When starting to learn something I recommend ALWAYS starting with the basics and most fundamental aspects of the discipline before even diving into the most technical side of things.
So, if I were able to speak to myself 4-5 years ago, I would have told him this...
- How does the internet work?
- Messages + Packets
- Internet Protocol (IP)
- Transport Control Protocol (TCP)
- HTTP/HTTPS
- Clients and servers
- DNS
[You don´t need to dive deep into any of these elements but be familiar with them on a basic level]
- Why is website crawling important? Why is website crawling important?
- Crawling (Finding the content)
- Rendering (Loading the content)
- Indexing (Organizing the content)
- Ranking (Serving the content)
Now, we can dive a bit into SEO.
Personally, I highly recommend for you break down SEO into areas or sections.
Don´t try to learn SEO as a whole!!
SEO it´s a beast and it will eat you alive!
It´s easier to eat an elephant piece by piece. So, this is how I would break down SEO...
- Technical SEO
- Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) set up and configuration
- Crawl errors - You will need access to your GSC account
- Robots.txt - I will make sure it´s fully optimized so search engine crawl only pages we are targeting to rank for
- HTTPS - SSL certificate
- Canonicalization - Avoid duplicate content issues
- XML Sitemap
- Meta robot tags
- Redirects
- Structured data - Rich Snippets, Knowledge Graph, Social Media Snippets
- Page Speed / Core Web Vitals
- Mobile-Friendly Test / Mobile Usability
- Error Pages (404)
- Broken Links
- Hreflang tags
- URLs
- Among a few others
- On-Page SEO
- Keyword usage in the HTML meta tags
- In Page titles
- In Meta description
- In H1s and subheadings
- In URLs
- In Image alt tags
- Inside the Body content
- Among others
- Optimize other on-page elements
- Images
- Internal and external links
- Anchor text
- Etc
- Keyword Research
- Focus on matching the user´s search intent (Relevance!!!)
- Research about search intent
- For B2C and B2B
- Target keywords & Related keywords (Semantic SEO)
- Etc
- Content Optimization
- Make sure Google Analytics is properly set up (This will help later on when conducting a content audit)
- Install an SEO Plugin (RankMath is my preferred choice)
- Write as you talk! (Casual but NOT informal)
- Copywriting
- Use a table of content
- Avoid plagiarism
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Add relevant CTAs
- etc
- Backlink Profile Analysis
- Here you will basically need to assess the quality of the links pointing to your site (or any particular site) focusing on elements like:
- Link relevance
- Domain Authority / Page Authority
- Anchor text used
- # of referring and unique domains
- Organic traffic
- Language
- Do follow vs nofollow ratio
- Link velocity
- etc
- Off-Page SEO
- Earn backlinks
- Social Media Marketing
- PPC
- Local SEO
- Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization
- Google Map Pack
- Citations & Reviews
- NAP
- Competitors Analysis
- Basically, run all of this for each of your competitors
On the other hand, and a general view of SEO, these are some skills you will need to develop in order to get (and offer) the most value out of SEO...
- Audience Research
- Web Analytics - Google Analytics
- Tracking & Monitoring - SEO it´s all about keeping track of the site´s performance and implementing changes and adjustments.
- Reporting
Additionally, here you have an SEO Glossary for you to learn the "jargon" used in the industry.
https://morningscore.io/seo-glossary/
Lastly, I wrote this guide a couple of years ago for newcomers just like you. Be sure to take a moment to go through it as it has some valuable insights about how to get the most out of the forum.
HINT: Advance search feature
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/new-to-bhw-and-seo-this-is-for-you.1243123/
I am pretty sure I leaving some stuff out but I feel this is a very strong checklist for you to follow.
Don´t get overwhelmed by this, remember, you will focus on learning as much as possible about an area/section and move on from there.
Either way, all these areas are interconnected somehow so, in the end, you should have a pretty good understanding of SEO.
I hope this helps, cheers and gl!
