An ideal online guitar course

Whether your ambitions stretch that far or not, the aim of an online guitar lesson course should be to teach you how to play all scales in all positions, in all keys, and how to play chords (major, minor, barre, open-position) plus create progressions.
There are tricks you can learn so that you can develop the ability to learn any song you hear - you should be taught those.
You need to learn how to solo with the major, minor and blues pentatonic scales, and you should also be getting the opportunity to learn how to make up your own guitar solos.

You can break all this down into some basic skills:
How to string and tune your guitar.
How to read tablature and chord charts.
Chords: major, minor, open-position, barre, 7ths (dominant, major, minor), extended (9ths, 11th, 13ths).
Scales: major, minor (natural, harmonic, melodic), 7 modes, pentatonic (major, minor, blues). Scales should be taught in all positions and all keys over the entire fretboard and you should learn how to identify notes on the fretboard.
Finger strength exercises to increase speed, stamina and ability to fret difficult chords.
Elementary music theory.
Solo skills like bends, vibrato, hammer-ons/pull-offs, tapping, sliding, tremolo playing, speed picking and trills.

Okay, that list's what you need to learn, another question is how you are taught. A good online guitar course should make use of CDs, DVDs, MP3s and online customer support to answer any questions you might have. There's also what's known as jamtracks - music you can play along to so you can get some idea of your progress.

Lead Guitar Secrets