How do I learn SEO? Guide and Tips (2024)

1. Why learn SEO?

In 2022, when digital dominates everything else, there are many reasons to learn and understand SEO. It is a rapidly expanding field that is impacting the growth and success of nearly every type of business. So it's no surprise that learning SEO can be a good thing for the success of your business or career:

However, some of the main reasons for doing so are:

• For your brand to be discovered online
• To stand out from your competitors
• To save money that you should have spent on advertising.
• Generate leads organically with minimal investment

In addition, SEO acts as a catalyst by increasing by 429% the commercial value of visiting your Blog.

As the field of digital marketing continues to intensify, the demand for SEOs is increasing. One of the main reasons for this is the growing need for businesses to achieve maximum reach and visibility organically. After all, organic search generates more than 50% of all web traffic. This is evidenced by the fact that the demand for SEO professionals increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the job market hit a record low.

Now that you know the many benefits you can get from learning SEO, here's how you can get started.

2. Step 1: Start with the basics

As with any process, let's start with the basics.

The most fundamental thing you need to know when it comes to optimizing the success of your website is to understand what search engines are looking for. They perform three functions: exploration, indexing, and filing.

First, let's talk about crawling. Search engines use robots to periodically crawl your website and find fresh content. Regardless of the format of the content, if it is on your website, it will be discovered by search engines using links.

That brings us to the next point in the discussion - indexing. The discovered URLs are then added to a database and retrieved when the content of the pages matches a search query. This process of storing discovered content to help researchers is known as indexing. Remember that not all of the content that is crawled is indexed. That's where SEO comes in.

The efficiency of your website's crawling and indexing then determines its ranking. Ranking is the order in which results indexed in Google are displayed in the SERPs for any search query. Your ranking is also the result of crawling and indexing. This means that your SERP rankings depend on how your web pages have been indexed.

Once you understand these three processes, you can understand how Google Search works much more effectively. The next step is to better understand the keywords.

Key words

So you're a local Adelaide bakery looking to expand its business through its website. You are on the right track, but remember that there are thousands of people just like you. One of the best things you can do to make sure your potential customers can find you is to incorporate the right keywords. What are your customers looking for and what can you provide? Answering this question is the first step in effective keyword research.

Keywords are terms or phrases based on user search queries that are relevant to the product or service you offer. In this case, you're looking for terms like “designer cakes in Adelaide,” “best bakery in Adelaide.” When you incorporate these keywords into your website content, you have a better chance of being indexed for them. In fact, the next time someone searches for these terms on Google, your website may show up in the SERPs.

The higher you rank for these keywords, the more likely you are to have a customer click on your website. After all, over 90% of websites are not receiving any search traffic from Google. So you've integrated successful keywords into your content, you should start generating traffic now, right? Well, it's not that easy.

Backlinks

When you have a website, it is also important to have the right one backlinks strategy only to have the right information. Enter: Backlinks. These are inbound links that come from traffic from other websites and lead to yours.

Backlinks are a way of assuring Google that the content on your website is credible and useful. So, the higher the number of your backlinks, the more organic search traffic you get. And then, of course, there's the fact that links are among the top three ranking factors for Google.

Now that we've covered the basics like keywords and backlinks, it's time to look at the importance of content in the SEO world.

Contents

The fact is that SEO-friendly content can help you get better visibility on search engines. The right content can also convert a website visitor into a paying customer. More importantly, without content, your website won't contain enough information for search engines to crawl and index.

In addition, more than 50% Marketers believe that page content is one of the most effective SEO tactics. Remember that well-written website content not only offers a wealth of information about your product or service, but also clearly defines things like keywords and links for better SEO performance.

Google Algorithms

For someone new to SEO, it is just as important to have a working knowledge of Google algorithms. The Google algorithm is a system used by the search engine to constantly improve the quality of search results and the experience provided to users.

To be fair, it takes a bit of time for people to start following algorithms effectively. Also, if you start now, you'll have to catch up with the previous algorithms, but better late than never, right?

Let's start by taking a quick look at the important algorithms you need to know. The algorithm Google Panda was published in 2011, and affirmed the need for websites to obtain a “quality score”. The next algorithm update you need to know is Penguin, published in 2012. This update was intended to eliminate the spammy and unethical link building tactics that were so prevalent at the time.

However, the recent update of Core Web Vitals is more important than all of these updates. This update bases the performance of the website on the user experience.

The three main parameters that are taken into account for the measurement of these vitals are the following:

• The largest content table (LCP) : This metric measures the loading performance of your website. To be exact, it measures how long it takes for the most important element on your web page to load. Ideally, this delay should be under 2.5 seconds.
• First input delay (DPS) : This measure evaluates the extent to which your web page facilitates interactivity. It measures the time the user has to make the first entry or interaction with your web page. Ideally, this delay should be under 100 milliseconds.
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS) : Each time an element on your web page moves from its rendering frame to another position, it's a change in layout. CLS measures the visual stability of your web page based on these movements. Ideally, it should be less than 0.1.

Measuring page performance is important because if your page load time drops from 1 to a few seconds, your bounce rate can potentially increase by 32%.

Staying up to date with algorithm updates may seem like a gargantuan task at first, but if you stay up to date with the latest trends, it can be quite simple. All you need to do is find the right resources to subscribe to and keep up to date.

Main ranking factors

Danny Sullivan Google even said that, slowly but surely, the Page Experience update will become a dominant factor in web page rankings. That being the case, now is the time to look at the most important ranking factors, as they are considered fundamental elements of SEO.

• Website security : Ensuring website security has always been an important ranking factor for Google. The search engine encourages websites to use HTTPS encryption, which uses SSL certificates to secure connections between websites and their users. This additional layer of security allows Google to direct users to the most trustworthy sites.
• Mobile friendliness : In this day and age, ensuring mobile-friendly websites is not optional at all. It's about how a website behaves on a mobile device. Google places a lot of importance on this aspect, because more than 50% Some website traffic comes from mobile devices
• Links : Links weave the web that connects everyone digitally. So it's no surprise that inbound and outbound links play a crucial role in ranking websites. Inbound links indicate that your site is credible and authoritative, while outgoing links reinforce the authority and quality of your content. Finally, use internal links to ensure that pages on your authoritative site transmit their content to other pages.
• Contents : It is essential for websites to have high-quality content that is optimized for SEO. Content defines the user experience, from engagement to visibility in the SERPs. It is therefore considered to be one of the most important ranking factors.
• Site and page speed : Users have a limited attention span when browsing a website. Any delay in loading your site or web page can therefore lead to a direct loss of customers who may otherwise end up completing a transaction. The user experience is also negatively affected if the speed of the site and pages is not optimized.

In addition to these ranking factors, the aspects discussed earlier, such as integrating successful keywords and Core Web Vitals, also impact your SERP rankings.

Set goals

Now that you have a comprehensive understanding of the key concepts you need to know when learning SEO, the next step is knowing where to start. Like any successful process, creating an effective SEO strategy starts with a goal-setting process.

First of all, when setting goals for your SEO strategy, make sure they are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). This will eliminate potential goals that may become obstacles to your strategy in the future.

Also, rather than pursuing a very ambitious goal, break it down into achievable performance steps. In this way, you will have more room to incorporate the trajectory corrections that you deem necessary. In addition to setting goals, you should also establish SEO benchmarks that will help you achieve quality results over the long term.

Set goals for your SEO staff so that they have specific direction to follow when creating and managing your strategy. More importantly, take into account that you may face a number of issues at the outset, so set deadlines accordingly.

3. Learn how to do keyword research and competitive analysis.

Now that you know all the basics and have sorted them out, let's dive deeper into what implementing an SEO strategy involves. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to learn SEO is to put the concepts into practice on your website.

An SEO strategy requires that you do a lot of research, apply the fundamental principles of SEO effectively, and then follow and Test the performance of your website consistently. With this in mind, when doing research, the two most important activities are keyword research and competitive analysis.

Keyword research is the process of finding the search queries that are most likely to drive traffic to your website or improve the performance of your marketing campaigns. When done properly, keyword research can give you insight into the most popular search queries that are relevant to you. In addition, it will enlighten you about the search volume and the competition you may face when trying to rank in this category.

So it's understandable that keyword research and competition analysis start together. The best way to find keywords that are right for you is to find out which ones work for your competitors. To go back to our previous example, if you have a bakery in Adelaide that sells personalized cakes, a good starting point to get to know your competitors would be to Google “best wedding cakes in Adelaide.” Here's what came up when we tried to do that:

The first results will allow you to know which bakeries you will be competing with. To make this process more successful, try using a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer, in order to reduce the number of top-ranking pages for the selected keyword. By using such a tool, you will also be able to find other keywords that are good for your competitors.

Of course, there are lots of ways to approach keyword research and you can choose the path that works best for you. However, using a keyword research tool is often a great idea to standardize the process, especially if you are likely to be working on a large amount of content. Other popular tools that you can explore when learning the basics of SEO include SEMrush, Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner.

Any discussion about running searches would be incomplete without the mention of Google search operators. There are simple Google searches and advanced Google searches. With search operators, you can extend the capabilities of basic Google searches and retrieve data more easily. In most cases, search operators only require the addition of a few special characters or strings to refine your search results.

In particular, these search operators can be a blessing in disguise when you conduct a competition analysis. After all, to create an effective SEO strategy for your business, you need to start by understanding your competitors' SEO efforts — whether they're successful or not. If you're wondering how to learn SEO competitive analysis, let us tell you that it seems more complicated than it actually is.

Competitive analysis for SEOs includes auditing the keywords, content, and other SEO elements that your competitors use so that you can reverse engineer the strategies used by them. You can then incorporate the most effective tactics into your own SEO strategy.

And yes, the ability to make Google search work exactly the way you want it to, and to effectively conduct keyword research and competitive analysis doesn't come naturally to anyone. SEOs have been training and practicing these processes for years. But it's one of those areas where you learn more by actually doing these activities rather than just basing yourself on the fundamentals. Consider having a blog or a project alongside where you can practice the fundamental principles of SEO.

Additionally, following the most popular SEO experts online and keeping up to date with their work in this field is always a great way to stay up to date with the latest trends. If you want to go a step further, you can also attend local SEO meetings and seminars that can help you become an ace in this ever-evolving field. The key to SEO success is, after all, to constantly learn, adapt, and evolve.

That said, it's important to be patient when you're just starting to learn SEO. It may take a bit of time to get good, but with constant practice and learning, you can certainly expect to make great progress.

Finally, remember that SEO is not a one-time process, contrary to what many uninitiated people believe. It is a consistent process that requires commitment and continued testing. It is not surprising that SEO tests are given as much importance as to audits or the implementation of real SEO activities. Periodically testing your website for SEO will help you identify shortcomings early in the process, and even take corrective action if necessary.

4. Learn the different techniques used for SEO

Once you've learned the basics of SEO and start putting them into practice on your projects, you can improve your skills using cutting-edge techniques. This is where your SEO learning journey gets really interesting.

When we talk about techniques, we mean the prerequisites that you need to understand and implement to ensure the success of your website. Starting there, you can build your SEO strategy and start establishing a strong presence and visibility on SERPs — one day at a time.

Let us help you start learning on-page SEO and how important it is in your overall SEO strategy and business performance.

On-page SEO activities and their impact on business

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your website and all your web pages to improve your visibility on SERPs and increase your organic traffic. And yes, as with all the other SEO activities you are going to carry out, keywords have a lot to do with it. Remember that you are doing On-page SEO for your customers/users as well as for search engines.

Why is that important, you ask? Well over 57% of marketers think that on-page SEO is their most effective SEO tactic. So now let's talk about what you need to do.

Optimizing title tags

The first and most important step you need to take for your On-page SEO should be optimizing your title tags. What you set as a title tag will let search engines know what your web page is about. Of course, it's also important for users, as it appears in the SERPs as a clickable link to your web page.

For example, if your customers in Adelaide are looking to order a cake for a special event, they will likely be looking for “the best bakeries in Adelaide.” So it's not surprising that many of the titles in the first SERP results for this query look like this.

However, many businesses exaggerate and fill their web pages with keywords in a futile attempt to rank higher. But now that you're aware of Google's algorithm updates, you already know that it's not working.

When composing a good title, you need to be sure to include the most important keyword and search intent. Additionally, maintaining the uniqueness of your titles and using action words are known to generate better results. Remember that long titles don't work for practical reasons. Search engines only show the first 50 to 60 characters. By staying within this limit, you can better present your idea in the SERPs.

Optimizing page performance

Did you know that more than 68% of online experiences are initiated by search engines?

So, the web pages on the first page of the SERPs will be the gateway for your potential customers to your website. This is precisely why it is important to ensure consistent and exceptional page performance.

For your page to be efficient, you must first optimize the speed of the page. Page speed refers to how quickly your web pages load when a user accesses them. We already know that Google places a lot of importance on site speed and that it takes this into account in the ranking.

However, page speed is more specific to individual web pages and can be measured using page load speed or the time to the first byte (TTFB). You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to get information about how your page is performing in terms of load speed and responsiveness.

In addition to its importance for search engines, page speed has a considerable impact on user experience. Keep in mind that for a delay of every second, you lose 16% customer satisfaction. This means that pages with longer load times often have higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.

Here are some of the ways you can increase the speed of your pages:

• Decrease the number of redirects for all your web pages
• Activate the compression of files, images and videos on your web pages
• Leveraging the power of caching for your website
• The use of content delivery networks (CDNs), to distribute the load of content delivery across multiple geographic data centers.

Apart from that, you should strive to constantly improve your UX, keeping it as simple and user-friendly as possible. Yes, aesthetics are important, but not at the cost of increasing complexity.

Together, a well-designed user interface and optimized page speeds can do wonders for the performance of the page you want to deliver.

Internal links

To be honest, we can talk endlessly about the importance of relationships and fail to emphasize how important it is to put them in order.

Besides sorting your external links and backlinks, pay attention to your internal link structure. A well-defined internal link structure helps search engines identify important pages on your website and makes it easier for customers to navigate.

Pages that contain a higher number of internal links are considered more important than others by search engines. By internal links, we don't just mean links from the home page or menu to other pages, but also contextual links between different pieces of content on your website. These links tell search engines that some of your web pages are about a similar topic.

In addition, the link value of one page is also distributed to the other links on the page, helping you to reinforce the authority of several web pages at the same time. Understanding this concept is important because it will help you implement an effective internal linking strategy.

Your internal link strategy should be based on the value of links, their relevance, and their relationship to each other. An effective internal linking strategy will also help you define the right site structure for your website.

Optimizing content for keywords

Your on-page SEO efforts won't work if you're not prepared to put in the effort to optimize all of the content on your website. We are sure that you take into account the main SEO parameters when designing the content of your website. But when taking your on-page SEO efforts to the next level, content optimization is just as important.

Keywords are, of course, a major element to take into account when talking about content optimization. Analyze each piece of content to find out who the target audience is and at what stage of the funnel they are likely to be. In fact, it's about determining the search intent of your users. This will give you a better idea of which keywords to choose. Only 0.16% of all popular keywords generate more than 60% research.

The next step is to ensure the right keyword density in your content. Adding too many keywords will cause stuffing, which is heavily penalized by Google. Instead, focus on integrating powerful keywords, but in limited numbers.

The way people search on Google is constantly evolving, and some keywords that were relevant a few years ago may no longer be as valuable. In the content optimization process, be sure to replace these keywords with new ones that can bring qualified traffic to your website.

Remember that this process should be applied to all pages - landing pages, blogs, product/service pages, etc.

Image SEO

SEO novices often make the mistake of not considering media like images and videos as content. Remember, these elements on your website aren't there just for the aesthetic aspect — they play a critical role in defining your SEO performance.

Of course, you might already know that images need to be optimized to appear in Google Images. But did you know that images can potentially impact your SERP rankings? Additionally, images often appear in search results and can even help guide customers to your website.

Let's say you have a car dealership that sells luxury cars in Perth. A person looking to buy a Porsche is likely to search for “buy a Porsche car in Perth” in Google. Look at the first results that appear when someone searches.

There is little doubt that users are more likely to click on the first two results, simply because it interests them more and establishes immediate credibility. That's what image SEO can do for you.

Now that we've talked about how it can help you attract customers, let's see what it can do for search engines. Adding HTML attributes to images allows search engines to identify and index your images. It's important because 30% of total searches On Google are done by searching for images.

Additionally, to optimize your images for SEO, you need to define a file name that describes the image and includes a keyword. You should also set the Alt-Text attribute, which is essentially descriptive text for the image that will be displayed if the image fails to load on slow connections. It is also useful for users who use text readers to navigate websites.

The use of figcaption is also highly recommended for users who want to add an additional caption under the image. Finally, you should ensure that your images are not too big, as they can be cumbersome for your website to load. Use tools like Compressor.io or Tiny PNG to compress your images and optimize them for your website.

Creating fresh content

Above all, a sure-fire way to keep your On-page SEO performance consistent and powerful is to continue to produce fresh content. Many websites choose to publish content when they are created and then stop producing fresh content. This can be very detrimental to your SEO performance.

On the contrary, continue to produce content in the form of blogs or videos in order to remain visible on search engines. In addition, it would also allow you to integrate new keywords that could generate performance for your website.

Content marketing is very beneficial when combined with the power of SEO, but only if you are dedicated to it and if you do it consistently.

Off-page SEO activities and their impact on businesses

Now that you've learned the on-page SEO activities that can generate results for your business website, let's look at off-page SEO activities that can help. As the name suggests, off-page SEO refers to activities that you need to conduct outside of your website that are likely to improve your SEO performance.

Creating links

This is perhaps the most popular off-page SEO strategy. It's impossible to improve your presence and visibility in search engines without the help of link building.

Link building is the process of generating links to your website from other websites on the Internet. As we saw earlier, links are important because search engines use them to crawl websites. Many credible brands are able to build links naturally without the help of SEOs or marketers. But for growing businesses and brands, link building is a critical part of your off-site SEO strategy.

In many cases, link building may require you to contact other blogs or webmasters in your industry. By doing this effectively, you can also build long-term relationships with influencers, which will help you gain a link easily in the future. When you create backlinks, be sure to find websites that have a high domain index and authority to earn valuable links.

We recommend that you carefully read the Google Webmaster Guidelines in order to better understand best practices and handling errors.

This process can be quite time-consuming and requires you to be patient. Writing a good email is also important to increase the chances of a successful outcome in your link building campaign. Many businesses set up entire campaigns of email marketing to raise public awareness and reinforce the credibility of their brand.

Creating broken links

On a global web full of links, most of the time, links expire or don't add value. This can happen for a wide range of reasons. Maybe the URL no longer exists or the link points to a web page that has been moved to another.

Whatever the reason, it leads to a broken link and clicking on it can hurt the user experience. Creating broken links can convert those 404s into exciting opportunities for you. In this process, you identify broken links on websites and offer webmasters a relevant, functional link that they can replace.

While the traditional approach to link building can often result in rejections, creating broken links offers a higher rate of success. You can easily gain a link to your blog or web page, while the webmaster can fix a broken link. It's really a win-win situation.

Local SEO

Businesses thrive on recommendations, and in the internet age, recommendations are made digitally. They are particularly crucial for local businesses that want to target customers in their geographic neighborhood.

Regardless of your niche, if your business has a physical location, you can benefit from local SEO. Over 76% people looking for a result nearby end up visiting a business during the day.

Let's say you have a store that sells electronic gadgets in Perth. Your success depends on the number of customers who shop in your store. Naturally, you will need to promote the business offline and online. Start with create a Google Business profile for your store and complete the form including all the NAP details.

With 46% of searches Indicating local intent, your store should appear in Google search results. At this point, you should know that Google uses a definitive set of factors to rank websites based on local SEO:

These ranking factors are:

• NAP quotes
• The geographical location of the user
• Online magazines
• Social media sharing
• Google business profile
• Presence on Google Maps

These factors allow Google to tailor local recommendations to users who search for a local purpose. So when a user searches for “electronics store in Perth,” these are the top results that come up.

Ideally, you want to be on this list and have your location displayed on the map, so potential customers can find and reach you easily.

You may be wondering what are the main results that are displayed for this search query, apart from the snippets that Google offers. Let's take a look at it, shall we?

You can see that the top five organic search results come from popular online directories. Remember that these websites receive a significant inflow of organic traffic and have a significant domain rating. Thus, registering your business and adding details to these directories will help you to further increase your visibility on SERPs.

With these measures, you can effectively maximize your business's impact on local search results and get local customers to start walking through the door.

Technical SEO activities and their impact on businesses

At the end of the day, SEO has a number of technical aspects that you need to understand when learning to do SEO yourself. You can excel in your on-page and off-page SEO efforts, but that won't measure up to what you can do by improving your technical SEO.

But don't worry, it's not that complicated if you learn the basics of SEO and understand how these technical aspects fit into the big picture. So let's get to the heart of the matter.

Robots.txt file

Since we've talked about crawling at such length, we're sure you're wondering if you have any control over this process. Well, the truth is you're not doing it.

However, you can give search engines guidance on which parts of the website should be explored and which should be excluded by using the robots.txt file. Robots.txt, also known as the Robot Exclusion Protocol, is a file that you need to place at the root of your domain and that details the URLs that robots are allowed to explore.

Whatever the reason, if you have web pages that you don't want search engines to crawl, the robots.txt file can help you rule them out. Additionally, it is the only text file that all search engines and other systems can read, and it is recognized as a standard protocol by major search engines.

Creation of the site map

How do you find a specific location in a place you've never visited before? You take out your phone and let the GPS do its job, right?

Sitemaps do something very similar and more for search engines. They help them discover and find the pages on your website. The more up-to-date your sitemap is, the higher the probability that Google will be able to find new pages and identify updates to old ones.

A typical site map serves several purposes on your website:

• Act as a roadmap for search engines to navigate your website
• Guide search engines to discover other language versions of your website
• Allow search engines to explore and index new web pages.
• Allow search engines to identify updates to old web pages on your site.

There are two types of sitemap formats that you need to be aware of:

• HTML sitemaps: These are sitemaps that you add for users to see. They guide and help them navigate your website.
• XML sitemaps: These are sitemaps that guide search engines in crawling and indexing your website.

While internal link building takes care of the role that HTML sitemaps will play in your website, XML sitemaps are essential for SEO.

When creating a site map for your website, keep the following checklist in mind:

• Decide which pages need to be explored and create a canonical version of these pages.
• Analyze the number of sitemaps you will need
• Create a sitemap index in case of multiple sitemaps

The process of creating and submitting your sitemap to Google may seem daunting for a beginner. To do this, you can use sitemap generators such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

Additionally, you can easily submit your sitemap using Google Search Console. We're going to take a closer look at what this tool can do for you in a moment. To submit a sitemap, create an account in Google Search Console, then click “Sitemap” in your dashboard. Then enter your sitemap URL and click “Submit.”

Remember that while you only need to create a site map once, you need to regularly maintain and check your site plans to keep search engines informed about the status of your site.

Site security

Security is not a term that is used lightly these days. Users are increasingly wary of how websites treat their privacy and security.

For this reason, and considering that security attacks are becoming more sophisticated and easier every day, site security should be at the forefront of your strategy. Ironically, One malicious site out of ten is hosted by non-malicious domains. Not to mention that several commercial websites contain malicious URLs without their knowledge.

To do this, you need to start by implementing a comprehensive website security solution. Never take this part for granted, because It is estimated that every website is attacked 90 times per day. If your website processes a lot of sensitive information about your customers, this part becomes particularly important for you.

Malicious software and phishing are two of the most common online attack modes that you need to protect your site from. Something as simple as providing adequate training to your employees can greatly help you in this process. Also, don't forget to protect your website by regularly eliminating any vulnerabilities.

Additionally, some of the best practices to consider to ensure site security include the following:

• Protect your usernames and passwords by creating strong words and changing them regularly.
• Choosing a web hosting provider that offers increased security
• Get an SSL certificate for your website
• Have a solid security policy that encourages regular security checks and backups.

Optimization of basic web storefronts

A detailed discussion of technical SEO would be incomplete without a deeper dive into Core Web Vitals. As we've seen before, Core Web Vitals are critical to your website's SEO performance, even if they're not ranking factors.

Google places great value on the user experience, so websites should offer the same on their web pages. Core Web Vitals are measures that Google introduced in its Page Experience update. These metrics determine how users perceive their experience on your website.

You already know what the three metrics measure: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). To understand how your web pages are behaving in this regard, you can use PageSpeed Insights.

Each measure requires you to follow a specific set of best practices. However, these three indicators can be improved and optimized with the help of a few activities such as:

• Use of content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute load to servers.
• Minimize third party requests and the volume of files requested.
• Implementation of a browser caching mechanism for your website to reduce server pressure.
• Optimization of images and activation of a mechanism of preload if necessary.
• Eliminate unused JavaScript and CSS files

By ensuring that your vital websites are optimized within the prescribed limits, you can improve the overall user experience of your website.

5. Step 4: Understanding SEO Tools

You'll notice that throughout this guide, we've encouraged you to use numerous SEO tools and software to help you with your process. It's important to know that these tools are in fact crucial for monitoring and optimizing your website for SEO on a consistent basis. Additionally, they can also help you learn how to do SEO yourself.

While there are hundreds of tools you can use for specific functions, here are a few that will help you take your SEO performance to the next level right from the start.

Google Search Console (GSC)

No surprises here!

Google Search Console has already been featured several times in this guide, and for good reason. It is a free platform that SEOs use extensively to monitor and optimize their presence and performance in SERPs.

The first step is, of course, to link your website to the Google Search Console. Here's a simple step-by-step procedure to get there.

Step 1: Create a Google Search Console account using your business account.

Step 2: You can now add your website as a property in GSC. You can add either the domain or the URL prefix.

Step 3: Choose a website verification method. Remember that the Google Search Console gives you total control over how your website will be crawled and ranked in the SERPs. So verification is important to make sure that you are the owner of your website. There are several verification methods you can choose from. Make sure you choose the one that works best for you.

Once your website is verified, there are a plethora of activities that you can accomplish using the GSC. You can monitor your website's performance across mobile devices, referring domains, and rich search results, all from the same platform.

Google Analytics

If used properly, Google Analytics can be the cornerstone of managing your website's SEO performance. Initially, we suggest that you prepare for a steep learning curve. Google Analytics has a reputation for having a complicated interface.

If you have a small or medium-sized business, you have every chance of getting all the features you need with the free version of Google Analytics. This analytics tool can offer you detailed information about the performance of your website and applications and integrates seamlessly with all of Google's other marketing and advertising tools.

Like the SGC, you'll need to link your Google Business account to Google Analytics. Start by setting up your account, and start tracking the metrics needed to monitor your website's SEO performance.

You can set up your Google Analytics account in a few simple steps:

• Step 1 : Log in to your Google Analytics dashboard with your business account.
• Step 2 : Add basic information such as the name of your business, the industry in which you operate, and the URL of your website.
• Step 3 : Link an asset that you want to track using your GA account.
• Step 4 : Add views to each property in your website account
• Step 5 : Add the GA tracking code after the head tag to your website.
• Step 6 : Check if the code is working and monitor your performance from your GA dashboard.

Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can start tracking the performance of your website, as well as social media channels, transparently from your dashboard.

Ahrefs

Now that you've started your SEO journey, get ready to hear about Ahrefs much more often. Ahrefs offers a comprehensive suite of tools, including those intended to facilitate link building, ranking monitoring, keyword research, and even monitoring the SEO performance of your competitors.

Ahrefs has become a very popular SEO tool because it offers features for businesses of all types and sizes. Even small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford one of the advanced plans can achieve a great deal of success, thanks to one of their most basic plans. In addition, SEO teams can also choose to use the specific tools offered by Ahrefs. Additionally, the user-friendly interface makes it easy for aspiring SEO professionals to learn and use the tools effectively.

However, Ahrefs is most often used to analyze domain backlink profiles and optimize their performance.

Screaming Frog

We know how difficult it can be to find the right SEO tools among the multitude of tools available. Even if you're just starting to learn SEO, it's likely that you'll end up using Screaming Frog for some of the most crucial aspects of your strategy.

It is a website crawler that scours your URLs and generates valuable information about your technical and on-page SEO performance. Remember that Screaming Frog SEO can be downloaded for free and used without problems if you have a small website with a limited number of web pages. However, if you have a detailed website with a large number of web pages, it's best to go for a paid plan.

The paid version of the software costs around £149 per year. The tool is recognized and used by some of the biggest companies in the world, including Google, Amazon, Disney, and Apple. The tool gives you a detailed overview of your SEO performance and is an ideal tool for conducting SEO audits.

SEMrush

SEMrush is an analysis tool that is very similar to Ahrefs. In fact, if you ask any experienced SEO, they'll tell you that it always comes down to these two tools when it comes to getting the full suite of SEO features.

SEMrush has modules that can help you conduct keyword research, competition analysis, and help you optimize your Google advertising campaigns. More importantly, you can monitor keyword rankings and organic traffic from any website right on your dashboard. One of the most useful features of this tool is that you can track your traffic sources, so you know where to focus your investments in the future.

While many prefer SEMrush to monitor and manage their SEO campaigns, it can be a very useful tool for tracking your PPC campaigns as well.

6. Learn SEO reports

Now that you know how to learn SEO and all that it involves, it's time to talk about reporting. Because it must be admitted: reports are one of the most crucial parts of the job of an SEO professional. Whether for your own website or for your client, the reports you generate will determine how SEO expenses are distributed.

When created effectively, SEO reports also detail what works and what doesn't work for your website. This will allow you to adjust your SEO strategy and steer it in the right direction.

But as we said before, it all starts with setting goals the right way.

Set goals before starting the optimization process

When you start analyzing your website and optimizing it to perform better, you need to know what the goal is. Without it, you would only be implementing strategy after strategy without a specific goal.

For any website you're doing SEO for, determine what goals you're pursuing. Are you aiming for a better ranking in the SERPs? Are you expecting an increase in organic traffic? Do you want your website to start converting visitors effectively?

Once goals and timelines are set, you can determine which activities are most likely to work in your favor.

Website audits

Before embarking on this strategy, conduct a comprehensive audit of your website to assess its current performance and determine what additional work is needed.

• SEO forecasts : SEO forecasting occurs and should occur during each reporting cycle. It's the process of looking at past SEO trends and performance data related to your website. Based on this data, you will make forecasts for the future. This will give you a better idea of which activities need to be repeated for continued gains and which activities need to be changed for more growth.
• SEO audit : The next step to perform a well-defined website audit is to perform a SEO audit. You will compare your SEO strategy to industry best practices. The aim of such an audit is to identify the issues that are preventing your website from achieving ideal results.
• Content Audit : The next audit you need to perform concerns your content. This process involves analyzing all of the content on your website and evaluating its performance. Nearly 51% of marketers consider content re-purposing to be a very effective content marketing tactic. A content audit will also identify these opportunities and contribute to your SEO strategy.
• Backlink audit : As the name suggests, this is an audit of all links pointing to your website. Essentially, it's about identifying good and bad links and then developing effective strategies to deal with them in the best possible way. It is important to adopt the good approach to backlink audits in order to obtain the expected results.

Tracking keyword movements

Even with all of these audits, you'll still need to track your keywords and their performance for your website.

You pretty much know how search engines work, right? You incorporate keywords into your content, and when a user enters that information into a search query, you want to be ranked for that keyword. At least that's the ideal scenario. In reality, even if you're ranked #1 for a keyword today, you can gain or lose your position over time.

To make sure you're still in that top spot, keep track of keyword movements and refresh your content with new keywords if the old ones no longer generate results.

7. Stay up to date with the latest advances in the search algorithm.

With the steps we've seen so far, you would be able to successfully create an effective SEO strategy, implement it, and measure the results. But don't forget that the SEO field is constantly evolving and search algorithms are constantly progressing.

With this in mind, you should always keep up to date with the latest advances in the field and in algorithms by reading articles on the subject.

Newsletter

If you follow a trend religiously, you've probably subscribed to a newsletter about it. Do the same for SEO.

There are lots of accomplished influencers and businesses operating in the SEO field that you should stay up to date with. Many of them have newsletters that cover industry news, technical updates, and opinions on recent trends. Subscribing to these newsletters will give you a rich and detailed overview of the trends that you should include in your SEO strategy.

Some of the newsletters that we highly recommend include tl; dr Marketing, Moz Top 10 and #SEOFOMO.

Podcasts

Another good way to stay up to date with the latest SEO trends is to follow podcasts. There are amazing podcasts out there that use high-value guests to talk about SEO. Choose the ones that feature SEO experts and entrepreneurs to learn from their experiences and mistakes.

Not to mention that podcasts are great tools when you want to study passively. You can listen to them while you're on the move or doing household chores, and get valuable information while on the go.

We have our own list of SEO podcasts that we recommend you try.

SEO conferences

It goes without saying that if you want to improve your SEO learning, you should rely on conferences. Conferences are one of the richest sources of up-to-date information on any sector, as they usually bring together experts who have big ideas to share.

It's also a great way to network and meet learners like you, as well as seasoned professionals you can learn from. Now that the world is slowly opening up, you can even attend some of these conferences in person. But until then, there are plenty of virtual summits and conferences that you can register for.

8. FAQs

Can I learn SEO by myself?

Yes, you can totally learn SEO by yourself. In fact, most SEO professionals today are self-taught or acquire the necessary skills through online courses.

Should I learn SEO through practice or through courses?

Even if you choose to learn SEO through a course, the majority of your skills will develop through practice. You'll need to apply these concepts on projects to be able to refine practical and effective SEO skills.

Is SEO hard to learn?

The SEO learning journey can certainly seem quite daunting for beginners. But once you know the basics, you learn pretty quickly. However, advanced SEO techniques should be learned by ensuring that they are applied in real time on projects and by practicing them constantly.

How can I learn SEO for free?

Learning SEO can be easily done by sifting through the knowledge already shared online by yourself. It goes without saying that this process is absolutely free.

However, to get additional information and dig deeper into SEO, you can opt for SEO courses taught by reputable SEO companies and influencers. These courses are available at nominal prices and are very affordable.

How do I start learning SEO?

The best way to learn SEO is to get familiar with the basic concepts of SEO and build your skills from there. Remember that most of the learning you will do in this regard will be effective if you apply the concepts to real projects. Start an online practice blog or take on a freelance project to slowly refine your SEO skills.

Additionally, you can also gain knowledge by consulting reputable blogs on the subject and taking courses offered by seasoned SEO professionals and experts.

How do beginners do SEO?

Beginners or not, when you start learning SEO, you learn the theoretical concepts, but you benefit greatly from applying them to real projects. This will enlighten you about possible difficulties in the process and how to overcome them effectively. Be prepared to make a few mistakes, but take advantage of these opportunities to define your personal approach to SEO.

What do you do for on-page SEO?

If you want to learn on-page SEO, there's nothing better than finding a website project you can practice on. After all, on-page SEO is about optimizing websites for better search engine performance. But don't forget that it's just as much about providing an ideal experience for your users.

On-page SEO can start with something as basic as keyword research, and go all the way to optimizing internal link structures and page performance. Conduct an SEO audit of your website, to get started, identify the main shortcomings in your strategy and work your way up from there.

Why is on-page SEO important in 2022?

Most marketers today consider on-page SEO to be one of the most effective SEO tactics for their digital presence. Also, an ideal SEO strategy starts with optimizing elements of your website for SEO, which is fairly easy to do. Without an effective on-page SEO strategy, your off-page SEO tactics and techniques may not work or may not deliver the expected results.

Another way of looking at it is the increasing number of people who are now accessing websites on their mobile devices. You need to optimize your website for these users, because otherwise you would lose potential customers.

9. Final remarks

After fighting a global pandemic, one thing is certain for businesses today: you can't afford to take your digital presence for granted.

That said, if you're just starting to see the benefits of your digital marketing and want to get started with SEO, it's never too late.

Start by learning the basics of SEO, and continue to practice on a project to ensure that your skills are put to use. With the increasing demand for SEOs around the world, learning SEO will only open the door to numerous opportunities for you.