How to Become an SEO Expert in 2023
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How to Become an SEO Expert
in 2023

This guide will show you exactly how to become an SEO expert.

Including:

  • Learning frameworks
  • Emerging trends
  • Must-read resources
  • Lots more

So if you want to go from SEO rookie to SEO pro, this guide is for you.

Let’s get started.

How to Become an SEO Expert: The Definitive Guide

About The Author

Brian Dean

Hi, I’m Brian Dean.

I launched my first website way back in 2009.

And I quickly realized that SEO was going to be a big part of my site’s success.

So I set out to learn as much as I could.

And thanks to years of reading and experimenting, I’ve had a ton of success with SEO…

…including top 3 rankings for competitive keywords like β€œGoogle ranking factors”:

Google SERP – Google ranking factors

β€œSEO best practices”:

Google SERP – SEO best practices

And β€œContent writing”:

Google SERP – Content writing

In fact, Entrepreneur called me an β€œSEO genius”.

Entrepreneur article calling Brian Dean SEO genius

And in today’s guide, I’m going to reveal how YOU can become an SEO expert in record time.

Chapter 1:SEO Expert Fundamentals

SEO Expert Basics

What Is an SEO Expert?

An SEO expert (also known as an β€œSEO specialist”) is someone that optimizes websites in order to achieve higher search engine rankings.

Put another way:

An SEO expert is someone that knows how to get more traffic from search engines.

How Do You Become an SEO Specialist?

Because the field of search engine optimization is so new, most people don’t learn SEO from a traditional 4-year college program.

(Although those do exist.)

Here are the most common ways that people become SEO specialists:

Here’s a breakdown of each of these six options:

Ways to become an SEO specialist
Approach Learning Speed Ease of Learning Cost Personal Support and Guidance Putting SEO Into Practice
SEO Course 4/5 5/5 2/5 3/5 1/5
Your Own Site 4/5 2/5 4/5 1/5 5/5
Work At Marketing Agency 4/5 3/5 1/5 3/5 3/5
Take On SEO Clients 3/5 2/5 2/5 1/5 5/5
Online Certification/Degree 3/5 5/5 4/5 4/5 1/5
In-House SEO 5/5 3/5 1/5 4/5 3/5

What Skills Should an SEO Expert Know?

There’s a lot more to SEO than optimizing meta tags on a website.

In fact, the best SEO specialists are people that are proficient in a number of different areas of digital marketing. This includes β€œcore” SEO skills (like title tag optimization). But it also includes other digital marketing skills, like writing and web design.

With that, here are the key skills that an SEO expert needs to have:

  • Ability to find high-volume, low-competition keywords
  • Basic understanding of HTML
  • How and where to add keywords to a webpage
  • Intermediate to advanced copywriting skills
  • Proficiency in visual content, like video and infographics
  • Ability to promote and build links to key pages
  • Understanding of how technical SEO impacts rankings
  • Knowledge of emerging SEO trends and Google algorithm changes

In the rest of this guide, I’ll dive deeper into each of these. And show you real-life examples of people that have become SEO specialists.

Chapter 2:Understand the Basics of SEO

Learn SEO Essentials

In this chapter, you’ll learn the essentials that ANY legit SEO expert needs to know.

These essentials include HTML, how search engines work, and important Google ranking factors in 2023.

And once you master these SEO basics, you’ll be well on your way to mastering advanced topics (like link building and mobile optimization).

Let’s get started.

How Search Engines Work

Understanding how search engines work is a key piece of knowledge for any SEO professional.

Search engines send out search engine spiders to find pages on the internet.

Search engine spiders find pages on the internet

Next, they crawl each page’s code.

Search engine spiders crawl each page's code

Once the page is crawled, the page is added to the search engine’s index, which is a cached collection of pages.

Crawled pages are added to Google's index

In other words: when you do a Google search, you’re not getting back live results. Instead, Google is showing you pages from its index. That’s why you get Google results within milliseconds.

(Fun Fact: Google has over 130 trillion pages in its index!)

When someone searches, Google looks for pages in its index that match the person’s query.

Google finds pages that match search query

And they rank those pages based on hundreds of factors in their algorithm.

Pages are ranked based on hundreds of ranking signals

Resources to learn about search engines

How Search Works: A very well-done visual guide to how search engines work… straight from Google.

How does Google Search work?: This video by former Googler Matt Cutts gives you an in-depth peek into Google search.

You’re probably wondering:

How do Google, Bing and other search engines figure out what to rank on the first page?

Keep reading…

Important Search Engine Ranking Factors

Google uses 200+ ranking factors in their algorithm.

And no, you don’t need to learn them all. πŸ™‚

In fact, most of the 200 ranking factors are different ways of measuring 3 things: relevancy, authority and quality.

Relevancy is how well a page matches someone’s search.

For example, let’s say you searched for β€œgrey hoodies” in Google.

Relevancy to search query

Well, Google is going to scan its index to find pages that are about β€œgrey hoodies”.

Google scans its index to find relevant pages

And they’re REALLY good at it. This is why you almost never see a result for β€œgrey sneakers” when you search for β€œgrey hoodies”.

Authority is how much Google trusts the content on a page.

And they measure authority primarily based on links.

Google – How Search Works

The more links a page has pointing to it, the more authority that page has in Google’s eyes.

Google measures authority primarily based on links

Quality is based on a few different factors, like your site’s online reputation, your content’s structure, and how users interact with your site in the search results.

How Google measures quality

Resources to learn about ranking factors

13 Search Engine Ranking Factors: An updated list of ranking factors that are considered (by me) to be most important right now.

The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors: Very cool visual guide to β€œsuccess factors” that can help your site rank in Google.

Google RankBrain: The Definitive Guide: Google has said that their AI-based algorithm, RankBrain, is one of their 3 most important ranking signals. Get the lowdown on RankBrain in this guide.

Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time for chapter 3.

Understand The Basics of HTML

Do you need to be a coding ninja to be good at SEO?

No.

But do you need to understand the basics of HTML?

Yes!

Why is this important?

Google doesn’t see your site as humans do. Instead, they look at your site’s code. And if you don’t understand that code, it’s almost impossible to optimize it the right way.

Google looks at your site's code

Plus, if you ever run into any technical SEO problems, you’re going to be completely lost.

But when you at least know the basics of HTML, optimizing your site gets A LOT easier.


Resources to Learn HTML

Head First HTML and CSS: A Learner’s Guide to Creating Standards-Based Web Pages: A fantastic guide that pushes you to take action after every lesson. This is how I learned HTML in an afternoon.

Introduction to HTML: An interactive HTML course from Code Academy. Great for picking up the basics.

One Month HTML: A very involved training for people that want to know everything there is to know about HTML.

Chapter 3:Master The 5 Keys of SEO

Master The 5 Keys of SEO

If you’re serious about becoming an SEO expert, there are 5 β€œMaster Keys” you need to know.

These Master Keys are the 5 most important topics in the world of search engine optimization.

And the better you understand these 5 core topics, the more success you’ll have.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Finding and Choosing Keywords

Keyword research should be the first step of ANY SEO campaign.

Choose the right keywords? You’ll see your site rocket to the top of Google’s first page for keywords that thousands of people search for every month.

Choose the wrong keywords? Your site will be buried at the bottom of Google’s 5th page.

Keywords really are that important.

If you want to learn more about keyword research, this guide has you covered.

Backlinko – Keyword research guide

Content Marketing

No SEO training would be complete without a section on content marketing. That’s because it’s almost impossible to rank in 2023 without awesome content (even if your site is perfectly optimized for search engines).

The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing from Moz is a great place to start.

Moz – Beginners guide to content marketing

And if you want to see a case study of how SEO and content marketing relate to one another, I recommend reading this case study:

Backlinko – Skyscraper technique post

Optimizing Content

Back in the day you could stuff your content with keywords… and it would rank. Flash forward to today, and on-page SEO is much more sophisticated. Sure, you still want to include keywords on your page. But that’s just the beginning.

Use this video to get an understanding of basic and advanced on-page SEO strategies (including tons of real-life examples).

Technical Optimization

Technical SEO is one of the most underrated parts of SEO. It’s important for just about any website. But technical optimization is ESPECIALLY important for big websites with thousands of pages (like ecommerce and news sites).

Whether you run a small blog or a media brand with 500k pages, these resources will help you master technical SEO:

Link Building

There’s no way around it: link building is a HUGE part of SEO. And that’s not likely to change anytime soon. That’s why any SEO expert (even one that specializes in technical SEO or content) needs to be good at building backlinks.

These resources will help you learn about white hat link building approaches, strategies, and techniques:

Which brings us to our next chapter…

Chapter 4:Put SEO Into Practice

Put SEO Into Practice

You can read about SEO all day long.

But if you want to become an SEO specialist, you need to actually do SEO.

And when it comes to practicing your SEO skills, you’ve got three main options.

I’ll cover these options (including their pros and cons) in this chapter.

Work On Your Own Website

This is how I got started with SEO.

And it’s how I recommend that most people learn how to become an SEO expert.

Here’s why:

When you run your own website, you can make changes FAST.

No need to ping your boss on Slack to see if it’s OK to change a title tag.

No need to email your client’s web designer to add an image to a page.

See something that needs to be changed. Change it. See the results.

The cycle of testβ†’learnβ†’improve moves 10x faster with your own property than with someone else’s website.

Plus, when you work on your own stuff you get to see the 100+ of factors that go into a successful website (beyond straight-up SEO). I’m talking about things like design, copywriting, email list building, social media, outreach.

In other words, running your own site helps you become a well-rounded β€œT-Shaped Marketer”.

The t-shaped web marketer

For example, Jerryll Noorden applied what he learned from his time as a former NASA scientist to SEO.

Which helped him take his side hustle into a highly profitable real estate business.

We buy houses in Connecticut – Homepage

Here’s how Jeryll described how his experience shaped his approach to SEO today.

“As an (ex) IHMC/NASA robotics scientist. I am used to figuring things out, analyzing it dissect it and make it better, 10X. My SEO strategies are in house developed and they work better than anything I have seen thus far. My secret is to bypass Google, by figuring out what Google looks for.”

And Jerryll isn’t alone. A few years back, Maaike de Boer’s daughter was struggling with math at school.

And when Maaike looked for resources to help her daughter, she came up empty.

That’s when Maaike decided to launch a website that now gets 200k visits per month.

Wijzer over de Basisschool – Google Analytics

(Which is even more impressive if you consider that The Netherlands only has about 17 million people.)

How did Maaike get so good at SEO? She learned as much as she could about SEO (from blog posts, online courses and SEO conferences). Then, she applied what she learned to her website.

And this fast process made Maaike go from SEO newbie to SEO expert in record time.

Or as Maaike told me:

“From the beginning of the business, I trained myself in SEO. I soon discovered that the main competitors focused more on television commercials and social media. I made a difference with in-depth articles with valuable information for involved parents. By constantly optimizing the website and the articles the results got better each year.”

That said, running your own website isn’t the only way to learn SEO. You can also…

Take On Clients

The idea of cutting your teeth on SEO with a client’s site might sound weird. After all: if you’re not an SEO expert yet, why would someone hire you?

It’s a good question. Here’s the answer:

1. The fact that you’ve read about SEO puts you ahead of 90% of small business owners out there.
2. SEO is a lot of work. So even if a client knows more about online marketing than you do, they probably don’t have time to do SEO on their own.
3. Your first SEO client should pay you pretty much nothing (or, in some cases, actually nothing). Think of it as an apprenticeship. That way, there’s no pressure to perform miracles.

For example, Backlinko reader Felix Norton got started with SEO when he helped clients with their local SEO.

As Felix puts it:

“I worked on clients sites, testing out strategies, testing different markets and using their existing sites as a foundation to see what works and what doesn’t.
When I found things that worked I built them into my agency’s standard operating procedures, so I could replicate them on future client sites and on my own.”

Today, Felix runs a WordPress development agency. And that opportunity wouldn’t have opened up if he didn’t kick things off with client work.

Work Somewhere

Working at an agency or as an in-house SEO is a great way to become an SEO specialist.

The big plus here is that you’re surrounded by people that already know SEO. And it’s their job to help you get up to speed.

So you tend to learn FAST.

In fact, that’s how Backlinko reader Ryan got his start. Ryan was interested in SEO. And he wanted an environment where he could learn more. So he worked as an entry-level SEO at a big agency.

And the SEO knowledge that Ryan picked up helped him grow his travel blog to one of the most popular in France.

Lesacados – Homepage

As Ryan explained to me:

“Naturally, I applied everything I learned about SEO from the agency to my travel blog. But I kept learning on the way and always keep myself updated. That’s how I maintain my top positions.”

Chapter 5:Test and Learn

Test and Learn

The best SEO professionals I know all have one thing in common:

They’re ALWAYS testing.

In fact, I’d say that β€œtesting” is the one thing that ultimately pushes people to the top of the field.

That said: SEO is a tricky thing to test. So if you’re going to run SEO experiments, here are a few key frameworks to follow.

β€œYour Change Isn’t Always the Cause”

Put another way:

Correlation doesn’t always mean causation.

Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm. In fact, according to Google, they make approximately 3,000 changes to the algorithm every year.

As you can see in this shot of my Google Analytics organic traffic report, variations in your organic traffic happen all the time… even if you haven’t touched your site.

Google Analytics variation in Organic Traffic

This is a mistake I made early on. I’d assume that a rankings improvement (or drop) was due to a change I made.

For example, I’d add a few keywords to a page. See my rankings go from #7 to #5. And assume my keyword optimization caused the bump.

It might have. But it could also be Google’s algorithm doing its thing.

So how do you know if your change did anything? Well, that leads us to…

Look For Big, Consistent Results

The bigger the result, the more likely your change was behind it.

I’ll explain with an example…

Look at the organic traffic stats for this page on my site over a 30-day period:

Google Analytics 30-day traffic for one post

I didn’t touch the page. But you can see that there are quite a few spikes and dips throughout the month.

Spikes and dips in one-month traffic

If that’s the type of change you’re seeing, it’s probably Google’s normal fluctuations at work.

On the other hand, look at the organic traffic to that same page AFTER I made a significant change to that page’s content:

Google Analytics traffic after content change

Is it possible that Google made a major change to its algorithm that day? Yes. But it’s much more likely that my change caused the traffic to improve.

And if you want to be sure, roll out the same change across different pages. If they all react the same way, you can be pretty sure that whatever you did is behind the improvement.

Noticeable change in traffic across multiple pages

Things You Can Test

In theory, you can test just about anything.

But here are some relatively easy SEO experiments to run:

And if you want to get more advanced, you can start testing different link building strategies, search intents, and paid social media promotion.

For example, a while back I wanted to see if interactive content would decrease my bounce rate and improve my time on site.

(Which I believe to be an important Google ranking signal.)

So when I launched this mega list of SEO tools, I added an interactive filter to the top of the page:

Interactive filter from "SEO Tools" post

As it turned out, user interaction stats on that page were higher than other similar content on my site:

User Interaction stats for "SEO Tools" post

So I decided to use this same interactive element on long list posts like this one:

Interactive elements from "Actionable SEO Tips" post

And the results were similar:

User Interaction stats for "Actionable SEO Tips" post

This experience taught me: β€œInteractive filters is one way to maximize user experience signals on super long content.”

This is something that I could have NEVER learned from reading blog posts or watching YouTube videos.

It had to come from experimenting.

Chapter 6:Implement Advanced SEO Strategies

Implement Advanced SEO Strategies

Now it’s time to take your SEO game to the next level.

In fact, if you want to be considered an β€œSEO Expert” you should learn about the topics I’m going to cover in this chapter.

For example, you don’t need to be the world’s foremost guru on International SEO. But you should at least know what an Hreflang tag is.

And in this chapter, I’m going to outline a number of advanced SEO skills… and resources to learn more about them.

Analytics

When I say β€œAnalytics”, I’m mostly talking about Google Analytics.

Understanding Analytics is important for two main reasons:

  1. Analytics is how you measure the success or failure of an SEO campaign.
  2. Analytics can help you find SEO opportunities that are impossible to find any other way.

Here are a few resources to help you:

SEO Audits

In a perfect world, you’d work on sites that are almost perfectly optimized. They just need your magic touch to push it over the edge.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. πŸ™‚

In the real world you’ll find yourself battling duplicate content, Google penalties, horrible UX, and lots more.

Enter: SEO Audits.

SEO auditing is important because it helps you break down a site’s SEO in a systematic way.

If you want to learn more about SEO audits, I recommend checking out this SEO audit tutorial.

User Experience

Is User Experience a direct ranking signal?

Probably not.

But user experience indirectly impacts SEO in a major way.

For example, let’s say your site is hard to use. Well, Google searchers are going to β€œPogostick” back to the search results, which can hurt your rankings.

With that, here are some resources that will help you get started learning UX.

SEO Tools and Software

If you want to be an SEO specialist, you MUST know how to use tools.

In fact, experience with tools is so important that most SEO specialist job postings list β€œexperience with SEO tools” as a requirement:

SEO Job listing

If you want a crash course on SEO software, this section from the SEO Marketing Hub has you covered.

Local SEO

If you plan to run (or work at) an SEO agency, local SEO will take up a big part of your day. That’s because the vast majority of SEO clients tend to be local businesses, like dentists and lawyers.

This video by Sam Oh is a great intro to local SEO.

Competitor Analysis

In other words: reverse engineering how your competitor is getting their links. This includes looking at the content that’s working best for them and WHERE they get their links from.

Here’s a starter guide to reverse engineering that I recommend checking out.

International SEO

If your site targets more than one country, international SEO is HUGE.

If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend checking out this helpful international SEO guide from Moz.

Mobile Optimization

Google now runs on a mobile-first index. Which means that mobile SEO isn’t optional. It’s required to succeed with SEO.

This mobile SEO guide I recently updated is a great place to start.

Chapter 7:Scale Your SEO Efforts

Scale Your SEO Efforts

It’s one thing to know how to optimize a title tag.

But how do you optimize 50,000 title tags on an eCommerce site?

That’s where scaling comes into play.

Unfortunately, scaling SEO can be tricky.

That’s why, in this chapter, I’m going to show you three real-life examples of SEO tasks done at scale.

Scaling SEO Site Audits

Like I mentioned in the last chapter, audits are a big part of an SEO specialist’s job.

Without a system, you’re going to have to start from scratch whenever you run into a new project.

For example, SEO consultant Felix (who we met earlier) does TONS of audits for his clients.

And to scale up, he created dedicated systems and processes to make the audits faster and more efficient.

Specifically, Felix documented EVERY step of the process.

That way, his team can execute audits without him.

For example, he has an Asana board that outlines every step (with a timeline):

Felix Norton – Asana SEO board

And team members collaborate on each task using Slack.

Felix also has dozens of Google Docs that go into insane detail on how to find and fix technical SEO issues, set up the Google Search Console, and more.

Felix Norton – Google Docs collage

All of which has helped Felix scale up this time-consuming process:

“The hard part has been in figuring out a way to scale this and transfer the knowledge and processes to colleagues. Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) has been critical to delegating and tracking work.”

Scaling Content

Scaling content is easy:

Just hire a bunch of random freelancers on UpWork and hope for the best.

But scaling GOOD content? That’s a different story.

For that, you need a system for coming up with blog post topics, keyword research, writing, outlining, editing and design.

Bob Warfield has this down to a science. Bob’s company, CNC Cookbook, publishes 12 posts per month. And despite being in a boring niche, his content is REALLY good.

CNC Cookbook – "Feeds and Speeds" post

His secret? Bob and his team follow a repeatable blueprint for creating high-quality content:

  1. Find keywords that customers search for (using KWFinder and Semrush).
  2. Sort keywords by search volume. Download the list to Excel.
  3. Toss out any keywords with a keyword difficulty of 30 or more.
  4. Use The Skyscraper Technique model to create content.
  5. Optimize the content for SEO.

Here’s a screenshot of Bob’s spreadsheet:

Bob Warfield – Excel spreadsheet

As Bob puts it:

“Once you get used to it, the articles almost write themselves. And I have successfully tested the method on folks that have no knowledge of my niche at all. My daughter wrote a series of posts for me one summer that did well.”

Scaling Link Building and Outreach

Scaling white hat link building is no easy task.

In fact, there’s a fine line between scalable link building and straight-up spam.

Well, according to SEO consultant Calin Yablonski, you can scale outreach without being spammy.

The secret isn’t necessarily the process (although his SEO company does have a detailed process using Basecamp).

Calin Yablonski – Base Camp – To-do list

Instead, it’s about guidelines that ensure your SEO team personalizes each and every email that goes out.

And what’s interesting about Calin’s approach is that he actually involves his client in the entire process.

For example, he asks new clients to fill out a brief intake form to get an insider’s look at their industry.

Calin Yablonski – SEO Intake document

Which helps them:

  • Find untapped link opportunities
  • Write scripts that fit the language of that space
  • Understand the types of content bloggers and journalists already link to

As Calin told me:

“Link builders are the air traffic controllers of the SEO industry. Using scalable link building processes is absolutely critical to organizing and implementing a campaign effectively.”

Voice Search

This chart (based on data from Kleiner Perkins) shows you pretty much everything you need to know about the growth of voice search:

Google Trends, Worldwide

As you can see, the number of voice searches is growing VERY quickly.

In fact, I’d say that voice search optimization is one of the most important skills that modern-day SEOs need to have.

It’s still early. So it’s not 100% clear how you should optimize for voice searches.

That said, there are already some voice search best practices out there, which I cover in this guide.

Video SEO

It’s no secret that video is blowing up right now.

In fact, according to a Cision report, 82% of all traffic will be video in 2021.

Business Insider article on How much IP traffic will be video by 2021

(And a big chunk of that growth will come from YouTube.)

Want to learn more about optimizing videos? This library of YouTube SEO resources has you covered.

Google Lens

Google recently reported that Google Lens can identify 1 billion objects.

Google Lens can now identify over one billion objects

(Thanks to AI.)

And as AI improves, image search is set to become even better.

How do you optimize a page when the β€œkeyword” is a picture of a cat? Who knows. But it’s an emerging trend to keep an eye on.

Featured Snippet Optimization

According to the latest data from SEMRush, about 5.6% of the SERPs have a Featured Snippet:

SEMrush Sensor – Featured snippet

Which is a BIG opportunity for most websites. That’s because Featured Snippets take up A TON of real estate:

On page SEO checklist – Featured snippet

Here’s a great video that outlines a handful of best practice for ranking in the Featured Snippet box.

User Intent

User intent is basically what someone wants when they do a Google search.

Do they want information? Or to buy something?

The better your content matches someone’s user intent, the higher it will rank.

Check out this case study to see how optimizing for User Intent boosted organic traffic to one of my pages by 600%.

Conclusion

Now It’s Your Turn

I hope this guide helped show you how to become an SEO expert.

And now I’d like to hear what you have to say:

Which area of SEO do you specialize in?

Or what part of SEO do you want to get good at?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.

291 Comments

  1. I like the part about starting your own website.

    I oftentimes get people who ask me how to learn SEO and I always tell them to launch a website. Going through that process is just so priceless and gives you the confidence to optimize other websites as well.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Arash, that’s been my experience too. There are lots of ways to learn and master SEO. But nothing beats building and ranking a site from scratch.

      1. Great info. I’ve been doing a lot of SEO on my we site over past 3 months and all of this is extremely useful. I do have one question that hasn’t really been covered though on internal links. Is it better to have all of your pages indexed in one menu or have them clustered by topic with only the intro page for each topic in the main menu with smaller submenus for each cluster? I think an article on this concept would be helpful.

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Thanks Michael. As your site grows it’s going to be impossible (or at least not practical) to have all of your pages linked to from one page. That’s basically what a sitemap is for. That said: categories depend a lot on the type of site. For example, ecommerce sites tend to be set up a lot differently than blogs.

  2. Great overview and resources, Brian. I especially like the part about testing on your own site. That’s such an important factor that I think every really strong SEO expert has done, but which rarely gets talked about in beginner’s guides.

    There’s no better way to learn about SEO (as well as principles of marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, etc.) than to apply it in your own sandbox like that.

    And those “test” sites can often either be turned into real businesses or at least used as case studies.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Kyle, well said. Every approach has its pros and cons. I do think there’s a place for learning SEO by working as an in-house SEO or at an agency. In that case, you’re surrounded by experienced people that can show you the ropes. When you work on your own site, you’re kinda on your own.

      Like you, I do think that working on your own site is the best and fastest ways to get good at SEO. But I tried to cover the different options that are out there in this guide.

    1. I second this a 100%. So many SEO professionals and peers I meet (both agency and in house) don’t have their own sites, to test things and use as their SEO playground. I just don’t get that.

  3. Very important to test your own site – how can you expect others to take your advice if you own site is lacking in areas

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Nathan, I agree. To be fair, it can be tough to find time to work on your own site if you have lots of client work. But you’re right: it’s hard to look credible if your own site is a mess. It’s like if Marie Kondo’s house had stuff everywhere πŸ˜‚

  4. You did it again! I think this would be one stop guide for people who wants to learn SEO. Great post Brian. Amazing as usual.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thank you πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  5. Thanks Again Brian for the awesome piece of content. I have been working as an SEO Expert from last 9+ years but still I learn something new every time I read your content. Also, I’m a student of your STW course, which was the life-changing moment for me. After the course, I started my own SEO agency and it is working very well.

    But here I have one question/request. Being an SEO Company owner, I always feel about the scope of SEO in the future. Would it be possible for you to do a deep study on the future of SEO so that we can plan the scaling of our business accordingly from investment and other perspectives

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome. And I appreciate your kind words about STW! To answer your question: I might have a post/guide coming up on that. I don’t tend to look too far ahead. But this guide should get you ready for the next year. Also, I did briefly cover some emerging trends in Chapter 7 of this guide.

  6. Great resource for beginners, complete beginner to expert guide! Personally im pretty stuck at the scaling section.. Im ranking good for the pages that I created myself but im not a creative writer so it takes allot of time for me to finish a good page. Still have not found a good writer that I can give a keyword and get content back. I always end up spening allot of my time with rewriting the content..

    So maybe I should give that more priority.. Finding a good writer that understands my niche and knows how to write with seo in mind.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Koen, thank you. I’m glad you liked it. Yup, scaling content and SEO is actually super hard. On the one hand, you ultimately need to scale up to grow your traffic. But like you saw, it’s hard to find someone that can write about your topic as well as you can. So yeah, I’d recommend making that a priority for sure.

  7. Hey Brian, This is a great piece of content for SEOs and has in-depth information to become an SEO expert. I think it would be if you shared some of your favorite excel/Google sheet template for Technical SEO audit.

  8. Looks like its time for me to take video more serious. Im just not a vlogger type myself so I will have to get creative to get good videos. Maybe hire someone who is more comfortable on camera? 82% is so much! Times are changing…

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Wim, I agree that video is something more businesses should at least be testing out. The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to be in the video. Or, if you do, you can have them professionally shot and produced. Like you, I’m not a big vlogging type. I’m much more comfortable on camera when it’s more structured.

      1. πŸ‘

  9. Hello Brian,
    great article. I see you put the author presentation at the beginning of your blog post, and i find it an interesting move for reassuring the viewers.
    Is-it dangerous to do the same for all the blog posts for the seo ?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Clement. Why would it be dangerous for SEO?

      1. If it is on multiple blog posts, the same introduction about the author, can it be duplicate content and so bad for seo ?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Ah Ok. The author intro is different on every post.

  10. Thanks Brian to post another great post.

    If someone wants to become an SEO expert then he has to learn SEO regularly. No one can stop learning because SEO is changing frequently.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s a good point. I added Chapter 7 at the end for that reason. It doesn’t cover everything new. But I did want to drive the point home that learning and practicing SEO is a never-ending process.

      1. Brian, you repy very fast. I am impressed.

  11. As usual, a very thorough article! An alot of insights! Thank you Brian for sharing your thoughts and experience.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Sarah, you’re welcome. Glad you liked today’s guide πŸ‘

  12. Definitely need to work on testing my site more. I guess its just kind of overwhelming. I just try to focus on getting as much as possible good content out there. But im pretty sure it has allot more potentional if I would test different titles and check CTR. Thank you very much for all this valuable information, I will certainly bookmark this site to check any future posts!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Henk. Glad you liked the post. Also, if you want to improve your title and descriptions for CTR, I’d check out this post: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/organic-ctr

    1. Hi Brian,

      The way you write and present article, I haven’t seen anyone to do so.

      Your visualisation about blog post is totally different and high quality.

      I have a question:

      If I want to rank a local website (local SEO) does backlinks from other country blogs help local website to rank on Google?

      In simple words:

      If I want to rank in London, then do backlinks from Indian, Australia etc. blogs help my website to rank well in London?

      1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

        Hi Rintu, yes, those backlinks can help a little bit. Obviously, links from London and the UK will help a lot more. But as long as the links are white hat, they all help.

  13. Thanks for sharing awesome post brian. I already saw your seo 3.0 but you re not mention these points.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome

  14. Hi Brian.
    I am a beginner in this industry.. I am trying to become an SEO expert.. Your articles takes too much time to read but it is worth reading always..
    I want to know your point of view on Vlog. Do you think Video will replace Blog in future totally or create a separate audience?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I think that video will eat a little bit into search and other platforms that don’t have a lot of video (like FB). But I’m still bullish on blogs and SEO.

  15. Another amazing detailed article. Thank you for all the key information Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Darshana.

  16. Great guide as always, love your definitive guides, very informative!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Emin!

  17. Roslyn Hill Avatar Roslyn Hillsays:

    I am a female 70 year old. I have just become an author and my readers don’t know the book exists, so I am working on my author platform. I also run a glamping Site, we are superhost on Airbnb, but it doesn’t matter how good our site is if we can’t change nectar to our potential customers. I have built my own WordPress blogs for both and also Facebook pages.
    Getting results here I understand is all about SEO. Self publishing my book was a massive learning curve, I just wish I was younger and had the energy to know where to go best from here.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Roslyn, the most important thing is that you’re learning and testing out different things. That’s pretty much where I was when I first started out.

  18. Most amazing is –
    I was thinking to learn HTML to understand website background & coding and you gave the refrences. Thank you.

    1. Head First HTML and CSS
    2. Code Academy
    3. One Month HTML

    My first step to analysis competitors website –
    1. sitemap_index.xml
    2. post-sitemap.xml
    3. Page-sitemap.xml

    I also tried your site. πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice! Love the action plan πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  19. Structured Data (schema JSON+LD) is huge for me at the moment and i’ve seen positive ranking benefits from implementing FAQPage specifically, able to get a sites’ page onto page one and obtaining featured snippets.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Oh nice. I’ve seen a lot of people using FAQPage Schema lately.

  20. Wow, dude super appreciative of all you do for us. Shared this with the content and engineering team. I had a question for you actually and was curious what you thought or the community.

    Our site http://www.MedCircle.com is a video streaming service that provides in-depth mental health education with psychologists and psychiatrists however recently a consultant brought up that we should be blogging.

    Creating good long-form content around mental health isn’t easy at the moment because we built the brand around what wasn’t out there, video interviews as opposed to written interviews or podcasts.

    Do you think that creating written content might actually compete with our video content since we use each series page as pretty much an in-depth overview of the course?

    We publish a new piece of content every Sunday morning so the consistency is there.

    Appreciate your time and thanks again for this extensive actionable outline.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Andrew, you’re welcome. I’d say the two complement each other. Especially if you’re posting your video content on YouTube. If you can swing making high-quality blog content and video content, that’s actually really powerful.

  21. Chapter 5, “reverse engineering”.. is a golden nugget because at anytime and after any Google Algo update you can reverse engineer what changed, what does Google like now, ect.. For example, this content is a perfect example of what is currently ranking for “SEO Expert” and I’m sure soon enough because of the robust, thorough content and people referencing (linking to it) it now and in the future it will rank first page as well very soon.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi TJ, absolutely. I’m a huge fan of studying the SERPs. Great point there.

      1. Update already see you 6th for “SEO expert” with this post ;0)

  22. Hi Brain,
    Do links to specific product sub pages on a site have as much power as links to the main domain?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi William, yes they have the same ranking power.

  23. Learning SEO from you is a must-have. Thank you, Brian. I’m waiting for another SEO blog post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Michael!

  24. Joseph Wilson Avatar Joseph Wilsonsays:

    Brilliant article as always
    which hosting site you want to recommend if a site (wordpress based) is getting 100K views per month?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Joseph, it depends a lot on your needs and budget. We use Pressidium here and are happy with it.

  25. floyd Johnson Avatar floyd Johnsonsays:

    Hey Brian, a great resource you got right here.

    Will have to come back to go over some of the info to get a better grasp of the concepts in here.

    just wanted to point out a quick error in the third line of the intro “quickly realized that SEO was going to a big part ” I think you miss out the word “be”.

    Just wanna say keep up the awesome work man because I know it takes a ton of effort and time to put out such content this is probably something you often hear but I still gotta say it.

    P.S: Just tweet it out and will share on LinkedIn.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Floyd, thank you. I appreciate the typo heads up and all of your support. πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

    1. Mark Gorman Avatar Mark Gormansays:

      I am fascinated with SEO. I’ve read a few books and been put off. They’ve always said expensive software is the key. I don’t hundreds per month to spend on subscriptions. Without a guaranteed roi. However this post is solid info. I’d love to see an affordable course that would teach the skills once and for all that would guarantee results or your money back.

  26. Hi.

    Norway has not 17 million people, but 5,3 million (2017). The name Maaike de Boer is not a typical Norwegian name, I assume Norway should be the Netherlands?

    Other than that, a very good and informational article. Thank you πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Oops! My bad on that Richard. Thanks for pointing that out.

      1. Yes, I was just writing you an E-mail about that, but someone beat me to it πŸ™‚ It’s the Netherlands.

  27. Hi Brian, Good post. I don’t produce video – written posts only with relevant images. I write a travel blog and since I’m hopeless with a video camera I sometimes link to Lonely Planet etc videos for the destination featured in the post. Just wondering if there is an SEO advantage of putting a video link into a post?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Hazel, that’s no big deal in my opinion. I personally like video and think it has a ton of potential. But it’s not a must. To answer your question: I do think that embedding videos can improve dwell time and bounce rate in some cases.

  28. Brian, thanks for sharing such an amazing and useful articles with us. I try to learn from you as much as I can. Thanks again πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  29. Ali shahid Avatar Ali shahidsays:

    Hi Brian,great post man!
    I am a complete beginner of SEO.Why we need to learn html completely?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks. You don’t need to learn it completely. But you do want the basics down.

  30. Shabbir Avatar Shabbirsays:

    Hey Brian,

    Really awesome job consolidating basically all of your hard work on Backlinko over so many years into one super awesome guide! I should make this my default page in Chrome πŸ˜‰

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Shabbir. You got it: this is mostly documenting how I learned SEO and what I’d recommend to people that want to get better at it.

  31. Isn’t this a paid course Brian? πŸ˜‰
    A wonderful piece of content as usual

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Vamsi. Glad you enjoyed it.

  32. You couldn’t let me have the pixels huh ;-).

    I may have missed this but I think it’s really important to accept you’ll likely never be an expert in all facets of this profession.

    The greatest link builder you can think of right now probably knows far less about local SEO than the person who calls themselves a local SEO, even if they’ve been doing SEO for a very long time.

    Recognise that someone else is far more focused on one of them than you can be at both…and that’s OK.

    I would almost go as far as advising some people skip some aspects of SEO (e.g. link building or…technical SEO relating to JavaScript) and hone in on a part of the skillset and try to be the best at that specific thing.

    Finally, be open to accepting when you’re wrong or don’t know something, otherwise it can be harder to learn and find a better path going forward. And there’s no point putting others at risk to make your Ego happy.

    There are lots of people happy to share their advice on the things you don’t know πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      They say imitation is the highest form of flattery πŸ˜€

      But seriously, I loved Detailed.com’s design since the moment I laid eyes on it. It definitely inspired us to try an 8 bit style here.

      I 1000% agree with you there. For me, technical SEO is one of my weak points. I don’t know a ton of coding knowledge, which is sort of the foundation. Like you, I rely on the wisdom of others to help me understand that stuff.

    1. Glen, some of us know who started the pixel revolution, stay strong! πŸ˜€

      I would like to touch on “skipping some aspects of SEO”. I totally agree, to an extent. You need to know which one you can skip, and which you can’t skip under any circumstance. For example, I am clueless about local SEO, but I also think I don’t need it. On the other hand, if I bought some shady backlinks because I didn’t understand backlinking and I thought it was a good deal… that wouldn’t end well for me.

      I also agree on sharing your mistakes (done that here below), that’s fastest way not to repeat them.

  33. Nick C Avatar Nick Csays:

    Brian, another super useful post. Thank you! There is a never-ending stream of SEO related topics to write about. I have a client that is a large janitorial services company serving multiple cities. How do you come up with content (article/posts/video) ideas for the most boring services in the world?

      1. Nick C Avatar Nick Csays:

        Thanks Brian, much appreciated, I’ll be checking out those shoulder niches (but Janitorial services still sucks as a topic) πŸ™‚

  34. Lizzie Avatar Lizziesays:

    Nice article. In the introduction you mention frameworks, I didn’t see anything in the article on the different frameworks. Would that be included in one of the articles that is linked to yours?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Lizzie. By Frameworks I meant the different ways to put SEO into practice. So basically the content in Chapter 3.

  35. Junaid hamid Avatar Junaid hamidsays:

    Great post. I liked the HTML part.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thank you.

  36. Hey Brian, You did mention about top SEO blogs, tools, onsite SEO tips but please tell us little more about backlinks or influencer marketing or local SEO. Would love to hear from “The REAL SEO Expert” πŸ™‚

  37. Laxman Avatar Laxmansays:

    Hi Brian Dean
    Nice article about seo with resources related to every topic had mentioned by you..
    You are the best seo guide and explain the topics in experiment manner.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thank you πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

      1. Lizzie Avatar Lizziesays:

        Ohhhh…. I was thinking JavaScript, Angular, PHP, etc.
        Thanks!

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          I mean, you can definitely learn that stuff. And it will come in handy. But it’s not required to succeed.

        1. Rohit Avatar Rohitsays:

          Once more great post brian … Your knowledge is helping me a lot grow day by day… I got a lotful of knowledge from this as well ..thankyou brian for backlinko

  38. Wow! Another great piece of content. You never cease to amaze me. Brian, thank you for sharing your knowledge 🀘🏻

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Jake, you’re welcome man.

  39. The tip on learning more HTML/CSS just came on handy. Even with WordPress where users are presented with an enormous amount of themes and plugins, there’s always a need to customize the finer details, but without a solid understanding of the markup languages, it’s easy to make bloated codes or to blow up your website somewhere without even you knowing.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Absolutely, Thomas. WordPress does take a lot of the coding work out of running a website. But like you said: you still need to understand HTML to get the most out of WP.

  40. Thanks for this BRILLIANT guide, Brian.

    I agree that having at least basic knowledge of “HTML(syntax, semantics, structure)” is MUST skill to call yourself the SEO guy.

    Although it’s in my favor, I’m a dev.

    Chapter 2- “Master The 5 Keys of SEO”- I actually read it on many SEO guys blog, but you have put them into one place, So It’s good to see those buddies together, Now I’m going after these five keys first.

    Although I’m trying to write remarkable contents, and have written 5000 words blog post.

    Also, it’s true, mountains of research and data proved that video is going to the next big traffic driver like you said 82% by 2021,

    So I have already downloaded your “youtube SEO guide” and planning to record youtube videos by this month itself.

    So brian, is this will be a good idea to record my blog posts first?

    Thanks again brian for this power post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Rahul. Absolutely: you need at least basic knowledge of that stuff to be considered an SEO expert. To answer your question: I’d adapt your blog content to video. Here’s more info on that: https://backlinko.com/improve-your-seo#repurposeformats

      1. Wow, thank you so much brian. I’ll Repurpose my blog posts in video formate.

        Your articles are way better than hundreds of dollar of paid courses.

        Your all posts on my todo list now.

        Every night before bed, I’ll read your ONE article.

        Best wishes man. have a wonderful day !!!

  41. Sebastian Hovv Avatar Sebastian Hovvsays:

    Wow this was thorough. Nice work BD!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Sebastian!

  42. Great blog and what is funny: I know Maaike. She is, as I know her, way to modest. Besides putting in the hard work year over year she is really intelligent and keeps on learning the SEO newest things. Of course: mainly from Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Peter. Small world! I was so happy to feature Maaike in this guide. I’m super impressed with what she’s built.

  43. As Felix said “document everything” this is some of the best advice I’ve heard over the years while running our SEO company. Not just for guiding our employees and new recruits, but for illustrating to clients what is happening on the backend that is propelling them to rank better in search.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Greg, man I’ve been kind of obsessed with the “document, don’t create” approach. It’s been a game changer for me.

    1. Its simple yet tedious, but highly effective and definitely worth the effort.

  44. I have never opted to become an SEO expert. Infact i don’t need to be one. All is need is knowledge to enable me execute my digital campaigns and achieve the results i want. Unfortunately or fortunately, to get to that level in today’s competition, is really HARD. That’s why am proud to be a passive student of Brian, Glen and Neil. All SEO knowledge i have that has got my website rank within top 300k websites if from those 3 awesome humans.
    Love you all.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  45. I am practicing SEO on my own website. It’s an education and career related local website. But If I target international keywords for this website what will happen? Will the keywords rank?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      It’s hard to say without looking deeper into it. But in general, I recommend focusing 100% on on language at a time.

  46. Great article as always Brian!

    Just one note.

    Norway has about 5 million people living in it.

    Not 17 million. =)

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Bjorn. I got the country wrong. It’s actually The Netherlands 🀦

  47. I see that getting other sites to link to you is important. But how do you do that when you’re just starting out?

  48. he Brian

    Maaike you have mentioned does not live in Norway as you write but in the Netherlands,

    Thx for the article!

    Regards
    Wouter

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Wouter, you’re 100% right. I need to change that.

  49. Love it! Thanks for sharing for free this great content with us!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Gabriel.

  50. Ben Donley Avatar Ben Donleysays:

    You always rock the free world, Brian!!! You are making me SEO smart and that is saying something. Great article as usual.

    I do local SEO for a bunch of clients and I am finding your advice to be mega helpful. I am wondering about how to do accurate search volume keyword research for smaller markets though…

    Anyway, I’m going to try the HTML advice first.

    Thanks again!!!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Ben, thank you. To answer your question: the Google Keyword Planner lets you drill down to search volumes for specific geographic areas. I think that’s what you meant by “small markets”.

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