plenty of guides around the forum, look them up
But SEO comes down to a few important parts:
1. keyword research
2. content quality and optimization
3. good site structure and navigation
4. topical authority (basically, your site needs to cover one, or multiple - but closely related - niche(s) in detail)
5. good and relevant backlinks
1. For keyword research there are dozens of guides on BHW. Just put "keyword research" in the search field and you'll find more guides than you have time to read... And you can also watch tutorials on YT, I'm pretty sure there are 100s of them there, too..
2. Content quality and optimization comes down to...
2a. For content quality, addressing the intent of the keywords you target, and covering them in detail regardless of how many words it will take you to cover it. Generally speaking, it's better to have a longer article than a shorter one, but sometimes you simply don't have a lot to write about your keywords, so if you end up with several 300-400 words articles just use them and move on! Sometimes you find a topic that warrants 2-3k words of text, other times 500-600 words is enough.
Again, it comes down to covering the topic (keyword) in detail while also addressing its intent correctly. I can't think of an example at the moment (I'm having a brain freeze lol), but you can google it if you don't understand what keyword intent is
2b. For content optimization, you can follow the instructions of content optimization tools like NeuronWriter, Frase.io, Surfer SEO, or even the recommendations of your SEO plugin (Yoast, RankMath, TSF, SEO Pressor, etc... many of these plugins give a few basic tips on which words and phrases your content should contain for google to figure out where to rank your content).
Also read this:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guide-full-example-of-how-to-do-on-page-seo.1251425/
3. Not sure what to say about this point since you are a web designer. I assume that you already know how to create fast, clean, well optimized website, so I don't think there's anything else I can say
Except, maybe, for mentioning how important mobile optimization and site speed are... Also, how important siloing (site structure) is, in which case you should read this guide:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/seo-siloing-2023-the-last-siloing-guide-youll-ever-need.1502244/
4. Topical authority is what I described earlier, but you can read more about it here:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/a...e-question-what-is-topical-authority.1450324/https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/importance-topical-authority-semantic-seo/
5. And for backlinks you need to follow a few common sense practices to beat the system, otherwise you'll probably get flagged as spammer / link builder and lose the rankings. Here's a guide to help you out:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guide-how-many-links-per-day-week-or-month-should-i-build.1502403/
And that's pretty much it... I think...
Oh, one more thing... even if you follow all of these steps to the T it's still possible that you won't rank (or rank fast) for a few reasons:
1. google loves authority, and until your site reaches a decent level of authority you might not rank, especially if you're targeting the wrong keywords
2. you might get sandboxed for anywhere between 3 months to 2 years (depending on your niche), so - even if you do everything correctly but you're still not getting traffic - don't despair and keep working on your site as usual until it gets out of the sandbox (usually after 6 months, but can be earlier, or later, like I said it can take up to 2 years if you're in really tough niches like insurance, business, finances, forex, etc...)
3. luck... a lot of times (especially in the last few years) google introduce randomness into their algorithm, so it's possible that you're having the best site in your niche and you still don't rank. Not sure how to beat this scumbaggery, but I mentioned it so you can be prepared for getting screwed
