- 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)
