How to ACTUALLY Learn SEO

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- Hey, in this video I'm going to show you how to actually learn SEO, so before we jump in, make sure you subscribe to my channel because I'm gonna be publishing a lot of videos just like this one in the near future, so give this video a big thumbs-up if you're ready to go, and let's jump right in. (authoritative music) So this isn't going to be like a lot of the other videos you've probably seen about how to learn SEO because I'm not gonna focus on the definitions of things. I'm not gonna tell you what backlinks are or what keyword research is. You can find all that stuff on your own, and it's totally available for free everywhere online, so I'm not gonna get into that because the truth is anyone can find information, but if it was as easy as just getting more information, more people would be successful at SEO, so what makes the difference between people who succeed in SEO and people who don't succeed in SEO? Well, that's exactly what I'm going to cover in this video, so let's talk about how you can learn SEO the right way, so back in 2011 I started my very first website, and it was an absolute ghost town. It had no traffic for months and months and months, and no matter what I did I just couldn't get more traffic, and that's when I finally stopped trying to figure it all out on my own, and I started to do a little more research, and then that is when I discovered SEO, and so I immediately started taking action on everything that I was learning, and then, within a few short months, I was able to grow my traffic substantially, and I even made my very first affiliate sale, so that was a huge thing for me because all, at the time, I was really trying to do was just make enough money to be able to pay my bills in the future, and then I would be happy, and it's amazing what it turned into, but ever since I used SEO to grow that website I got absolutely obsessed with it, and so I started creating website after website because I really just wanted to get better at SEO. I actually wasn't too concerned about making a ton of money. I just wanted to get better at SEO because I knew if I can consistently rank websites on the first page of Google, I was able to drive organic search traffic to any website that I wanted, that would be an extremely valuable skill, and then, in the future, I could take that skill and start to sell it to businesses or use it to grow my own company, so I knew, at that time, I really needed to focus on learning how to do it the right way, so in this video I'm going to show you the exact process I used to learn SEO the right way, and how to learn it fast, and learn it in a way that it actually sticks, so that you can continue to be an expert and continue to get results now and into the future, so the very first thing you have to do is you have to get base knowledge, so there's unlimited information about SEO on the Internet. You can go into Google and search. You can go into YouTube and search, but really, this is, of course, a little biased, but you can just go right into my YouTube channel, or go to the Gotch SEO Blog, and you'll pretty much find all the information you need to know about SEO and to give you that base knowledge that you need before starting to take action, before moving on to the next step. Now, before you take all the base information that you're going to learn and start acting on it, you need to understand that not all actions in SEO are created equally. Some actions produce 100 times bigger results, while some actions produce very little results, so knowing the difference between those actions is absolutely critical, and that's really what makes a difference between people who are extremely effective in their SEO campaigns and people who focus on a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually produce results, so you wanna focus on the things that are gonna produce the biggest results with the minimal amount of effort, so what are those actions that you can take that are gonna produce huge results? Well, the first is understanding how to create keyword-targeted content, also known as SEO content, so SEO content actually applies to informational pieces of content, which are gonna be blog posts and also transactional pages, which are gonna be lead capture pages, local pages, or even e-com pages, and the way you structure those pages will completely depend on the intent behind the keyword phrases that you're going after, so for example, if you're targeting how to train a Great Pyrenees, that page should be completely focused on educating that person about how to train a Great Pyrenees. It shouldn't be built to convert them into a customer. It should be built just to educate, and once you've done that job, then you can ask for something, which typically, in that case, you wanna just ask for an e-mail address because you're so early in the sales cycle that it's not gonna convert very well if you immediately try to hit them with a sales pitch, so it's best to, when it's an informational asset, to go after something that's a little lower barrier to entry, so that would be like trying to get their e-mail address, and you can offer a lead magnet or something of value in exchange for their e-mail address, and then transactional pages, on the other hand, would be built to actually convert the searcher into a lead or into a customer, so if you were a dog trainer in St. Louis, and you wanted to rank for that keyword phrase, you'd want that page to be structured to build a lot of trust and, most importantly, build it in a way that's completely designed to convert, so you see the differences that the information was designed to educate, the transactional is designed to convert, so knowing the difference between those two is completely dependent on understanding search intent, but I won't go deep into that because I have a ton of videos on my channel about search intent, and make sure you watch those, but regardless, understanding how to create new keyword-targeted content and how to improve existing content on a website is one of the most fundamental SEO skills that you can learn 'cause the truth is websites are filled with thin, duplicate, outdated, and just sometimes straight-up bad content, and so you have to understand how to go through a website and find these issues, these content issues, and then know what to do with the content once you find it, so in a lot of cases you will actually end up having to delete a lot of content or consolidate or even redirect content to primary assets, but once again, I have a video on my channel about how to do a content audit, so make sure you watch that, but understanding how to create SEO content and how to optimize existing content is a fundamental SEO skill you have to learn. Number two is link building, so I know there's a lot of stuff out there right now about how links don't matter, but there's so much evidence showing that they still matter and have mattered pretty much forever, so it's kind of a silly discussion overall, but regardless, it is very, very difficult to rank without links, and it can be done, but you'd have to be willing to wait a very long time to be able to get those results, and so if you're willing to wait years and years and years to get results, then you might be able to do it, but in most cases you're gonna need links if you're competing in even a semi-competitive niche, and you have to think about it this way: If all things are equal, let's say you have two competing websites. They both have incredible content. They both have incredible design. They both have incredible user experience. Well, what is Google going to use to determine who should rank? Well, the only thing they can do at that point, if all things are created equally, is they have to look to external sources. They have to look to external factors to determine which pages are best, so the number-one factor that they can use are links from other relevant websites or links from other credible sources, and so whoever has the most high-quality links is going to definitely outperform the one that does not because, if all things are equal, that's gonna be the determining factor to do decide who wins in that battle, so that's why it's absolutely critical that you have a concentrated effort to acquire new links to your website because otherwise it's gonna be extremely hard, no matter how good your content is, no matter how good your website is, and that may change in the future, but right now that continues to be one of the most important factors for SEO performance, so make sure you learn everything about it, so the third high-impact area that you need to study and learn is user experience optimization, and so a lot of the technical SEO optimization that you'll go through will improve user experience, but anything you can do in a website that improves user experience is going to benefit SEO, and most importantly it's going to benefit your conversions, and so it's a critical piece of the puzzle, and so understanding how to create and optimize existing content, understanding how to acquire links, and understanding how to optimize for user experience, if you get those three right, and you understand those, and you really hone in on getting better at those, you are gonna be a really, really good SEO expert, and then number four, which I consider a bonus, but I really think every SEO should be competent in this skill, and that's conversation rate optimization, also known as CRO, and CRO is critical because it doesn't matter how much traffic you drive to your site if you don't actually turn that traffic into leads and customers, and that's when CRO comes into play, so I won't get deep into CRO, but it's absolutely critical that you're consistently testing your pages and trying to improve your pages so that they convert at the maximum that they can, so that you're getting the most out of all the traffic that's going to your site. Okay, so now that you know that you need to establish base knowledge-- - Knowledge. - and you need to focus on the high-impact actions within SEO, the third and most critical part of this process, which I always recommend to people within Gotch SEO Academy is to start your own side hustle. Now, I know that might seem like a kind of a weird suggestion, but believe it or not, when you start your own project, and you use that as your testing breeding ground, you will learn so incredibly fast, and this is the process that I recommend doing, so while you're getting your base knowledge, while you're learning the key elements of successful SEO campaigns, what you wanna do is study one thing, so let's take one of my videos, for example. Go and watch one of my videos, and when you see something that's actionable, take that action item and put it what I call on a future actions list, and so what I do is I literally take actionable items from content, books, videos, whatever, and I put it on a future actions list so that I am accountable to take action on that information, and so you need to have that process in place because otherwise you'll just consume, consume, consume, and you won't actually act on the information, and so everything that you have consumed doesn't matter unless it's actually acted upon, and so it's so incredibly critical to understand that concept. You've probably seen many people online, maybe on Twitter or where else, where they know a lot of information, but they can't actually demonstrate that information, so for example, there may be some college professors that know a ton about business. They may know the history of business. They may know everything you could ever imagine, historically, about being an entrepreneur, but they've never actually started a business. They've actually never grown a business, so that applies in SEO too. There are tons of people who know everything, every single nook and cranny about SEO, but honestly, a lot of them don't actually know how to execute that information, so you don't wanna be a person that just knows a bunch of information. You wanna be someone who actually knows how to execute on that information and knows how to get real results, and the only way to get real SEO results is to act on every piece of information that you get so that you can learn from it and iterate over time because there are no rules in SEO. Everything is a hypothesis. Everything is a best practice, but you should always be putting those best practices to test, and that's really, really important, and even my own advice, anything I give you, put it to the test. See if it works. You should always be questioning everything at all times, but the way to really question it the right way is to actually act on it and get that feedback based on your own actions. Now, the good news is that I've done a massive amount of testing and failure for you. I've worked on hundreds of SEO campaigns, so you can really bypass a lot of the stupid stuff that I did so you don't have to it yourself, and trust me, I did a lot of stupid stuff in between here to get to the point where I am now, so believe me, you don't wanna go through any of the stuff that I did in between, so that is really the value of working with someone who has expertise, and I've had to do that many, many times throughout my SEO career, seeking out information from people who are way more experienced than I am because I know that I do not wanna go through this again in any other field, so I always look for people who are way more experienced than I am to leverage their expertise so I don't have to go through all the failing, and the testing, and the experimentation, and the time-wasting. I don't wanna go through any of that. I'd rather just bypass all that and work with someone who already knows what they're doing, and so understanding that principle is huge because at the end of the day we only have so much time. You can't learn every skill in the world, so you have to work with other people to acquire these skills, and the only way to do it is to work with people who are more experienced than you are, so the big takeaway for step number three is to start your own side hustle, and make sure that you act far more than you consume. I recommend about a 90/10 split, so 90% of your time should be spent acting; 10% of your time should be spent educating yourself and learning. Okay, so let me review how to learn SEO the right way, so step number one, establish the base foundation, so learn just enough so that you can start to take action on the information. Number two, learn the most important parts of SEO, which is gonna be content, link building, user experience, and conversion rate optimization, and then number three, start your own side project or side hustle so that you can get real-life experience in SEO, and even if you're already an experienced SEO, and even if you've worked on SEO campaigns before, it's still really important to have your own side projects because it keeps you fresh. It keeps you thinking 'cause when you have to start something from scratch, it forces you to think in a totally different way, and so I highly recommend you check out the video on my channel about how to build a niche site because that goes through the entire process of how to start a niche site, so if you wanna start your own side project at an affordable price, that is the best way to do it. Just go through that video. It's completely free. It's about an hour long, so make sure you set some time aside, but it will give you everything you need to learn exactly how to start a niche site or start your own side project, so that's all I have for you today about how to learn SEO, and to be honest, if you wanna not have to go through all the testing, and all the failure, and all the time-wasting, and honestly, wasting a ton of money like I did for many, many years trying to learn SEO, you can actually just join Gotch SEO Academy, which over 800 other SEOs are already inside there learning, and what it is is an exact, step-by-step SEO training program, and the real value of Gotch SEO Academy is that you're really just piggybacking off my years and years of SEO experience, and the cool part is you don't have to go through that entire phase of trying to learn, and testing, and failing, and doing all kinds of stuff trying to learn SEO. Instead, you can just learn a proven SEO process that's based on real-life experience, and you can save a ton of time and money, and you can actually learn SEO the right way so that you can start getting better rankings and more traffic, and you can really grow any company that you want. It's such an incredibly powerful skill, but like I said, I'm not gonna pitch you super-hard about Gotch SEO Academy. I just hope this video gave you a nice little framework for learning SEO the right way, and if you got a lot of value from it, please like this video and leave a comment below, and if you're not subscribed, please subscribe because I'm going to be publishing a lot more videos just like this one, so that's all I have for you today. I'll see you in the next video. (off-kilter music)
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Channel: Nathan Gotch
Views: 155,808
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Keywords: seo, seo 2020, seo for beginners, what is seo, neil patel, how to rank in google, seo tutorial, search engine optimization, learn seo, seo training, seo tutorial for beginners, seo basics, how to do seo, how to seo, seo marketing, learn search engine optimization, seo tutorial for beginners step by step, how long to build seo, search engine optimization tutorial, how to rank #1 on google, learn seo 2020, how to learn seo, learn seo free, seo 2022, learning seo 2022
Id: pBD1C5JxRho
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Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)
Published: Thu Jan 02 2020
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