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Every business – big or small, needs a fully functional website. It’s a window that opens your products and services to the world and gives your business an identity.
But what’s the use of a website if it cannot reach your potential customers?
How do you make sure your web pages are getting found by your target audience?
This is where SEO comes into the picture.
With the help of search engine optimization, you can do several activities that can boost up your website. In simple words, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a method used to increase traffic to your site from search engines.
If you are new to the online or digital marketing world, here are some resources to help you learn and master SEO.
Credits: Moz.com
Moz is a dynamic online SaaS (Software as a Service) company.
They offer several resources to marketers, including a beginners’ guide to SEO.
This guide has 10 chapters that explain what search engine optimization is, and why business people should use it.
And guess what?! This guide is free; you can either download it onto your device or read online.
Don’t forget to check out their blog. They frequently update it with modernized SEO techniques.
One of my favorite piece of content from Moz is A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO which illustrates how we can perfectly optimize our website.
Credits: Moz.com
Credits: google.com
This 32 page PDF can be listed as one of the best beginners’ guides to SEO.
Even though the guide is in depth and goes into technical details, it’s worth reading. It explains various aspects of search engine optimization such as:
If you are just starting up with SEO activities for your site, this guide from Google (the absolute leader among search engines) is your go-to resource. I personally love that they mention how all SEO related decisions should revolve around what’s best for site visitors and not just search engine algorithms.
You can read this guide online or download it from the Google Search Console Help page.
Credits: Kissmetrics.com
If you are looking for the absolute basics as an SEO newbie, then this guide from Kissmetrics is the best option for you.
It gives you a simplified idea of what SEO is and all that it entails. It isn’t precise in giving all the information, but it is a good place to acquaint yourself with the basic concepts.
The topics covered include:
While it may not be a comprehensive guide, it does give you a strong foundation on SEO terminology and the overall process of optimizing a website for search engines.
Since the article is in the blog format you’ll have to read it on screen.
Credits: Neilpatel.com
As we all know, reading from the web can be a bit dull. So, I decided to look for something that’s not entirely theoretical but included a video tutorial as well. And here it is… the perfect guide for you.
SEO Made Simple is a comprehensive and descriptive guide by Neil Patel that uses a video, images and screenshots to help readers familiarize themselves with SEO.
The video in this guide will give you a better idea about the basics of SEO, and the article itself explains some of the components in great detail.
Well, I can guarantee that you won’t get bored while learning from this site.
Credits: searchengineland.com
Search Engine Land is an authoritative website that has up-to-date information and news related to the search marketing industry.https://waybackmachine.org/web/20170613063027/
Maybe I should call it a digital encyclopedia. There are plenty of SEO tit-bits you can learn from this site. They also provide a Search Engine Optimization guide which is not surprisingly named after the site itself.
The most interesting thing I found about Search Engine Land’s Guide to SEO is that the guide itself is in the form of a Periodic Table!
It is accompanied by a 9 chapter long online guide that explains the periodic table of SEO success factors in great detail. The factors outlined here will help you gain more site visitors from organic search.
Credits: bufferapp.com
If you are a novice to the SEO world, then this guide from Buffer is another one I’d recommend for you.
Buffer provides effective apps and tools to help individuals, businesses and publishers build an audience online, especially using social media marketing.
They also have a very informative blog that delves into diverse digital marketing topics, obviously including SEO as well. Of particular note is their comprehensive Search Engine Optimization guide.
It will help you learn the very basics of SEO, like what it is, how it works, what are the factors affecting the search results and what sort of changes you can make to improve your search engine optimization.
The guide is peppered with helpful diagrams and screenshots that are more suited for the visual learner.
Credits: searchenginejournal.com
The Search Engine Journal is a look-alike website of Search Engine Land; both contain search marketing news and tutorials.
While the Beginner’s Guide to SEO 2016 by Search Engine Journal is aimed at beginners, it does have a lot of information for SEOs of all levels.
Since it’s been updated for the year 2016, you can be assured that only the best and latest SEO concepts are highlighted, without any outdated content.
The guide is split into 17 easy-to-read chapters. So, you can read the guide from start to end, or just dive into the topic you want to learn about.
Credits: wordstream.com
This is another excellent beginner’s guide to SEO, a simple to learn, top to bottom beginners SEO manual.
This guide is both an introduction and an overview of Search Engine Optimization. It will help you scale up your SEO knowledge and provide the information you need to get your website indexed on major search engines.
The guide is presented as a blog article, divided into eight sections that deal with the basics of SEO, best practices, content marketing and tracking/measuring SEO results.
The article is complemented with detailed charts and descriptive screenshots to help readers grasp the concepts more easily.
Credits: Hobo
This tutorial explains the technical, analytical and creative procedures needed to enhance the visibility of a site in search engine results. The tutorial has been updated this year, so the content is still relevant.
The 58 free SEO tips included in the guide will help you create yourself a successful SEO friendly website. A helpful table of contents enables you to just jump to the section that you are most interested about.
An SEO eBook is also available as a free download with the full chapters of the guide. You can download the eBook in PDF format if you want to get in-depth information about Search Engine Optimization.
Credits: seobook.com
This manual for SEO novices is excellent for taking your first steps in understanding what you’ll be handling with regard to search engine optimization.
Just like the other sites, SEO Book also does a very good job of explaining the how’s and why’s of search engine optimization.
The lessons I found here are relevant and introduced in a direct way so that even a newbie can get the essence of things.
I can assure you that their articles and posts about SEO and Google are also very reliable and effective.
Credits: Distilled.net
Most of us don’t have the patience to read directly from the web, and neither do I.
I kept looking for a non-theoretical way to learn SEO, and that’s when I found this site.
DistilledU is a very interesting, interactive, visual learning site. It is akin to an online university where you learn from instructive videos and then answer interactive questions about the topics under study.
Since this is a paid course, you’ll have to pay about $40.00 for the monthly plan or $33.00 for the annual plan. You can also opt for the free demo course which covers three modules.
Credits: Google.com
This is a self-study training pack that can be completed at your own pace.
Google provides us with a lot of extremely useful data and support in different areas – guiding users, webmasters, SEOs, marketers and business persons in general.
This digital marketing course teaches you what tactics to apply in order to be successful in online marketing.
They also recommended all students to undertake the AdWords Certification exams upon completing the Digital Marketing Course so they can become AdWords certified professionals.
After perusing all the basic guides for SEO it’s time to take it to the next level. It’s important to keep up with the latest SEO trends and techniques.
Below is a list of advanced SEO guides I found useful.
Credits: quicksprout.com
The Advanced Guide to SEO is undoubtedly a best free option to mastering SEO. Since the information in this guide is advancing from top to bottom, this guide is a must read.
The infographics used here to describe the methods of search engine optimization are captivating and explains the concepts thoroughly.
The guide contains 9 chapters and each chapter goes into great detail about the tactile, followed immediately with actionable things you can do to improve search engine rankings, site performance, and traffic to your website.
Credits: Hubspot.com
‘Learning SEO from the Experts’ is a free eBook from Hubspot done in collaboration with experts from the online marketing world.
This is a six chapter guide which explains important SEO concepts, where you can apply them, and examples on how it should be done. All the information comes from top SEO experts, such as:
Credits: SingleGrain.com
This guide will take you through all the procedures required to set up your website effectively, so that it will be indexed by search engines.
If you are a small business owner, this comprehensive guide to search engine optimization will teach you many specific strategies like:
And well, putting together a list of SEO guides is a daunting task. There are hundreds out there! So I hope I did justice to this list.
This is the list of guides and tutorials I have found extremely valuable and very often recommend these to my clients and business associates. I hope you find them helpful too!
Get ready to take your business to the next level. Lots of free resources, worksheets and eBooks to help you get started.