If you want to learn SEO but don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. There’s so much SEO-related content that it’s easy to get lost. That’s why we created this guide for you.
By the end of this guide, you’ll understand:
- The SEO basics you need to know first
- How to practice and apply what you’re learning
- The tools every SEO should be familiar with
- The skills that will make you more effective
Let’s dive in.
1. Understand How Search Engines Work
Understanding how search engines work gives you the foundation for deep, meaningful SEO learning—rather than just memorizing tactics.
Search engines like Google use bots to discover and analyze websites across the internet. They store these websites in a massive database called an index and then serve the most relevant results when people search.
You can get a full breakdown of this process in Google’s how search works guide.
As an SEO, your job is to make sure search engines can easily find your site, properly index your content, and understand that your pages deserve to rank highly for relevant searches.
You’ll use the basics below to begin working on an SEO campaign.
2. Develop Basic SEO Skills
You can develop basic SEO skills by conducting keyword research, creating content, applying on-page SEO best practices, improving your technical SEO, and link building.
Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the search terms (keywords) your audience is typing into Google.
This is arguably the most important skill in SEO because it guides your content creation efforts.
What makes a good keyword?
Here are the criteria to use when deciding whether to target a keyword:
- It should have a decent number of monthly searches
- It should be relevant to your business
- It should be within your ranking capabilities (i.e., it shouldn’t attract too much competition from other websites)
To do keyword research well, you’ll need a specialized software like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. It can help you find keyword ideas and analyze various metrics to choose the best keywords for your website.
Further reading: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO
Create Content
Producing SEO-optimized content involves creating pages around keywords, such as articles, product pages, and landing pages.
The main thing to learn here is how to make your pages genuinely useful.
At a basic level, your pages should:
- Match search intent (give people what they’re actually looking for)
- Offer something unique compared to rival pages
- Be easy to read with clear headings and short paragraphs
- Include helpful visuals
- Incorporate keywords naturally
Further reading: 16 Tips for Creating SEO-Optimized Content
Apply On-Page SEO Best Practices
On-page SEO refers to the optimization of individual webpages. This is the most straightforward aspect in SEO to learn and implement.
Optimizing your on-page elements properly makes it easier for search engines to understand what your pages are about. And if they can understand your content, they can show it for relevant searches.
Key on-page SEO elements to focus on are:
- Title tags: Titles that appear on browser tabs and can show as clickable headlines in search results. Each page’s title tag should include its main keyword to show what the page is about.
- Meta descriptions: Short page summaries that can show as snippets under your titles in search results. Their primary purpose is to attract clicks from users.
- Headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.): The H1 (main heading) should help users and search engines understand the main topic of your page, while subheadings should clearly reflect the information hierarchy of the page
- URL slugs: Descriptive parts of your web addresses that tell both users and search engines what the pages are about. This slug is another good place to include a page’s main keyword.
- Internal links: Links within your content that point to other pages on your own website. Adding relevant links to descriptive text will help search engines and users navigate your site efficiently.
Further reading: On-Page SEO: What It Is & How to Do It
Improve Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves improving various technical aspects of your website, mainly to ensure search engines can find and index your website properly.
This includes things like:
- Having an XML sitemap (a file that lists all the pages you want search engines to index)
- Creating a robots.txt file (a file that tells search engines which pages on your site should be crawled)
- Using meta robots tags (HTML that tells search engines how to crawl, index, and display pages)
- Implementing structured data (code that helps search engines better understand your content)
Much of technical SEO is also about improving the user experience through things like:
- Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly
- Maintaining strong Core Web Vitals (a set of metrics that score your pages for user experience)
- Using HTTPS (a protocol that relates to website security)
You can find technical SEO issues on your website and get advice on how to fix them with Semrush’s Site Audit tool.
Further reading: What Is Technical SEO? Basics and Best Practices
Start Link Building
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your site. These incoming links (called backlinks) are among the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm.
But not all links are created equal.
Here’s what influences the value of a backlink:
- Relevance: How topically related the linking site and page is to your site and page. The closer the relation, the more weight the link may carry.
- Authority: How well-known or reputable the linking website is. Links from well-known or reputable websites may carry more weight.
- Placement: Where the link appears on the page. For example, a link within the body of a blog post is more valuable than one buried in a footer or sidebar.
- Anchor text: The clickable text of the link. Descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text may be more beneficial for SEO.
There are many tactics for building links, including:
- Creating link-worthy content: Original research, guides, and tools tend to naturally attract links
- Broken link building: Identifying broken links to your own or competitors’ websites and getting them replaced with working links to your website
- Digital PR: Gaining media coverage to earn mentions and backlinks
Further reading: Link Building for SEO: A Guide to the Basics
3. Learn SEO by Doing
The best way to actually learn SEO is to start practicing what you’ve learned.
There are a few ways to do this:
Practice on Your Own Website
Building your own site and using it as your testing ground (or experimenting safely with your company’s current website) is one of the best ways to learn SEO when you’re starting out.
Start applying what you’ve learned:
- Try doing keyword research to find content ideas
- Create pages around those keywords
- Optimize your title tags, headings, and meta descriptions
- Work on technical aspects like your page speed
- Build a few backlinks by asking websites that mention you to turn those unlinked mentions into backlinks
When you apply what you learn in your actual work, you’ll start making progress.
Sometimes you’ll make mistakes—and that’s okay. You’ll figure things out, correct course, and start to see how everything connects.
Master Essential SEO Tools
Every SEO professional needs to learn how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console properly to be able to measure their websites’ SEO performance.
Beyond that, you should also learn how to use some third-party SEO tools.
For example, Semrush’s SEO Toolkit offers a suite of SEO tools that make your daily work easier, including:
- Keyword Magic Tool: Helps you find the best keyword ideas for your business
- Site Audit: Helps you identify and fix technical issues on your site
- SEO Writing Assistant: Uses AI to help you improve and optimize your content
- Link Building Tool: Helps you find link building opportunities and manage your entire outreach campaign
- Position Tracking: Helps you track where your pages rank for important keywords so you can see if your SEO efforts are working
4. Learn Complementary Skills
To truly excel in SEO, it helps to build complementary skills that boost your effectiveness.
Use Spreadsheets Confidently
A lot of SEO work involves analyzing data in Excel or Google Sheets, so it makes sense to learn how to use these tools effectively.
You don’t need to become a spreadsheet wizard. But you should be comfortable with basics like:
- Filtering and sorting data, so you can easily find the information you need
- Using formulas like VLOOKUP, IF, LEN, CONCAT, COUNTIF, so you can make useful calculations
- Creating pivot tables, so you can easily summarize large sets of data
Sergei Rogulin, Head of SEO at Semrush, says:
I use spreadsheets pretty much every day at my job. Whether it’s digging into traffic drops, modeling growth, analyzing new data sets, or just creating a quick report or dashboard. Spreadsheets are where most of the real work happens. It’s not just about storing data—it’s where analysis, insight, and stakeholder conversations begin.
Further reading: Excel for SEO: 10 formulas to work smarter
Master AI Tools
AI tools like ChatGPT have become incredibly useful for doing SEO work more productively.
Connor Lahey, Content Strategist at Semrush, says:
AI tools can assist SEOs with everyday work that used to take hours. I personally use AI for things like SERP analyses, generating content optimization ideas, and creating multiple variations of title tags for testing.
If you put in the initial time to learn how to best leverage AI tools, you’ll find that it can ease some of the burden of more intensive work and save you more time in the long run.
So, take time to experiment with AI tools. Explore different use cases and see where it can genuinely save you time without compromising on quality.
Further reading: How to Use AI for SEO
Learn HTML & JavaScript Basics
You don’t need to be a developer to succeed in SEO—but having a basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript can take you a long way.
HTML is the language that provides a structure and meaning to a webpage and its content. When working in SEO, you’ll deal with things like title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and internal links—all of which are created in HTML.
JavaScript is a language used to make websites dynamic and interactive. It affects how search engines and users interact with your site, so it can have a significant impact on your SEO performance.
An understanding of both technologies will make you a more effective SEO professional.
Sergei Bezdorozhev, SEO & International Blogs Lead at Semrush, says:
You’ll often be working with dev teams to get technical fixes live, so having a good understanding of web technologies makes the process smoother and more efficient. You can speak their language, explain what needs to be changed, and avoid misunderstandings that slow down implementation.
Further reading:
5. Keep Track of Changes in the Field
SEO is constantly evolving, and keeping track of these changes is key to adapting successfully.
Algorithm updates happen all the time—both big and small. And AI-powered search is reshaping SEO in a big way.
How do you keep up with all these changes?
Here are a few go-to sources that’ll help you continue to learn about SEO:
- Google Search Central blog: Shares official Google updates and the latest best practices
- Search Engine Land: Covers the latest news and trends across the SEO and search marketing industry
- X (formerly Twitter): Reveals what SEOs are talking about in real time. Many experts share experiments, insights, and quick takes on recent changes.
- Semrush blog: Offers step-by-step guides to help you adapt to the evolving SEO landscape
To learn specifically about how AI search is impacting the world of SEO, check out our AI search study.
If you want to dive straight into optimizing for AI search experiences, read our dedicated guide to generative engine optimization (GEO).
FAQs
How Much Time Will It Take to Learn SEO?
Learning the fundamentals of SEO will take a few months of consistent study and practice.
But truly mastering SEO is an ongoing process. Even experienced SEO professionals will admit that they’re continually learning new things after many years in the field.
Do You Need to Be Technical to Succeed?
Not really. A basic technical understanding is essential, but you don’t need to be a programmer.
You should:
- Understand how search engines crawl and index websites
- Be able to identify and fix common technical SEO issues. Ideally, you’d have access to a developer who can help with more complex problems.
Most SEO professionals focus on strategy, analysis, and identifying problems rather than implementing complex technical solutions.
Do You Need Formal SEO Education?
No. Most SEO professionals are self-taught.
What matters is your hands-on experience and your ability to deliver results. That said, courses can be helpful.
Here are a few options worth checking out:
Is SEO Still Relevant?
Yes—SEO isn’t going anywhere and it’s still worth learning. As long as people use search engines, businesses will need to optimize their content to show up.
Your visibility in search engines can also impact your visibility in AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT. So, traditional SEO will remain important as AI adoption increases.