3 Ways to Learn Basic SEO From Scratch

If you’ve ever considered starting your own blog (and we have often talked about its importance for authors), then the word SEO will always pop up. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, may sound like a complex techy thing that definitely does not come under your area of expertise. After all, why should a writer know these things?

If you’re an indie author, and you would prefer not to spend on hiring someone to run your blog, then learning SEO is an absolute necessity. The primary goal of using SEO is to make sure your website comes up on the first page of Google search results. SEO is not as complex or confusing as it seems (although Digital marketing specialists would disagree). The trick is to focus on the basics.

For SEO tips, check out our blog post, 7 SEO Tips for Authors to Generate a Bigger Readership. Here, we will be discussing three simple and easy ways a beginner can use to learn SEO from scratch.

1. Google

Google is always anybody’s go-to for any kind of information. Since our main goal is to get our blog to rank within the first page of Google’s search results, there is no better way to learn the basics of SEO than Google itself. In fact, Google has several official resources for SEO, which are completely free for users.

Google’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Starter Guide consists of a glossary of SEO-related terms, guidelines on how to get your page on to Google’s search results, tips to help you decide if you need an SEO expert or if you can do it yourself, how to control your title links and snippets in search results, and many, many more guidelines.

“This guide won’t provide any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!), but following the best practices will hopefully make it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and understand your content,” says Google.

If you want a comprehensive guide to SEO, this is the best place to start.

2. Moz Blog

Moz provides various software, educational videos, and community advice to help people become more proficient in SEO. Its blog is a mine of information for anybody with an interest to learn and discover tips and tricks in the trade. They have several video courses, the best one among them being The Free SEO 6-Part Video Series, which is easy to access and easy to comprehend. The video series covers SEO strategy, keyword research, searcher satisfaction, on-page optimisation, technical SEO, and link building.

You can access the video course here.

3. Yoast (Free SEO Course)

Yoast is a popular SEO plugin for WordPress, and comes with a range of in-built features that would optimize your blog posts. While you can immediately start using the Yoast plugin and learn SEO along the way, if you want to start from the basics and learn methodically, try enrolling in the Yoast SEO Academy.

They have two courses, free and premium. The free course covers all the basics of SEO, WordPress and Yoast SEO plug-in training, SEO news webinar replays, etc. The premium course includes a more extensive range of knowledge, and would be highly beneficial for someone who wants to become a true expert at SEO. It contains all-around SEO training, international SEO training, keyword research training, technical SEO training, etc., and also comes with the Yoast Premium plugin for WordPress.