s the part you have the most direct control over. Off-page (links) takes months and other people’s cooperation; on-page you can fix this afternoon. But it’s also where the worst outdated advice lives — “put your exact keyword everywhere” is a decade out of date and now actively hurts you. This lesson teaches the handful of elements that genuinely matter, where to place your keyword naturally, and the stuffing myths to ignore. Combined with the content work in 1.4, it’s how you turn a chosen keyword into a page built to rank.

Watch

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Watch for: Sam Oh's framing that on-page revolves first around satisfying search intent, then around clean HTML elements — and his three 'what on-page is NOT' myths. The big one: it is NOT about stuffing exact-match keywords. Google understands synonyms and related phrases, so grammatically-awkward keyword repetition is an old tactic that now backfires.
Watch for: How a single well-optimized page ends up ranking for hundreds or thousands of related keywords, not just its target — and his method of learning what to cover by studying the pages that already rank. Note that intent-matching comes before any tag tweaking.

The explainer

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On-page has two layers. The first is satisfy the intent (the content itself — that’s Lesson 1.4). The second is the set of HTML elements that tell search engines and searchers what the page is about. Here are the ones that matter, and how to use each.

Title tag. The single most important on-page element. The title tag is the page’s HTML title; it usually becomes the blue clickable headline in the results, and it’s a genuine ranking factor. Include your keyword, ideally near the front, written as a compelling headline a human wants to click — not a robotic keyword list. Keep it roughly 50–60 characters so it doesn’t get cut off.

Meta description. The meta description is the short summary under the title in the results. It’s not a direct ranking factor, but it heavily influences whether people click. Write ~150–160 characters that sell the click and include the keyword naturally (Google bolds matching terms). If you leave it blank, Google writes its own — often worse.

H1 and headings. The H1 is the on-page headline (distinct from the title tag, though often similar). There should be one clear H1 that states what the page is about, with your keyword in it naturally. Sub-headings (H2, H3) structure the rest — and, as you’ll see in Level 3, clean heading structure is also what lets AI answer engines lift your content cleanly.

URL slug. The URL slug is the readable part of the address (/best-running-shoes-flat-feet). Keep it short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, and descriptive — include the keyword, drop the filler words. A clean slug helps users and is a mild signal.

Body content. Use your keyword naturally in the first ~100 words and where it genuinely fits — then stop thinking about the keyword and write to fully answer the query (1.4). Modern Google reads synonyms and related terms, so covering the topic well matters far more than repeating one phrase. This is the death of keyword stuffing: the top pages for a query are often nearly identical in topic coverage, not in keyword count.

Image alt text. Alt text describes an image for screen readers (accessibility first — this is its real job) and for search engines that can’t see pictures. Describe the image honestly; if the keyword fits naturally, good, but never stuff. It also earns you image-search traffic.

The mindset that ties it together: on-page is about clarity, not tricks. You’re making it unmistakable — to a machine and a human skimming the results — what this page is and who it’s for, then delivering on that promise in the content. Do the elements above cleanly, once, and move on. There are no secret tags, and anyone selling you “power words” or exact-match density targets is teaching you 2013.

Do it

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Take the page and keyword from 1.2 and optimize it:

  1. Write a title tag: keyword near the front, click-worthy, ~55 characters.
  2. Write a meta description: ~155 characters, keyword natural, sells the click.
  3. Set one clear H1 and lay out H2/H3 subheadings that cover the topic’s sub-questions.
  4. Clean the URL slug: short, lowercase, hyphenated, descriptive.
  5. Make sure the keyword appears naturally in the first paragraph — then don’t obsess over it again.
  6. Add alt text to every meaningful image.
  7. Check each item against the on-page cheat-sheet.
On-page SEO checklist — the elements, ideal lengths, and the stuffing myths to avoidon-page-checklist.pdf78 KBOriginal course material — free to use

Terms introduced

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Check

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Check yourself

  1. Which on-page element most directly influences the clickable headline shown in Google’s results?

  2. What is the modern truth about putting your exact keyword on the page?

  3. What is the primary purpose of image alt text?

You can move on when you can… take a page and its target keyword and write a clean title tag, meta description, H1, URL slug and alt text — placing the keyword naturally, without stuffing — and explain why topic coverage beats keyword repetition.

Go deeper

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  • Google Search Central — “Influencing your title links in search results”: the official guidance on how titles are generated and how to write good ones.
  • Next: 1.4 · Content that satisfies intent — the harder, more important half of on-page: actually answering the query better than what ranks now.