How do you get started with SEO when you're a beginner?

If you’re brand new to the world of SEO and you want to learn how to get more traffic to your website, boost your visibility online, and generate leads from Google and ChatGPT, that’s great! I’m so glad you’re here, and you want to learn how to get started with SEO. It’s a super powerful marketing channel and can help your business so much. 

While you’ve likely heard that SEO works, you probably don’t really understand how or even what to do first, if you’re being completely honest. No shame. That’s normal. You’re learning something new, and that takes time.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing strategy that we use to help increase the visibility of our website or content online. It’s how we help the search engines understand us, our content, and who to show it to in a way that they understand.

I first started learning SEO in 2008. It’s been a long time. What we do has changed over the years, but the core foundational strategy remains pretty similar.

You want to create great content on your website that people are interested in and searching for, and then, you want to do a few things to optimize that content so that the search engines understand it and know who to share it with.

How to begin learning about search engine optimization

When you’re learning a new skill, it’s important that you learn from a trusted advisor or teacher. Since SEO has been around for about 20 years now, there are a lot of people who teach it or share tips. Some of them are good, some of them are not so good.

SEO has evolved over the years. The tactics that we used back in 2008, 2010, and even 2012 that worked great then, could get you in trouble today. Some of what worked years ago is considered cheating today.

It’s important to make sure the person you’re learning from focuses on what’s called White Hat SEO, not Black Hat SEO. If you’re looking for tricks and ways to game the system, they’re out there, and they’re mostly Black Hat tricks, and they might work temporarily, but in the long run, they’ll hurt you and your business.

SEO is one of those industries that doesn’t have a lot of certification programs. It’s a newer industry. It’s part of digital or online marketing and tends to live somewhere between the web development team and the content or marketing team. There are some certifications, but most of the people who’ve been in SEO for years now don’t have a degree in the field because it didn’t exist when we were in school. SEO wasn’t really even a thing at my first job out of college. It’s evolved over the years.

Where to find beginner SEO tutorials by trusted digital marketing companies?

One of the best ways to learn SEO is to take a course or join a group program. SEO isn’t really easy to learn independently. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and people get confused and overwhelmed when they’re trying to learn it on their own.

I see this with my students. When they first come to me, often they’re really confused. They’ve been trying to learn SEO on their own, and many of them have tried to do SEO and aren’t really getting results. It’s frustrating to them.

It can feel overwhelming because they’re getting information from too many sources. They don’t know who to listen to or what’s right or wrong. I’m seeing this even more now with AI. A lot of people are now using ChatGPT and Claude to try to learn how to do SEO, and at first, it seems like it could be a good option. They’re trained on tons of information, and they can give you insights and tips. But some of what they’re trained on is incorrect or Black Hat SEO because it’s out there, and they don’t know that it’s bad. They just know that it’s an SEO tip they found and indexed. The other issue I see with people trying to learn SEO using AI tools is that they still need someone to clarify the information, answer questions, and give recommendations for their specific situation, and AI doesn’t do that. AI works in generalizations.

You’re going to be better off watching the beginner SEO training offered through SEO tools and platforms or from a strategist like me who’s been in the industry for years. The tools and platforms will teach you the basics of SEO in the hope that you’ll use their platform to do SEO. I teach free courses in the hope that you’ll join me in Simple SEO Content so we can work closely together and I can guide you and answer your questions as you learn about SEO and start using it for your business.

I offer an SEO training program for beginners called Simple SEO Content

It’s technically for either beginners or those who’ve tried to do SEO before, and it’s not working. I walk you through what search engine optimization is, how it works, what matters for your business, what doesn’t, how to find keywords you can rank for, how to do SEO on your website and blog, what to do for AI based SEO, and how to track leads and understand your reports so that you know that what you’re doing is working long-term.

We work together for 6 months, and you learn about SEO and implement it on your site with my guidance and help. I’m there to answer your questions and guide you every step of the way.

What are the basics of SEO that you need to know about?

Even if you’re brand new to SEO, you’ve probably heard that keywords are important. They’re the first thing most people attempt when it comes to SEO. I ask people what they’ve tried when it comes to SEO in my free class, and 46% of the people who’ve tried to do SEO on their own say they’ve chosen keywords.

Keywords are at the heart of SEO, so that’s good. They’re understanding one of the most important pieces of search engine optimization. But I can tell you, they’re getting them wrong.

When we search for their business name on Google or ChatGPT, 99% of the time, they show up. However, when we search for them using a keyword that’s not their business name, 99% of the time, they don’t show up.

Keywords seem pretty easy from the outside, but there’s a lot that goes into selecting the right ones for your website. Most people select keywords that their site can’t rank for. They don’t understand how Google chooses the websites that it ranks for specific keywords, so they choose words they’d like to rank for, as they should, except they’re words that are too competitive for their site, and they don’t know it, so they do the work but are frustrated because they don’t see results.

You want to focus on choosing keywords your website has a good chance of ranking for, and using them in the places that Google expects to find keywords. You want to choose one keyword for each page and use the same word in all of your SEO elements. If you’re not sure what those are, get a copy of my free Beginner’s Guide to SEO here, and it will help you get started with SEO today.

If you want to learn how to do SEO and would like someone to guide you through the process, teach you step-by-step, and be there to answer your questions, join me in Simple SEO Content, and let’s work on your SEO together.