You do some keyword researching, include those keywords in your blog post, use text decorations on those keywords, write good meta description, get some backlinks and you’re set for the first page of search engines.
But over 20 years,
SEO has evolved and become more complicated. The changes were necessary as there was more website being created each day and competition for the top spots on search engines are getting stronger. The old algorithms are no longer useful in sorting the best results once people have figured out how to play the SEO game.
Over the years, more and more ranking factors are added into search engine’s algorithms to make sure that the results returned from each search are absolutely the best for the users.
And consequently, SEO becomes more complicated and requires more effort to optimize. With SEO being so complicated and evolving so quickly, you’ll need to learn SEO quick too.
Here are 5 best ways to learn SEO so you can become an SEO expert in no time:
1. Read
The conventional answer to learning anything is by reading. I know this is a boring answer but despite being a casual reader myself, I find this to be the best way to learn.
However, the key idea here is reading from the right sources.
Nowadays, there are too many resources out there that you can learn SEO from. You don’t want to waste your time reading articles that are just promoting bad SEO practices, or articles that are rehashing what you’ve already know.
For every bad article that you wasted your time reading, you could have read another article and actually learn something valuable.
Which is why you need to know where to source your reading materials from. You should be reading content from credible SEO blogs, and below are some of the blogs that you can count on getting the most reliable and valuable SEO content:
- Moz
Moz is considered as the top leader in the SEO industry. That is because Rand Fishkin (founder of Moz) and his team publishes only unique and only the highest quality content on their blog.
- Search Engine Land
You can get all the news and trends in related to search engine here, including SEM, PPC, and SEO.
- Search Engine Journal
Similar to Search Engine Land, you can expect to read the latest search marketing advice, news, and tutorials.
- Backlinko
As the name suggest, Brian Dean (founder of Backlinko) is the top expert when it comes to building backlinks. Brian Dean shares his expertise on link building, SEO, content marketing, and conversions on Backlinko blog.
- SEOPressor
And of course, our own blog! Although we’re not as popular as the bigger players listed above, our blog is definitely a source you can rely on. We write articles on our latest findings, how-to guides, tips and tricks and advice on SEM and content marketing.
2. Get An SEO Mentor
This is possibly the fastest way to learn, but it’s not always an accessible option. SEO can be considered as a niche industry so there aren’t too many people involved in SEO and even less that can be considered as SEO experts.
Even if you do know someone who is an SEO expert, they might not be willing to share their knowledge with you, which is understandable given that they usually charge a high price for consultation.
So if you have someone close that is an SEO expert, try getting them to coach you. Offering them something of equal value in return of their knowledge is always a welcomed idea.
If you don’t know anybody who is an SEO expert, consider attending marketing seminars, conferences or any networking events. You are bound to know
3. Mingle With Like-Minded People
If you don’t have a mentor that you can learn SEO from, learn it from a million others. In this internet era, finding like-minded people and sharing knowledge has never been easier.
There are plenty of SEO websites and SEO communities that bring people from all over the world together, sharing their SEO knowledge.
Here are some great SEO communities that you could join and participate in:
- Inbound.org
Initiated by Rand Fishkin and Dharmesh Shah (CTO of Hubspot), Inbound.org is the fastest growing and most popular inbound community currently. Marketers of all different level of expertise are here to learn or to share their knowledge and opinion. Articles shared here are moderated manually and sorted based on a voting system, which means only articles of the highest quality are able to make it through to the trending page.
- GrowthHackers
GrowthHackers has a similar format to Inbound.org and even have similar audiences. The big difference between GrowthHackers and Inbound.org is the type of topic that is valued in the community. Community in GrowthHackers values any article related to growing web traffic while Inbound’s community value articles that are related to inbound marketing methods.
- BizSugar
BizSugar is slightly less focused on SEO. Generally, all articles that a small business owner will be interested are accepted here.
- Google+ SEO Communities
Many people have a misconception that Google+ is an empty wasteland, but it is not. While Facebook is the more popular social network between the two, people prefer using Facebook solely for their personal matter. For work related stuff, most people will prefer hanging out on Google+ or LinkedIn, and it is evident as work related posts have higher social engagement on Google+ than on Facebook.
- LinkedIn SEO Groups
LinkedIn groups has generally a smaller amount of members and lower engagement, but this platform is where you can easily find industry leaders share their thoughts and knowledge.
4. Learn With SEOPressor Connect
Besides being an On-page SEO WordPress plugin that helps you with your On-Page SEO, SEOPressor Connect acts like an SEO mentor that guides you while you’re working on it.
SEOPressor Connect works by analyzing your website, calculate your SEO score with our own algorithms and give you suggestions on how you should optimize your pages. SEOPressor will also check if there’s any over-optimization and warn you about it.
SEOPressor Connect analyzes your content and gives you instant feedback and suggestions so you can rank higher on search engines.
By having SEOPressor installed on your WordPress, you are equivalent to having an SEO mentor looking at your website, guiding you and giving you advice all the time and responding to you whenever you desire.
5. Run Your Own SEO Experiment
Running your own SEO experiments require a longer time, but if you’re serious about SEO, this is one of the greatest ways to learn about it.
Despite having thousands of experts having run their own experiments and shared their results on their blog already, nothing beats having your own set of data, results and insights. This is because every case is unique, every website has different metrics, a different set of target audience, and trigger a different type of response from the audience.
There are just too many factors in SEO for it to be possible to accurately predict the outcome of each optimization you make. Which is why you should run your own SEO experiment on your own website to see how each of your actions result in what outcome.
To run your own SEO experiment, you should always have sufficient data. Be sure to record every data of your website (tools like Google Analytics is your best friend) before you make an optimization, record in detail exactly what you do to optimize, and record the result of your optimization.
Once you’ve run your experiment, whether the outcome is negative or positive, you’re bound to have more insights on your own website and have learned an SEO lesson that you could unlikely forget. One thing that you should always keep in mind is that correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
Before making any sound conclusion, always test out any possible variables and cross check with other sources of SEO findings.
Final Thoughts
SEO is already a big part of marketing and will continue growing. In fact, it is almost always a required skill for digital marketers. The need for SEO is becoming higher, which is why picking up SEO is definitely a wise choice, especially if you’re a marketer or blogger.