There isn’t a standard way to learn SEO (search engine optimization). Ask anyone who started SEO; you will get many different stories.
You need to know at least some SEO if your business has any online presence. Maybe you have just launched a fantastic new website and want Google to rank it on the first page, or perhaps your existing site isn’t getting the desired traffic, or you want to begin a new, in-demand career.
So, you want to teach yourself SEO? Look no further. Sit, relax, and get ready to learn. Despite all the technical jargon, SEO is relatively easy to understand, even for a complete newbie. You just have to put in the time and effort.
Your presence here tells a few things, but mainly that you realized that in today’s connected world, learning SEO is crucial for your organization’s and your website’s growth. Fear not. It’s more intimidating than you think.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of improving the website to boost its visibility in Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines whenever a user searches for:
- Products you sell
- Services you offer
- Information on topics in which you have deep expertise, experience, etc.
The better your pages’ visibility in search results, the more likely you will be found and clicked on. Search engine optimization aims to help attract site visitors who will become clients, customers, or an audience that keeps returning.
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Why Learn SEO?
Learning SEO offers many advantages for all types of learners. Below are the rewards you get from learning search engine optimization:
- Build a growing career
- Start your agency
- Make your blog website get traffic
- Help any website grow and get traffic
- Learn the skill and grow your business or start a website
- A quick route to learning and doing digital marketing
SEO works to help businesses grow, which is an effective way of marketing. That’s why SEO is important for business. You can do your business marketing, make your services and products reach the right audience, and get valuable leads.
Also Read: Top 8 Benefits of SEO Marketing in 2024 (Importance)
Why is SEO Important?
Many people use Google, Bing, and Yahoo search engines to discover. Usually, organic traffic visits are from users who haven’t heard of your organization earlier. These search engines enable your website to reach new audiences.
If your site is the destination, search engines are the roads that get people there. That means they provide new, targeted traffic. For example, if you sell headphones on your site, Google will send you people specifically looking to buy headphones. So, if you can get your website to Google’s first page, you gain incredible opportunities.
Want your website to be authoritative and relevant? Yes? Then that’s why SEO is so important.
How to Learn SEO Step-by-step?
Learning SEO is possible, but it takes time because there’s much to learn. Thankfully, there’s so much helpful information out there to support you in your learning process.
Learning the SEO theory tells you what to do to make your website SEO-friendly. However, applying the SEO principles in practice makes a difference to your rankings and traffic.
Much of your time will be spent practicing SEO and not just reading the theory during this period. So, if you want to learn how to do SEO, follow these steps:
1. Understand the Basics of SEO
Ensure you know the SEO basics before diving into tools and resources.
a) Know What SEO is and Why it’s Important
Search engine optimization describes all processes and techniques to help you rank higher in search engines. The higher you rank, the more likely you are to drive people to your web pages. So, the main goal of SEO is to get more organic traffic from search engines.
Why is SEO Important?
Most search engine traffic goes to the sites that are in the first 5 positions of the search results. This means if you wish to get traffic from search engines, your website must be in the top positions for the search terms.
b) Learn Working of Search Engines
To do SEO, you need a fundamental understanding of how search engines work. In a nutshell, search engines follow a 3-step process: crawling, indexing, and ranking.
- Crawling – During this process, search engine spiders (bots) crawl the web to identify new pages and change existing pages.
- Indexing – Data collected from the first stage is organized, sorted, and stored in an index.
- Ranking – When an end user types a query in the search box, ranking algorithms determine which web pages to show in the SERPs and in what order.
SEO is about ensuring search engines crawl, index your web pages, and show search engines that your content is the best. From an SEO perspective, it’s essential to ensure that crawlers access the content without issues and that you give the right signals to the ranking algorithms so that they understand what your content is about.
The whole process is done without human intervention. Therefore, it’s your responsibility to make the job of search engines as smooth as possible.
c) Understand SEO Ranking Factors
SEO ranking factors affect your website’s and individual pages’ performance in search engine results. Text relevance is the most important Google ranking factor, which means how relevant your web page’s content is to the user’s query.
Google also considers:
- How fast your webpage loads
- Number of other websites link to your website
- Whether your webpage uses the secure HTTPS protocol
d) Know the SEO Types
The main types of SEO are:
- On-page SEO: Optimizing a particular page to rank better. Tactics include title tag optimization, content optimization, and internal linking.
- Off-page SEO: Performing SEO activities that occur outside your website. Tactics include content syndication, link building, and social media management.
- Technical SEO: Boosting your website’s technical aspects for search engines and end users. Tactics include improving webpage speed and website architecture.
There are also SEO tactics for particular content formats, including:
- Image SEO: To optimize images to rank better in regular image results.
- Video SEO: To optimize videos to rank better in regular results, video results, and image results on platforms like YouTube.
There are even SEO disciplines for certain types of businesses or websites, such as:
- Local SEO: Help local businesses rank higher in local results.
- International SEO: Tactics for websites that serve various languages and locations.
- E-commerce SEO: Strategy for online stores.
- SaaS SEO: Strategy for software as a service (SaaS) businesses.
- Small business SEO: Strategy for small businesses.
- B2B SEO: Strategy for business-to-business (B2B) brands.
Also Read: Top 7 Free Backlink Checker Tools in 2024 (Check Backlinks)
2. Know the Role of SEO in Digital Marketing
Before getting into the nuts and bolts of SEO, you should clearly understand the role of SEO in digital marketing.
SEO is part of SEM (search engine marketing), which is getting organic traffic from search engines through SEO or paid ads. It is one of the channels available in Digital Marketing. Other channels include Social media, email, and content marketing.
Hence, SEO isn’t the same as paid advertising and is not the only component of search engine marketing.
3. Learn More About Keywords and the Keywords Research Process
When you get to this point, you should know that everything in search engine optimization starts with a keyword. SEO keywords are search phrases end users type in a search engine that is crucial for a specific website.
The other SEO phases are strongly associated with keywords once you catch up with the technical SEO phase related to infrastructure-related settings.
Understanding which keywords to target in the content is called keyword research. So, mastering keyword research is integral to your SEO learning plan.
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4. Learn How to Measure SEO Performance
The next step is measuring SEO performance. This is because if you don’t know what to measure and what KPIs to analyze, you won’t understand if your SEO campaigns are successful.
To measure SEO performance, you must learn to use two essential tools:
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
The Google Search Console (GSC) gives insights into how your site is performing on Google. You can see the pages that receive traffic from Google and for which keywords.
Google Analytics tells you what end users do once they visit your site. You can identify which web pages they visit, how long they stay on a web page, and several other valuable metrics.
5. Study Your Competitors
Learning from your competitors is a great way to understand what’s helping other websites succeed.
You can conduct a competitor analysis to uncover new keywords to leverage, where competitors get backlinks from, and new opportunities to capitalize on.
6. Put SEO To Work
It’s time to put SEO to work. The best approach for newbies is to pick up a topic they are passionate about and start a blog. It doesn’t have to be fancy or too famous. Pick a topic you know well, set up a website, and optimize it for search engines.
At this stage, you may have to revisit a few guides and remind yourself how to do keyword research, optimize your page titles, verify that search bots can access the content, and many other things.
Creating an action plan and using checklists to track what you must do at each stage is best to avoid getting lost.
Also Read: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO? 2024 Strategy
7. Get a Working Understanding of SEO Tools
Several SEO tools take the guesswork out of your SEO efforts, from keyword tools to SEO checkers and analytics software.
SEO tools help research keywords, analyze backlinks, run site audits, investigate website analytics, and find content gaps.
Top tools you must consider getting familiar with include Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz.
8. Expand Your Knowledge of SEO
As you have seen in the learning plan above, there are various SEO concepts to master and many things to learn. Having everything you must know in one place saves you much time and effort.
Enrolling in an online SEO course is an efficient way to expand your SEO knowledge. A good SEO course teaches you the basics of SEO and the more advanced concepts. Learning can be made easier and faster with relevant real-life examples and easy-to-follow instructions.
- SEO Certifications – Includes the best SEO certifications you can enroll in that can prove helpful if you pursue an SEO Career.
- SEO Training Courses – Help you put in gear with SEO.
- Google SEO Courses – Understand SEO with official Google SEO training programs.
9. Stay Latest on the Newest Advances in the SEO
The ever-changing nature of the SEO world makes it exciting and overwhelming for SEO professionals. So, make the most of the SEO resources available, immerse yourself in the SEO community, and keep learning as much as possible.
From SEO podcasts to popular SEO blogs, there’s no shortage of well-known resources where SEO experts can pick up great new ideas, techniques, and tools.
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FAQs on How to Learn SEO
With various online experiences beginning with a search engine, a strong understanding of SEO helps you enhance your online visibility, drive organic traffic to your website, and generate more revenue. Whether a marketer, business owner, or content creator, investing time in learning SEO helps you accomplish your online goals and upsurge your website’s performance.
For beginners, gaining a basic understanding of SEO concepts and practices can take a few weeks. However, becoming an SEO expert and understanding advanced SEO concepts may take several years of continuous learning and practice. Learning SEO is an ongoing process requiring keeping up with the trends, current updates, and developments in the SEO industry.
SEO doesn’t necessarily require coding knowledge. However, a fundamental understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be helpful.
Some advanced SEO techniques may need coding skills or a developer’s assistance.
Learning SEO isn’t complicated; instead, SEO is a complex discipline. It requires theoretical and hands-on knowledge, as well as technical, creative, and analytical skills. To learn SEO, you need:
– A website to practice on
– A willingness to try out new things
– Access to reliable resources
– An SEO toolkit with quality data
Conclusion
As this blog makes clear, there are so many high-quality resources to help you learn SEO and apply it to your business or website.
SEO is already a big part of marketing and will continue growing. It is almost always a required skill for digital marketers. The need for SEO is increasing, so picking up SEO is a wise choice, especially if you’re a marketer or blogger.
And if you are looking for a partner in SEO, the experts here at WsCube Tech are ready and willing to help. Schedule a demo class to learn more about our services and software to help you become an SEO Pro!
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