Where A Beginner Can Learn SEO In 2021: Ultimate Guide

I started a site in 1996 after reading a book on learning HTML in 2 weeks. I had a friend who needed a job, and an idea on making money as a registered agent. I kept on improving the site over time and learned from where ever I could. At one point, I read Roger C. Parker's Guide to Web Content and Design: Eight Steps to Web Site Success. A friend sent a link to me for AltaVista, and the site was submitted there. I learned about topics such as usability and UX and found Jakob Nielsen and Jarrod Spool online and read a lot of what they wrote, as well as ingesting books about information architecture, which I would recommend highly for SEO.

I joined a forum for small business and website promotion, which evolved into a forum on SEO and Usability, and ended up as an administrator there, which hosted a number of SEOs from who I learned a lot. I learned more about CSS and HTML and gave lots of feedback to people in the Website hospital of that forum, where I ended up learning about how to audit sites and ask their owners questions about those sites. I had learned to use Xenu Link Sleuth to learn about site architecture and link consistency and adopted Screaming Frog to later do those things.

I also look at resources from Google — Blog posts and the Webmaster Central forum, the Support pages, and the Google Developer's pages, which are worth learning from as well.

The W3C Schema Mailing list is worth subscribing to also. I do not add too many emails to my account and include information about new updates and releases.

I'd highly recommend the Twitter community, the number of resources shared each day by genuine industry experts is unbelievable. It's also really good to get involved in chats and listening to webinars.

At absolute each week we have multiple in-house training courses across multi-disciplines so everyone has strong all-round knowledge.

We're also big believers in trialing experiments where possible too.

I was at the gym, one of my friends approached me. It was my last year at the university. He told me that there is something called SEO. I thought that it was a kind of element from chemistry or a kind of molecule name. I was about to ask, can we cook and sell it... Then, he explained it to me. Luckily, he was a Black Hat SEO, so that this coincidence helped me to not become a sheep for every official search engine statement.

I have applied to an agency from Turkey, I started as an intern. One day, luckily, I have clicked on Bill Slawski's previous blog, seobythesea.com from a SERP. From there, I have explored Shaun Anderson's hobo-web.co.uk.

Since then, I read from them. In 2019, I have started to learn Python, thanks to Hamlet Batista. And, for the last 3 years, I listen to Cindy Krum's and Marie Haynes' webinars, and podcasts.

I even read everything that Rand Fishkin has written, including the Art of SEO. I learned SEO by reading 4-5 hours every day. And, I protect this habit. For instance, today, when I was at the gym (again), I have listened, Bill Slawski's latest Edge of the Web Radio podcast, then I listened to Google's latest Search Off the Record Podcast Episode.

I very much agree about Twitter. Wish I found it sooner. Moz Whiteboards and blog were great. But nothing replaces great dialogue on Twitter because those discussions are amplified by trusted voices, rather than good SEO.

Also, groups like Areej AbuAli's Women in Tech SEO and Aleyda Solís's Learningseo.io didn't exist before. Incredible resources.

So this is where beginners need to rely on other sources of education to learn how to do SEO?

Statements from representatives of the search engines. This can come from their official blogs, unofficial personal blogs, statements in interviews by other SEOs, things they say at conferences, and in personal face-to-face meetings at networking events.

Experiments, testing and observations. Now not all statements by SEOs may be trustworthy, not all experiments could be conducted correctly, but that is up to you to figure out and see who to trust and not trust. Not everyone may draw the same conclusions from the observed data.

Sharing of knowledge with other SEOs. This happens every day on online forums and social media groups.

Actual on-the-job training. I know a lot of SEOs learned the most this way, by being employed at a company doing SEO and learning from some mentor in the company where all of the first 3 I mentioned become reference resources, but the actual how-to is at their job.

Enrolling in some training programs. Most of these SEO schools are online. There are good ones and there are better ones. Pay attention to the teacher and their credibility, experience and reputation. And decide from there if you want to enroll in an online course or not.