You want to learn SEO if you have a website or want to become an expert in the field. If you become an SEO expert, you can make money from your website or working for other people’s sites, or setting up an SEO agency. Read the following step-by-step approach about how to learn SEO in 2024.
In each step, you will learn an essential skill. For learning each skill, you need to use a free or paid tool. You will find the links to related tools, guides, and resources for your in-depth study. If you could have enough SEO knowledge in all the critical areas discussed below, you are already an SEO expert and ready to start making money. Now, let’s learn first what SEO is all about.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique of improving your website’s rankings in the search results. Google, for example, scores websites based on relevance, domain authority, and other factors. In addition to these known signals, SEO incorporates technical and creative activities that impact each of these signals. While it is essential to focus on individual ranking factors, there are several factors that contribute to overall website performance.
For example, using keywords specific to your business is one of the most essential elements of search engine optimization. Searchers use the keywords to find what they are looking for online. If a potential customer searches for “buy running shoes online,” they want to purchase running shoes. So, when you write content using these keywords, you are helping Google to rank your site higher. As a result, your SEO efforts will have a greater impact on your search traffic. There are many benefits to using SEO techniques and maximizing your organic traffic.
Why Should You Care About SEO?
It is essential to understand that this type of search marketing will not work if a website is not optimized for search engines. That is because you will end up with poor visibility in search results. That is why you should learn SEO. It is an excellent process to increase traffic to your website and increase sales.
SEO is the process of boosting a website’s visibility in search engines. It will improve the visibility of your site in the SERPs (search engine result pages) to attract more visitors. Although Google owns a large percentage of the search market, other search engines are also important to pay attention to.
Organic search is a vital part of a website’s performance. It is a crucial component of the buyer funnel, and it drives engagement and conversions. So why should you care about SEO? Read on to learn about and how it can boost your website.
The SEO Basics
To get your site or business noticed online, read this article thoroughly. There are many resources to help learn about SEO. A good SEO strategy will build a network of relevant links to your site.
Having a social media presence will also contribute to your website’s popularity and traffic. Your customers will spread the word about your brand by sharing your content and reviews with their friends. The basics of SEO are all about search engine-friendly techniques, which are critical to the success of your website.
How to Learn SEO Step by Step
1. Learn Keyword Research for SEO
If you are new in the field of SEO, you might wonder how keyword research can benefit your business. It is a crucial step in any SEO campaign, as it can influence all other aspects of your digital marketing strategy, such as content creation and promotion. Usually, keyword research is the first step in any SEO campaign. This step will tell you where to focus your efforts. The research will help you understand your target audience and what they are searching for. You may even find that you’ve hit on a few keywords you’d not have considered before.
Learn to find your keywords and determine which of them are relevant to your niche, and offer the greatest value to your customers. Guessing what people are searching for can only result in increasing your website traffic, it will also help you understand your competitors and overtake them in SERPs. By identifying the right keywords, you can rank at the top positions on Google.
Ultimately, SEO keyword research will help you select the most valuable and relevant keywords. It means that you’ll have to find out the best keywords your website would rank high. Remember, if your site or blog is a brand new one, you should target low difficult keywords first.
If you are new to keyword research, first practice with Google Keyword Planner. It is free and great to find your target search phrases.
| Check these best free & paid keyword tools
Learning to master keyword research takes time. If you want to improve your skill quickly, read some research tips and read some books:
2. Learn to write quality SEO content
Quality content ranks better. After finding the right keywords, learn to write SEO-friendly content about them. There are a few simple SEO content writing tips that can increase the visibility of your website. The first of these is to make sure that all information in your content is properly sourced. This includes images, textual data, and links.
Next, ensure that you add relevant data and information to your content. Adding valuable data will make it more engaging and increase your audience’s chance of remembering it later.
Include the meta description and meta title of your content. These two components will help search engines understand what your page is about. When using keywords in your titles and descriptions, make sure they are as relevant as possible. These two aspects will significantly impact how your content ranks on Google.
For in-depth learning about content writing, you can read some guides:
3. Learn about Good Site Structure for SEO
It is essential to improve the site structure so that users can easily find the information they are looking for on your site. It also helps search engines understand your content and relationships among topics. Creating a simple site structure can help your SEO. Ensure that each page of your website is easily accessible from its homepage. Make sure to use a flat hierarchy on your website.
Search engines love sites with a clear site structure and navigation. Your audience will easily find the information they need by using logical categories. If you follow the rules of Google’s site structure, it will benefit both your users and search engines. You may want to include a site map or navigation. This will show visitors where to find what they’re looking for.
The site structure should be an important consideration. As search engines become more sophisticated, they can create semantic relationships between topics. By breaking down content into core categories, you’ll make it easier for search engine crawlers to locate the most relevant content on your site. In addition to building logical categories, a sitemap is an essential part of site structure. By improving the sitemap, you can improve the site’s indexing, which is the basis for your page rankings.
4. Learn to make your site mobile friendly
To get the most out of mobile users, you must make your site mobile-friendly. Today, a lot of potential business comes from mobile channels, and you want your customers to be able to visit your website from any device. To get the best results from your website, make it responsive to different devices.
Using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights will give you a quick idea of whether your site is mobile-friendly or not. If your site runs on WordPress, switch to a responsive theme or install a WordPress plugin like WPtouch.
If you use HTML pages, learn how to make them responsive to any device or browser.
5. Learn about Schema Markup
When you use Schema Markup, Google understands your pages clearly. This type of data can significantly boost your SEO results. It is beneficial on product and service pages by highlighting the most relevant data can double its impact.
This markup is commonly used on contact information pages, product pages, and more. Before implementing schema markup on your site, you should test it first to ensure that it works well for your particular page. You can use the Google Structured Data Markup Helper to code the schema markup on your website. The tool has a number of preset filters and will help you code the correct type of schema.
Which schema markup to implement will depend on the industry and type of content of your website. WordPress sites can use an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math as it automatically implements the proper schema markup on the page.
6. Learn to improve Page Speed
Make your site faster. Understand how much time your site takes to load. Increasing page speed can improve your organic traffic. It will really boost your organic traffic and click-through rate.
Identifying the cause of slow loading pages is essential. Google introduces Core Web Vitals to check your site speed and boost rankings.
7. The best SEO tools to use
When it comes to SEO tools, there are many different options available to learn using them. Check these best paid and free tools to train yourself:
Besides the above tools, you are necessary to use these free tools:
Google Analytics to analyze traffic and visitor behaviors.
Google Search Console to analyze traffic and SEO performance.
8. Learn On-page SEO
In on-page SEO, you use multiple factors in the site to optimize search rankings. Content is king. High-quality content is your foundation. Besides, you need to fix any SEO issues with your on-site elements. You can use any of the best SEO tools mentioned above to audit and fix any on-site problems that hold your Google rankings.
9. Learn Technical SEO
Technical SEO is like building a house – you need to pay attention to every aspect of the site to optimize it for search engines. Fix technical errors in your website. Often, errors prevent the search engine crawlers from properly indexing a page, resulting in your website’s performance suffering. To fix such issues, you can use a Site Audit tool. It can detect errors and provide downloadable reports. The tool provides advice on how to correct common problems. It also lists all of the affected URLs and suggests common fixes.
You can use any on-page SEO tool mentioned above to detect and learn to fix technical site issues.
10. Learn off-page SEO to build quality backlinks
Backlinks are the links pointing to your site from other people’s sites. They are one of the most important Google ranking factors. But beginners are often confused about building links or creating quality backlinks correctly.
The best way to get high-quality links is to create content that is both informative and valuable to your audience. Blogging is a great way to generate long-form content and linkable content. Creating content regularly is also a good idea to attract more links and traffic. The links should be relevant to the topics you are discussing on your website.
But remember that if you have mistakes in link building, Google may penalize your website for spamming. So, you should be careful while building backlinks. Some of the most popular link building techniques are:
- Guest posting
- Competitor backlink analysis
- Broken link building
- Infographics distribution
- And more.
But before starting your backlink campaigns, it is highly recommended to learn the basic ideas first. Many articles are available online. For in-depth learning, you can read some books or courses.
11. Learn SEO Competitor Analysis
You can see who are your SEO competitors by searching Google with a keyword you are targeting. Pick a competing site, and then you can find out what keywords they are targeting. By doing this, you’ll be able to identify which ones are getting the most traffic and which aren’t. Using this data, you can choose profitable keywords that your competitors use and create your own content to match their approach. This will allow you to leapfrog your competition in the SERPs.
You can also analyze your competitors for getting their backlink data. Find out their backlink strategies, then build links as they do. So, competitor analysis is essential when you want to outrank them in Google search results. You can do competitor research using any of the SEO tools mentioned above.
12. Learn Content Marketing for SEO
When it comes to organic SEO, one of the most important things you can do for your website is start content marketing. By creating and distributing quality articles, you will help boost your ranking on search engines and get targeted traffic for your website. The goal of content marketing is to boost your website’s presence and increase organic traffic. You should include this strategy in your SEO strategy.
Prioritizing your content marketing strategy will help you provide fresh and relevant content to your website. Newly published articles will get indexed by Google quickly, which will help your ranking. It is essential to create a content calendar to stay on top of your SEO efforts. To learn content marketing effectively, read some books written by top content marketers.
13. Learn Video Marketing
You often see video results on Google. So, you can use videos as traffic generators for your site. They can boost your SEO. There are many ways to use video in your marketing efforts.
You can publish short videos of your products or services on YouTube. These videos can be shared on social media, your website, email, or paid advertising. For maximum effect, your videos should be high-quality and well-sounding. So, if you have a quality camera and some editing knowledge, you can do YouTube marketing. It is highly rewarding.
14. Learn Social Media Marketing
Now social media marketing is a must in your SEO strategies. It can build trust and authority for your site or business for both people and search engines.
Using the right platform can help you reach your target audience. If your social media account is active and has a large community of users, you can engage with your audience and earn their trust. Above all, social signals like shares and likes will boost your SEO performance.
So, consider learning social media marketing strategies for strengthening your SEO.
15. Learn Email Marketing
Though email marketing is not directly related to SEO, it can generate traffic to your website. By the way, increased traffic gives ranking signals to Google. Hence, you should also learn this marketing technique.
There are many benefits of email marketing. It allows you to stay in touch with your customers. You can set up a newsletter sign-up page to build your email list. Then you can send out newsletters or promotional emails.
Email marketing software can automate this process for you. The software will also send emails for you on autopilot.
16. Learn Conversion Rate Optimization
When it comes to online marketing, you’ve probably heard of “conversion rate optimization” (CRO). It’s a method of optimizing your website, landing pages, and marketing campaigns to increase the percentage of qualified leads and sales. Conversion rate optimization can be used to boost your traffic and revenue by improving your visitor experience. Develop a customer persona and establish your conversion goals.
Increased conversion rates build trust in Google. It means that your site is popular, and Google takes the signal positively.
Resources to Learn More About SEO
You also need to read and learn the trending news about search engine optimization to update your skills regularly. Check the following resources.
Blogs and Websites
Books & Courses
Free YouTube Channels
I hope I have listed enough information, guides, and resources. And you have read the steps about how to learn SEO and become an expert. As you grow your skill, you will know where to go next to upgrade your SEO skills further. Please share this page with social media posts and your loved ones if you enjoyed this article.
Ibochouba Singh is a content writer and reviewer with a passion for writing about digital marketing and tech gadgets, including software tools and new tech gadgets. He has over 15 years of experience writing for several consumers and clients, including tech startups, marketing agencies, and software companies. He is writing many articles and product reviews for many websites, including nigcworld.com, buywin.in, medium.com, and quora.com.
