How did you learn SEO when you first started?

I started with the basics from a few trusted SEO blogs and then tested everything on my own websites. Real practice helped me understand things faster.

Hi,

No courses or fancy ebooks. I learned 90% through pure trial & error and testing on my own sites. I spent hours reading BHW case studies, bought different link packages, built my own test sites, and watched what worked vs what got penalized. Hands on testing is the only real way to learn SEO.

I skipped most of the courses and built a few test sites instead. Breaking things, fixing them, and watching what changed taught me far more than tutorials. I still keep a small test site around whenever I want to try something new before using it on client projects.

I learned from tools like Ahrefs, and SEMRush guides.

My path has been one of trial and error, and so far there is no definitive answer

In my starting days. i have learned SEO in phased manner. I started with keyword research and spent half year doing just that then i moved to other aspects and realize along the way that i need more practical experience theni started experimenting and learned alot more in a short span of time.

SEO_COMPANY said:

There are so many blogs, YouTube channels and online courses available that it's difficult to know to begin. I'm curious how experienced members here learned SEO when they first started Did you follow a structure path or learn mostly through trial and error?

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I started by reading posts here and of course watching videos on YouTube.

Learn the absolute basics first: site structure, meta tags, internal linking – and just start building. The rest you'll pick up along the way through trial and error, no course can replace that.

I've been around in the SEO and affiliate marketing for over 15 years. I remember first time when I saw an ad online on making money online was at 16. Since then i started to look for info but ofcourse i found many "Gurus" back then who were promising method for making money for a small investment of 27.99$ and fake affiliate selling of investing 50$ into facebook ads and making thousands lol.

Didnt know shit back then so I took the bait ... it happend few times actually haha. But thats how you learn things, by getting tricked by others smarter than you.

Then i started to read more and more on whatever forum i find about Internet Money Making ( I discovered PPC sites like NEOBUX and ONBUX and many others like it, Clickbank, Seo tools like Xrumer, Scrapebox, Mass video blaster, Youtube Cpa, Jvzoo, Seoclerks, Fiverr and many others - There are so many I tried that I cant remember all).

My first biggest hit then was after about 2 years started i think when i had an ideea of paying someone to make me a Proxy Visiting software bot for 80$ and I sold it on fiverr multiple times for somehwere of near 4k in total of sales in few months. Thats when many lights started to ignite in my head.

I know I told my mother that THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO FROM NOW ON. She laughed a bit but still trusted me and said something like: "Its your life, try to make the best of it because you live once. If this is your path, I wish you good luck".

There is alot of money to be made on internet specially with the AI tools now. GL!

I am currently in the learning curve and I wanted to ask experts this: Does AI (claude/chatgpt/gemini) give you good advice or point you towards good practices or are they just too general?

When I first started it was a ton of online course work and just getting use to the phrasing and knowing what tools/where to get started, but honestly I learned the most from actually doing the job and finding businesses to work with. Obviously easier said than done when you're first starting but there's alot courses just won't prepare you for and things you'll have to just work around in the field or on the job

honestly, i learned by following a few quality articles and experimenting on my own sites learning from my mistakes.

When I first started learning SEO, it was a long time ago - around 2006 - 2007. SEO was much, much simpler back then. There weren’t that many websites explaining how to do it, and there wasn’t the overwhelming amount of contradictory information we have today. So the process was quite linear - You learned something and immediately tested it on a live website. You saw how it worked, what needed to be adjusted, and how you could improve the method.

from youtube & google search, by reading blog

SEO feedback runs 6 to 12 weeks. An algo update lands in the middle of it. So untracked testing is just doing stuff and hoping. If I was starting again I'd keep a dated log of every change. One change per site. Boring, but it's the difference between learning and collecting opinions.