I developed my first website back in 2002 using notepad and following instructions to code the HTML from a book I borrowed from my local library. The site was very basic, consisting of just a few pages, and from what I remember, looked absolutely awful.

I’ve gotten a lot better (I hope) since then, and during the past 19 years or so have built hundreds of websites for all types of businesses, with the main industry being travel. You will notice that when I include samples of code, I often do so based on that of a hotel website.

After a year or so of coding my own HTML with notepad and using tables to structure my pages (anyone else remember doing that?), I discovered WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. I started with Microsoft FrontPage, which turned out to be a complete nightmare to use. The amount of code bloat was the stuff of nightmares, especially if you were copy and pasting content you had written in Word.

From there I was introduced to Macromedia (now Adobe) Dreamweaver, which has become my tool of choice ever since. I was so hooked on using Dreamweaver 4 that it took me about five or so years to update the version I was using to one of the latest ones.

Over the past 10 years or so, I have built many sites using WordPress and I can fully understand and appreciate just why it is so popular. I guess if I hadn’t learnt HTML back when I started, then WordPress would probably be my choice of tool. When it comes to on-page SEO, it’s the ideal platform on which to work.

However, I much prefer the freedom that hand coding my sites gives me, where I can everything exactly how I want it down to the last pixel. One downside is the inability to use plugins as you would with WordPress, where doing something such as changing the URL structure of your pages can be taken care of in a few seconds, while making such changes manually can be a real pain the backside, and take hours depending on the size of the website.

At the end of the day, it’s all about what’s best for the individual and though I probably spend more time on certain tasks with my sites coding by hand, I could still get some things fixed and done quicker than I would if using WordPress.

Throughout the years I have been building websites, I’ve always been taking care of most of the on-page SEO elements, without even realizing at first.

I’ve always known the importance of the title and description meta tags, using headers and good page structure, resizing and optimizing images and using alt tags. This is stuff that I learnt when I first started - it’s just become second nature to me over the years, and is something that I apply to all websites I build.

Though there have been several new factors that have appeared over recent years relating to on-page SEO such as Open Graph tags and Schema, a lot of it is still the same as it was close to 20 years ago.

Once you have an understanding of the fundamentals of on-page SEO, and are in a position to apply them to your website, you are on a very good path. I’ve always been a believer in the power of on-page optimization, as it is really the foundations for all of your SEO efforts. Before you start with your off-page SEO, it’s vital that your on-page has been taken care of properly.

I hope that in this book, you’ll be able to get a better understanding of the on-page ranking factors and can start applying them to your own websites.

This book hasn’t been written to contain the most technical explanations of all things on-page. It doesn’t go into very specific details about all of the factors, as I simply wanted to write it in a way that most people would understand, rather than be baffled and confused with technical jargon.

Some elements of on-page SEO are basic common sense, such as image optimization. For example, you should know that uploading an image that is 4000x2500 pixels in size, but which would only be displayed at 600x400 is not good practice.

It’s also obvious (I hope) that placing emphasis on creating unique, helpful and well-structured and insightful content is something that plays an important role in how your website will rank.

I’ve wanted to write a guide to on-page SEO for several years now, but was never able to find the opportunity to do so. However, I set myself a number of challenges this year, and one of them was to complete this book.

I’ll admit that I didn’t expect to get it done so early in the year, but I’m glad I have been able to. A lot of thanks goes to Jarvis - a new, very powerful AI tool that helped me to organize and structure the information that has been floating around inside my head for years.