There is no standard way to learn search engine optimization (SEO). Ask anyone who works here at SEJ how they got started in SEO, and you’ll get many different stories.
This can be frustrating because if your business has an online presence, you need to know at least a little about SEO.
Maybe you just launched that amazing new website and you want Google to rank you on the first page.
Or maybe your existing website isn’t getting the traffic you want. Or you just want to start a new in-demand career.
Whatever your reason for wanting to learn SEO, you’ve come to the right place.
Right now some of you are probably a little intimidated. All of this discussion of search algorithms, keyword research, and reciprocal linking seems complicated.
Relax, despite all the technical jargon, SEO isn’t that hard to learn, even for a complete beginner. You just have to be prepared to put in the time and effort.
This article will give you a step-by-step plan that you can follow to build your SEO skills from scratch or improve your existing knowledge.
And while we can’t promise you top rankings in Google, we do promise that if you put in the work, you’ll see results.
Your Guide To Learning SEO
Contents
Before diving into the first step of your journey to becoming an SEO Jedi, let’s take a look at what exactly we mean by search engine optimization.
According to Google’s developer guide:
“Search engine optimization is the process of improving your site for search engines.”
In other words, it’s about figuring out exactly what changes you need to make to your website to make it more relevant to search queries.
The elements of SEO fall into two main categories: on-page and off-page.
As you might expect, on-page SEO elements are the parts that are on your website. These include:
Off-page SEO elements, on the other hand, are the ranking factors that come from outside of your domain. This mainly focuses on link building and building links from other high quality websites to your content.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dive into the step-by-step process of SEO mastery.
Step 1: Master The Basics
One of the best things about Google is the vast amount of information available. While they won’t reveal the secret sauce of what exactly drives its algorithm, the search engine giant is surprisingly open about what does and doesn’t count for rankings.
And even better, they have provided an extremely useful SEO starter guide for people who are new to the field. This is an overview of how search engine optimization works, including definitions of common terms and ranking basics.
If you’re starting your SEO education completely from scratch, this is the perfect place to start.
It’ll tell you how to get your site on Google, the best ways to control crawling so the search engine can find your content, and indexability, which will help them understand what your content is about – and what. type of queries it will be. good fit for.
Every year at SEJ we produce several ebooks on various SEO and digital marketing topics. One such ebook is our SEO Beginner’s Guide, a comprehensive getting started guide and instructions for many common SEO tasks.
Step 2: Dive Deeper Into The Technical Side
Once you’re sure you’ve mastered the basics of SEO, it’s time to move on to more technical concepts.
Once again, Google has provided several excellent resources for educational purposes.
A good place to further your education is the Webmaster Guidelines for Maintaining Your Site’s SEO. It can help you get started with intermediate to advanced techniques to improve your rankings or address other SEO issues.
This includes information on how to manage duplicate content and canonical pages, using robots.txt files to tell Google which pages to crawl and index, creating and submitting sitemaps, and other ways to help Google understand your site better.
Depending on the type of content you have on your site, you may need to use different strategies to maximize its exposure.
For example, videos are a popular form of content that require extra SEO work to ensure they rank as highly as possible.
If you’re using anything outside of plain text (and you should be — no one wants to scroll through a wall of text), be sure to check Google’s content-specific guidelines.
Step 3: Create An SEO Process
At this point, you hopefully have a pretty good understanding of what SEO is and how it works.
And now it’s time to put that education into practice by developing and implementing your own SEO process.
If you are working on an existing site, the very first thing to do is to perform an SEO audit. It’s quite a big undertaking, but again, Search Engine Journal to the rescue!
We’ve created an ebook that will walk you through the process of evaluating your current SEO efforts using a helpful checklist.
After understanding where you are now, it’s time to build a strategy. If only there was another useful ebook you could use to guide you through this process – oh wait, we have one.
It’s a step-by-step guide (plus a template) to building your year-round SEO strategy, with month-by-month tips to help you measure results and improve your rankings.
And when it comes to performance monitoring, Google Search Console gives you a ton of analytics and insights you can use to improve site traffic. It would greatly behoove you to familiarize yourself with this tool.
Step 4: Optimize Your Content
It is impossible to overstate the importance of your website content. Content is what drives people to your site, encourages them to take action, and is the only reason your site exists in the first place.
So, after doing the backend, technical, and strategic work needed to boost your rankings, it’s time to focus on your content.
Your content strategy should have been a big part of your overall strategy as shown in the last step, but that’s where the rubber meets the road.
This is where you’ll create the keyword-rich (but not cluttered) copy, build a solid structure that’s easy for bots and humans to read, and improve your overall content experience.
For detailed information on how to do this, watch this webinar.
Step 5: Build Your Backlinks
This has already been discussed, but it justifies its own approach.
Your inbound links tell Google a lot about the trustworthiness of your site.
For example, if you fall for one of those link farms, pay-per-link scams (which, of course, you would never do), Google will likely ignore those links.
On the other hand, if the Chicago Tribune directs people to your page, Google may well see that endorsement in a good light and consider that link valuable.
But how exactly do you build links? Did you really expect us to ask this question and not have another great ebook that answers this question in depth?
Download and read this for everything you need to know about creating and maintaining a successful link building campaign.
Step 6: Don’t Forget About Humans
With all the technical parts of search engine optimization, it can be very easy to overlook the main purpose of your website: to deliver value to real people.
And lest you think that Google search is made up entirely of a variety of computer programs, remember that real humans verify the work of the algorithm.
These people are known as research quality assessors. They follow a step-by-step guide to determining how well Google search results meet the searcher’s needs and evaluating the quality of your pages.
So always keep this in mind – that even with all the title tag, image optimization and responsive design work you’ve done, ultimately SEO is all about people .
Step 7: Never Stop Learning
Wow, that was a lot. Now you can just sit back and relax, enjoying your new title of Sixth Degree SEO Black Belt, right? Not even a little.
Search engine algorithms are constantly changing.
Some of them are so small that you won’t notice them, while others drastically change the type of return requests generated. And this constant state of flux means the last thing you can do is rest on your laurels.
Luckily, there’s a vast ocean of SEO resources out there, including this very website, where you’ll find all the news, as well as regular updates and blog posts on a variety of search engine related topics.
But we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you about some of the great online courses to help you take your search engine optimization skills to the next level.
For your convenience, we’ve provided a pick list here, and you can review some of them in more detail in this article on SEO certifications.
Free SEO Courses For Beginners
Coursera Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals: This 13-hour, 4-module digital course (created by the University of California, Davis) is designed to help you understand how search algorithms affect search results organic. It covers everything from developing an effective strategy to analyzing and optimizing your existing website.
Ahrefs SEO Training Course: This program, presented by SEO tools software provider Ahrefs, consists of 14 lessons divided into four modules, with a total duration of two hours. It will teach you the basics of SEO, including keyword research, technical SEO, and link building for beginners.
Shopify SEO Training for Beginners: The Shopify e-commerce platform offers a 30-minute course designed to help online entrepreneurs get up to speed quickly with the fundamentals of SEO. This course will give you a repeatable framework that you can apply to improve your business’ search engine rankings.
Yoast SEO Beginners Training: Another SEO tools provider, Yoast’s SEO Beginners course offers two hours of instructional videos, PDFs, and quizzes to train you on what you’ve learned.
Introduction to WP Courses Search Engine Optimization: This free course is designed to teach you how to improve your site for search engines and human visitors. It covers the basics of SEO, including keyword research, creating quality content, and optimizing your site for maximum rankings and traffic.
Bruce Clay SEO Training: Bruce Clay is known as the programmer of the first web page analysis tool. Now he runs a search marketing company (Bruce Clay, Inc.) that provides a wide range of digital marketing services. This online course will teach you how to improve your website rankings with a focus on E-A-T. It includes over 15 hours of instruction through 48 videos.
Introduction to Next.js SEO: This text-based course offered by the Next.js production framework provides a quick four-page overview of SEO. It covers search systems and crawlers and web performance topics, with a focus on using them alongside Next.js.
Hubspot SEO Training Course: This short course offers free certification and focuses on the business impacts of SEO. With six lessons built around 22 videos and three quizzes, it uses Hubspot’s blogging strategy as the main example to explain how SEO works.
Intermediate To Advanced SEO Resources
Mastered the basics and ready to move on to more advanced topics? There are many great resources, including:
Semrush Digital Courses: Online Visibility and Content Marketing SaaS provider Semrush has built one of the best SEO content libraries available anywhere. These free lessons, which are usually an hour long, are led by a variety of experts and cover nearly every aspect of digital marketing you can think of, including a dozen on search engine optimization.
Ahrefs Advanced Link Building Course: This 14-lesson course can be completed in less than two hours. It is designed to equip you with large-scale link building strategies that go beyond traditional backlinking tactics. It will teach you how to structure and distribute outreach emails, validate campaigns, and manage your link building team more effectively.
Coursera’s Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies: This free 25-hour course focuses on technical, mobile, and social strategies to improve your website traffic. It will teach you more advanced SEO skills such as improving site architecture, assessing competitors, and developing overall strategies.
LinkedIn Learning: Formerly Lynda.com, the educational portion of the social networking site LinkedIn offers a variety of SEO topics, from beginner to advanced. It offers a free trial but then costs $19.99 per month for unlimited access. LinkedIn Learning offers 86 SEO-related videos, many of which specialize in a particular aspect, such as SEO for e-commerce sites or structuring data for web crawlers.
Advanced Technical SEO: A Complete Guide: You didn’t really think we were going to make this list and not include another one of our ebooks, did you? We may be biased, but this free downloadable ebook will teach you everything you need to know about technical SEO, including finding the best hosting company, structuring your site to be user-friendly for web crawlers and best practices for pagination, plus a host of other useful information.
Google Analytics Academy: While not strictly speaking an SEO course, if you’re serious about SEO and improving your skills, this certification is well worth earning. This free course will help you better understand the content and digital marketing industry while ensuring you get the most out of the tools made available by the search engine giant.
Stay Up To Date And Get Optimizing
As you can see, there are a lot of things that go into search engine optimization. And even the experts are learning new things every day.
Hopefully by this point you have learned a bit about the basics of SEO and where to learn more about them.
And after going through some of the linked material, it’s time to put your newfound knowledge into practice.
Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results immediately – remember that search engine optimization is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes it can take months for your edits to start showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Remember that this is an ever-changing environment and what worked yesterday may not work today. It’s partly because of shady SEO specialists who gamed the algorithm through things like keyword stuffing and article rotation (i.e. recreating content with different words) .
But the main reason you need to stay on top of SEO is Google’s endless quest to deliver better and more relevant results.
Currently, that means focusing more on search intent than keywords, but who knows what that will mean tomorrow?
The only way to stay on top is to keep working once you’re there. Because if you kick it, it won’t be long before your hard-earned rankings pass to a harder-working, savviest optimizer.
Never stop learning, and now go ahead and reach the top of the search results!
Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock
How can I practice SEO at home?
6 Steps to Learn SEO for Free – Learn SEO at Home
- Understand the purpose of SEO. …
- Master keyword research. …
- Know the difference between on-page and off-page SEO. …
- Learn to identify UX signals. …
- Embrace SEO-optimized content creation. …
- Start link building.
Can I do SEO myself? If you’ve wondered, “Can I do SEO myself?” the answer is without a doubt. You don’t need to hire an outside agency to improve your SEO, and this guide gives you some basic SEO tips to get you started.
Can You learn SEO in a month?
Although this is a career path, you can indeed learn SEO in about a month – enough to have a huge impact on your website and therefore your business as a whole.
Can I learn SEO in 2 months? You will want to blog for at least six months to two years to see results. At this point, you will know that you understand SEO and can grow an organic audience. But, once you have good results, keep building that momentum and keep posting regular blog posts.
How quickly can I learn SEO?
If you can learn SEO for a few hours every day, you can master the basics of SEO in 4-8 weeks and land your first SEO job in 3-6 months. If you can learn SEO full-time, you can master the basics even in 1-2 weeks.
Can I learn SEO in month?
Although this is a career path, you can indeed learn SEO in about a month – enough to have a huge impact on your website and therefore your business as a whole.
How difficult is it to learn SEO?
The answer is simple. Learning SEO is difficult because there is a lot of information to read about search engines and how the optimization process works, which can be overwhelming at first.
Is SEO difficult to learn?
SEO is not that hard to learn. All you have to do is be prepared to allocate the time and effort necessary to learn the different SEO concepts. If you’re new to SEO and wondering what it takes to go from novice to expert, this article is for you.
Why SEO is so hard?
To sum up, SEO is difficult because search engines are constantly changing and updating. It could be anything from Google changing the way it looks at a certain type of link, including a major new update to their algorithm, or even recognizing something new as a ranking factor.
Is Learning SEO tough?
The answer is simple. Learning SEO is difficult because there is a lot of information to read about search engines and how the optimization process works, which can be overwhelming at first.
Is SEO job stressful?
Any job can be stressful depending on the type of performance your business requires. The same goes for SEO-related jobs. However, it is not as stressful as IT or other programming related jobs.
Is SEO analyst a stressful job? The same goes for SEO-related jobs. However, it is not as stressful as IT or other programming related jobs. Whether you do SEO in-house or for an agency or clients, however, your path to becoming an SEO specialist should start with mastering the skills with the help of an SEO training course.
Do SEO jobs pay well?
The good news is that globally, 60% of SEO professionals earn at least or more than the US median ($57,456 for men and $47,299 for women). 19% of global respondents reported earning more than $100,000 per year, while a lucky few at the top (3.38%) reported earning more than $200,000 per year.
How much do SEO people make?
In September 2021, most SEO experts could earn between $113,518 and $131,590. Salaries depend on many factors, including education, certifications, work experience, and additional skills.
Is SEO a high paying job?
The highest salary an SEO can earn is â¹11.2 lakhs per year (â¹93.3k per month).
Is working in SEO a good career?
‘ Yes. SEO is a good career option as it is among the most sought after careers in digital marketing. There are several organizations around the world that hire SEO professionals to generate better content and therefore produce more leads.
Is SEO a stable job?
‘ Yes. SEO is a good career option as it is among the most sought after careers in digital marketing. There are several organizations around the world that hire SEO professionals to generate better content and therefore produce more leads.
Is SEO job in demand?
SEO professionals are in high demand because businesses need search optimization to be competitive in most niches.
Is SEO job tough?
SEO is not that hard to learn. All you have to do is be prepared to allocate the time and effort necessary to learn the different SEO concepts. If you’re new to SEO and wondering what it takes to go from novice to expert, this article is for you.
Is SEO a good career 2021?
Regardless of the pandemic, SEO is now here to stay. As more and more customers are used to researching products online, 2021 is the year to start a good career in digital marketing and SEO. SEO is an art in which you personalize the content presented for higher rankings and appearing faster on search engines.
Are SEO jobs hard?
There’s no doubt: SEO analysts have a tough job. It takes a lot of critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and SEO know-how to scour websites to figure out what’s wrong with them, sift through the data to find the answers, and make account their findings in a way that is easy for businesses to understand. and customers.
Is SEO job tough?
SEO is not that hard to learn. All you have to do is be prepared to allocate the time and effort necessary to learn the different SEO concepts. If you’re new to SEO and wondering what it takes to go from novice to expert, this article is for you.
Is SEO job easy?
SEO just isn’t as hard as people make it out to be; you can get 95% of the effort out of 5% of the work, and you absolutely don’t need to hire a professional SEO to do it, nor will it be hard to start ranking for key terms though choose.
Does SEO have a future?
SEO will only grow rapidly in the future. Just be sure to follow SEO best practices, such as creating useful content, building a faster website, and following Google’s guidelines to get better rankings.
Is SEO a good career for the future? ‘ Yes. SEO is a good career option as it is among the most sought after careers in digital marketing. There are several organizations around the world that hire SEO professionals to generate better content and therefore produce more leads.
Is SEO worth it in 2022?
Yes, SEO is worth it – in 2022, in the future, in the past and always. As long as websites and search engines exist, SEO is necessary. SEO 10 years from now will likely be very different from SEO today, but you’ll still need to make sure your website is sending search engines the right signals so you can be found.
How much does SEO cost in 2022?
Average SEO costs are $100 to $250 per hour for US SEO agencies. SEO costs often range from $2,500 to $10,000 per month for US agencies. The average SEO plan costs $2819 per month (per Ahrefs) Overseas SEO companies can charge $10 to $50 per hour.
What is the future of SEO in 2022?
By 2022, expect SEO rankings to be more competitive by providing high quality content that is useful to internet users. Content that only tries to fish out its audience by linking to unnecessary sources of supply will not be as effective as it is today.
Will SEO exist in 5 years?
SEO will not be eliminated in the next five years as social media and search engines will more than likely merge. Facebook has already started doing this: they average over 1.5 billion searches per day. Twitter did the same; they joined in partnership with Google.
Will SEO exist in 5 years?
SEO will not be eliminated in the next five years as social media and search engines will more than likely merge. Facebook has already started doing this: they average over 1.5 billion searches per day. Twitter did the same; they joined in partnership with Google.
Will SEO be obsolete?
SEO is still a vital web marketing tactic in 2022.
How long will SEO last?
Most professionals expect to see results in as little as 2 months, but SEO can take up to 12 months to work. Although each company’s SEO strategy differs, most companies can expect to see significant results in 6-12 months.
Does SEO have a future?
SEO is now seen as a long-term investment for businesses, with results appearing gradually over time. SEO is considered almost dead by many web administrators and business owners due to recent search engine algorithms. They believe that SEO is no longer effective and will never yield fruitful results.
What is the future of SEO in 2022?
By 2022, expect SEO rankings to be more competitive by providing high quality content that is useful to internet users. Content that only tries to fish out its audience by linking to unnecessary sources of supply will not be as effective as it is today.
Does SEO have a future?
SEO is now seen as a long-term investment for businesses, with results appearing gradually over time. SEO is considered almost dead by many web administrators and business owners due to recent search engine algorithms. They believe that SEO is no longer effective and will never yield fruitful results.
Is SEO still important in 2022?
The fact that SEO works perfectly well even in 2022 as a method of improving business results for business websites and their owners, combined with the need for continuous research into what works, makes it still relevant. as a digital marketing method, but more. as a valuable service and reward…
Can I do SEO on my own?
If you’ve wondered, “Can I do SEO myself?” the answer is definitely. You don’t need to hire an outside agency to improve your SEO, and this guide gives you some basic SEO tips to get you started.
Should I hire someone for SEO? Yes, hire an agency if you are looking for long-term success. Unless there is something easily fixable on your site (like blocking it entirely with your robots.txt file), the majority of SEO creates long-term success and value.
Can SEO be done by yourself?
You can do SEO yourself or DIY SEO (Do It Yourself SEO). With some research and lots of practice, anyone can learn how to do SEO for their business. A quick way to get started with SEO is to enter your URL here and then focus your SEO efforts on recommended action items.
Is it hard to do your own SEO?
SEO just isn’t as hard as people make it out to be; you can get 95% of the effort out of 5% of the work, and you absolutely don’t need to hire a professional SEO to do it, nor will it be hard to start ranking for key terms though choose.