Your Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Learning SEO for beginners

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for the growth and success of any website. However, since every website out there is trying to achieve the top spot on the first page of search engines, mastering the craft might seem to be an overwhelming process. Well, worry no more, as here is a systematic guide on how to get started with SEO; basically learning seo for beginners.

Whether you have launched a website and want it to achieve a higher rank on SERP (search engine result page), maybe your existing website is not attracting the traffic that you expect, or you are keen on starting a career in an industry that is in demand. No matter what the reason, learning SEO is all you need. 

Why? According to Aherf’s:

“SEO is a valuable practice of optimizing website for increasing quantity and quality of traffic from organic search results” 

So, without any further ado, let’s dive into our step-by-step guide on how you can build your SEO skills using the right practices. 

Steps to Learn SEO- From Beginner to Advanced Level

Step 1: Begin with SEO Basics 

An incredible thing about the digital era empowered by Google is all the information that it has in store for you. Even though it may not reveal what specifically controls the algorithms, still it provides the opportunity to learn more about the fundamental aspects that are considered while ranking websites. 

The best part is that it even offers an SEO starter guide for professionals who have just made their way into the industry. This is a perfect way to know more about basic terms, definitions and principles of SEO. 

Step 2: Focus on The Technical Side of SEO

Once you’ve got your fundamentals done, it’s time to make your move towards the technical components of SEO. 

Even for this Google comes to the rescue! There are innumerable resources available for educational purposes.

Another great destination is the webmaster guidelines designed for maintaining the SEO of a site. It provides relevant information on how to manage canonical pages and duplicate content along with methods for crawling and indexing pages using robots.txt to help Google understand the site better. 

Remember, SEO involves three major processes which are:

• Technical SEO: The process that is essential for indexing and crawling webpages. 
• On-Page SEO: The process of optimizing the content of the page, to make the search engine friendly. 
• Off-Page SEO: The process of promoting the website to acquire links. These links are regarded as a “certificate of trust”, and thus have a positive impact on the ranking of the website.  

Based on the type of content that you are planning to use or already have on the site, you can select different strategies that will optimize its exposure.  

Step 3: Put Your SEO Knowledge to Work

By now you must be aware of what is SEO, how it works and what makes it an important part of a website. 

Finally, the time has come to implement your knowledge by crafting a well-structured SEO process. 

If you are working on the SEO of an active website, the first thing that you must do is perform an in-depth SEO audit. The audit will offer a holistic overview of where the SEO of the site stands and the type of strategy that might make a difference. 

For monitoring the performance of a brand new site, on the other hand, you can consider Google’s Search Console which offers ample analytical data on how to improve traffic to the website. 

Step 4: Make Your Content SEO Ready

Without a doubt, content is the star of the show. Content drives the audience to your site, encourages the best possible action and primarily is the sole reason why they decided to step into your website. 

Hence, after fulfilling the strategic and technical obligations of SEO, you need to prioritize content. The content strategy has to be a major part of the overall SEO strategy. This is the point where you will require a keyword-rich copy with a great structure that is readable by humans and bots alike. 

Step 5: Build Strong Backlinks & The Emphasis is on Humans

Incoming links of a website speak volumes about its trustworthiness. For instance, if your links are part of conventional pay-per-link scams, Google ends up ignoring those links. 

However, if an authoritative website is redirecting its audience to your page, Google will consider that endorsement in a good light by making that link valuable.

Amidst the technical aspects, it’s common for one to overlook the purpose of a website in the first place: to provide a great experience to your audience. While you may think that Google is just about algorithms and programs, realize that there are humans who are verifying these algorithms. Hence, when creating responsive webpages, title tags or optimizing images, don’t forget it’s about the people, not just algorithms. 

Bonus: Free Resources For Learning SEO 

Yoast’s SEO Course For Beginners: Being a renowned SEO tool provider, this course features everything that you need to know about SEO in the form of informational PDFs, instructional videos and quizzes.  

Coursera’s Search Engine Fundamentals: Created by UC, Davis, this comprehensive course offers 13 hours and 4 modules of free training, ensuring you can build, analyze and optimize the SEO of a website seamlessly. 

Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO: Explaining SEO using the principles of Maslow’s hierarchy, the guide covers terms, phrases, marketing techniques, link-building practices and more in a systematic manner. 

WP’s Intro to Search Engine Optimization: A 100% text-based online course designed to teach SEO for free. It covers the basics of SEO, keyword research, strategies and more, to help you learn and grow in the industry. 

Continue Learning to Stay Optimized 

Of course, learning SEO is a never-ending journey. Even experts get to learn something new and surprising every single day. 

So, now that you’ve learned a bit about the basics and even know the best free places to learn SEO, why wait anymore? Get started, the only way to learn SEO effectively is by practicing your hard-earned wisdom on the diverse competitive landscape of the worldwide web!