How to learn SEO the right way, and how to learn it fast, and learn it in a way that it actually sticks, so that you can continue to be an expert and continue to get results now and into the future, so the very first thing you have to do is you have to get base knowledge, so there’s unlimited information about SEO on the Internet.
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Learn search engine optimization (SEO)
Now, before you take all the base information that you’re going to learn and start acting on it, you need to understand that not all actions in SEO are created equally. Some actions produce 100 times bigger results, while some actions produce very little results, so knowing the difference between those actions is absolutely critical, and that’s really what makes a difference between people who are extremely effective in their SEO campaigns and people who focus on a bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually produce results, so you wanna focus on the things that are gonna produce the biggest results with the minimal amount of effort, so what are those actions that you can take that are gonna produce huge results?
Learn SEO Tutorial: Step-By-Step SEO Guide for Beginners
Well, the first is understanding how to create keyword-targeted content, also known as SEO content, so SEO content actually applies to informational pieces of content, which are gonna be blog posts and also transactional pages, which are gonna be lead capture pages, local pages, or even e-com pages, and the way you structure those pages will completely depend on the intent behind the keyword phrases that you’re going after, so for example, if you’re targeting how to train a Great Pyrenees, that page should be completely focused on educating that person about how to train a Great Pyrenees. It shouldn’t be built to convert them into a customer. It should be built just to educate, and once you’ve done that job, then you can ask for something, which typically, in that case, you wanna just ask for an e-mail address because you’re so early in the sales cycle that it’s not gonna convert very well if you immediately try to hit them with a sales pitch, so it’s best to, when it’s an informational asset, to go after something that’s a little lower barrier to entry, so that would be like trying to get their e-mail address, and you can offer a lead magnet or something of value in exchange for their e-mail address, and then transactional pages, on the other hand, would be built to actually convert the searcher into a lead or into a customer, so if you were a dog trainer in St. Louis, and you wanted to rank for that keyword phrase, you’d want that page to be structured to build a lot of trust and, most importantly, build it in a way that’s completely designed to convert, so you see the differences that the information was designed to educate, the transactional is designed to convert, so knowing the difference between those two is completely dependent on understanding search inten, understanding how to create new keyword-targeted content and how to improve existing content on a website is one of the most fundamental SEO skills that you can learn ’cause the truth is websites are filled with thin, duplicate, outdated, and just sometimes straight-up bad content, and so you have to understand how to go through a website and find these issues, these content issues, and then know what to do with the content once you find it, so in a lot of cases you will actually end up having to delete a lot of content or consolidate or even redirect content to primary assets, but once again, I have a video on my channel about how to do a content audit, so make sure you stream that, but understanding how to create SEO content and how to optimize existing content is a fundamental SEO skill you have to learn.
Number two is link building, so I know there’s a lot of stuff out there right now about how links don’t matter, but there’s so much evidence showing that they still matter and have mattered pretty much forever, so it’s kind of a silly discussion overall, but regardless, it is very, very difficult to rank without links, and it can be done, but you’d have to be willing to wait a very long time to be able to get those results, and so if you’re willing to wait years and years and years to get results, then you might be able to do it, but in most cases, you’re gonna need links if you’re competing in even a semi-competitive niche, and you have to think about it this way: If all things are equal, let’s say you have two competing websites. They both have incredible content. They both have an incredible design. They both have an incredible user experience. Well, what is Google going to use to determine who should rank? Well, the only thing they can do at that point if all things are created equally, is they have to look to external sources. They have to look to external factors to determine which pages are best, so the number-one factor that they can use are links from other relevant websites or links from other credible sources, and so whoever has the most high-quality links is going to definitely outperform the one that does not because, if all things are equal, that’s gonna be the determining factor to do decide who wins in that battle, so that’s why it’s absolutely critical that you have a concentrated effort to acquire new links to your website because otherwise it’s gonna be extremely hard, no matter how good your content is, no matter how good your website is, and that may change in the future, but right now that continues to be one of the most important factors for SEO performance, so make sure you learn everything about it, so the third high-impact area that you need to study and learn is user experience optimization, and so a lot of the technical SEO optimization that you’ll go through will improve user experience, but anything you can do in a website that improves user experience is going to benefit SEO, and most importantly it’s going to benefit your conversions, and so it’s a critical piece of the puzzle, and so understanding how to create and optimize existing content, understanding how to acquire links, and understanding how to optimize for user experience, if you get those three right, and you understand those, and you really hone in on getting better at those, you are gonna be a really, really good SEO expert, and then number four, which I consider a bonus, but I really think every SEO should be competent in this skill, and that’s conversation rate optimization, also known as CRO, and CRO is critical because it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your site if you don’t actually turn that traffic into leads and customers, and that’s when CRO comes into play, so I won’t get deep into CRO, but it’s absolutely critical that you’re consistently testing your pages and trying to improve your pages so that they convert at the maximum that they can, so that you’re getting the most out of all the traffic that’s going to your site.
How to learn SEO: Best tips for effective learning
Now, I know that might seem like a kind of a weird suggestion, but believe it or not, when you start your own project, and you use that as your testing breeding ground, you will learn so incredibly fast, and this is the process that I recommend doing, so while you’re getting your base knowledge, while you’re learning the key elements of successful SEO campaigns, what you wanna do is study one thing, so let’s take one of my videos, for example. Go and stream one of my videos, and when you see something that’s actionable, take that action item and put it what I call on a future actions list, and so what I do is I literally take actionable items from content, books, videos, whatever, and I put it on a future actions list so that I am accountable to take action on that information, and so you need to have that process in place because otherwise you’ll just consume, consume, consume, and you won’t actually act on the information, and so everything that you have consumed doesn’t matter unless it’s actually acted upon, and so it’s so incredibly critical to understand that concept. You’ve probably seen many people online, maybe on Twitter or where else, where they know a lot of information, but they can’t actually demonstrate that information, so for example, there may be some college professors that know a ton about business. They may know the history of the business. They may know everything you could ever imagine, historically, about being an entrepreneur, but they’ve never actually started a business. They’ve actually never grown a business, so that applies in SEO too. There are tons of people who know everything, every single nook and cranny about SEO, but honestly, a lot of them don’t actually know how to execute that information, so you don’t wanna be a person that just knows a bunch of information. You wanna be someone who actually knows how to execute on that information and knows how to get real results, and the only way to get real SEO results is to act on every piece of information that you get so that you can learn from it and iterate over time because there are no rules in SEO. Everything is a hypothesis. Everything is a best practice, but you should always be putting those best practices to test, and that’s really, really important, and even my own advice, anything I give you, put it to the test. See if it works. You should always be questioning everything at all times, but the way to really question it the right way is to actually act on it and get that feedback based on your own actions. Now, the good news is that I’ve done a massive amount of testing and failure for you. I’ve worked on hundreds of SEO campaigns, so you can really bypass a lot of the stupid stuff that I did so you don’t have to it yourself and trust me, I did a lot of stupid stuff in between here to get to the point where I am now, so believe me, you don’t wanna go through any of the stuff that I did in between, so that is really the value of working with someone who has the expertise, and I’ve had to do that many, many times throughout my SEO career, seeking out information from people who are way more experienced than I am because I know that I do not wanna go through this again in any other field, so I always look for people who are way more experienced than I am to leverage their expertise so I don’t have to go through all the failing, and the testing, and the experimentation, and the time-wasting. I don’t wanna go through any of that. I’d rather just bypass all that and work with someone who already knows what they’re doing, and so understanding that principle is huge because at the end of the day we only have so much time. You can’t learn every skill in the world, so you have to work with other people to acquire these skills, and the only way to do it is to work with people who are more experienced than you are, so the big takeaway for step number three is to start your own side hustle, and make sure that you act far more than you consume. I recommend about a 90/10 split, so 90% of your time should be spent acting; 10% of your time should be spent educating yourself and learning. Okay, so let me review how to learn SEO the right way, so step number one, establish the base foundation, so learn just enough so that you can start to take action on the information. Number two, learn the most important parts of SEO, which is gonna be content, link building, user experience, and conversion rate optimization, and then number three, start your own side project or side hustle so that you can get real-life experience in SEO, and even if you’re already an experienced SEO, and even if you’ve worked on SEO campaigns before, it’s still really important to have your own side projects because it keeps you fresh.