Search Engine Optimization – SEO Tutorial

Effective SEO lets you optimize your web​site to show up in search engines.

This search engine optimization tutorial teaches you how to apply SEO best practices from industry pioneer Bruce Clay. It’s a step-by-step SEO guide​ explaining what SEO is and how to optimize a website for search — complete with free SEO tools you can use!

Let’s start at Square 1…

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science and art of increasing traffic to a website by helping it rank higher in organic search engine results.

This SEO tutorial teaches you strategies to improve both internal and external factors that influence ranking.

If you do SEO better than your competitors, then you should achieve higher search engine rankings. And you’ll have a quality website capable of maintaining your revenue goals.

What you get from this tutorial

Each lesson guides you through SEO basics to hands-on optimization using free SEO tools and bonus videos. Improve your organic search marketing know-how and your website!

1. Keyword Research – How to Select Keywords
   Includes: Keyword Suggestion tool
2. Competitive Research – Who’s Your SEO Competition?
   Includes: Top-Ranked Websites by Keyword tool
3. SEO Competitive Analysis – Spy on Your Competition
   Includes: Single Page Analyzer
4. Choosing Keywords for SEO Relevance
   Includes: Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool
5. Key Considerations when Writing Content
6. How to Use Keywords in Content
7. How to Optimize Website Content for SEO
   Includes: Domain Indexing Report, SEO Multi-Page Information tool, Single Page Analyzer
8. How to Submit a Website to Search Engines
   Includes: Check Server Page tool
9. Sitemaps – How to Create a Sitemap
10. Using Rich Media to Engage Your Site Visitors
11. How to Optimize Multimedia Content for SEO
12. Siloing – How to Structure Your Website
13. Link Building – How to Attract Quality Links
    Includes: Link Analysis Report, Pages Indexed and Inbound Links Report
14. Avoiding Google Penalties
15. Monitoring Backlinks and Link Pruning
16. Technical SEO Tips
    Includes: SEO Cloaking Checker tool
17. Mobile SEO and UX Optimization
18. How to Monitor Search Engine Rankings & SEO Progress
    Includes: Single Page Analyzer
19. Final encouragement – SEO: The Job That’s Never Done

Step into the SEO Tutorial

Reasons to trust Bruce Clay’s SEO Tutorial

Our SEO ​tutorial follows the proven methodology that thousands of students worldwide have learned in our SEO Training courses.

This tutorial covers only “white hat” SEO methods. That means everything you learn here adheres to search engine guidelines — to keep your site out of the penalty box. You need to earn the expertise, authority and trust (E-A-T) that are the basis of Google’s definition of “quality.”

Bruce Clay set the standard for ethical web marketing by authoring the “SEO Code of Ethics.” This code has been translated into 18 languages. It has been a respected guideline in the ever-changing search marketing industry since 1996.

How does a website rank, anyway?

Search engines want to show the “best” results possible. They seek the most relevant, most expert and highest quality webpages that will satisfy the goal of the searcher.

To do this, the engines look at hundreds of factors to determine a webpage’s relevance to a search request.

Some of these factors are woven into the fabric of the website (on-page elements, server speed, etc.). Others are trust signals based on links from reputable sites and, to some extent, social media engagement (off-page factors).

No single webpage, even with the best search engine optimization in the world, can be perfect in all 300+ ranking factors.

Further, no one knows precisely what the factors include or how they are weighted to determine the search results for a given keyword or query.

So what’s a business owner or marketer to do?

This SEO tutorial teaches you a “beat the leader” approach to search engine ranking. It offers SEO tips that have worked for our digital marketing clients. To see what Google or Bing thinks is best for any specific attribute, we look at the sites they are currently rewarding — the top-ranked results. Once you know what structural and content choices worked for the “leaders,” you can do even better by making your pages the “least imperfect”!

What is ​search engine optimization, then? It’s not secrets or tricks. It is ranking methodologies to follow that help a site ​which offers value to users beat the competition in search results. You must be committed not just to optimizing your domain, but also to making it a quality site that attracts links naturally and is worthy of ranking.

SEO is a combination of digital marketing efforts all working together to increase a site’s value to users and visibility in search.

Watch “How to Get Found ​on Google” for an entertaining overview of the search engine results page and the role of SEO!

Ready to dive in? Click to start the SEO Tutorial!

It is not the job of search engine optimization to make a pig fly.
It is the job of SEO to genetically re-engineer the website so that it becomes an eagle.

– Bruce Clay

Creating a website that offers a good user experience is one goal. But the site must also achieve high rankings. That involves more than just tags and keywords, or content writing, or links, or speed. It requires an integrated effort.

It is difficult to do this type of project without a proven SEO method and strong tools. This tutorial gives you ​both. It’s like taking a free SEO training course!

Before you begin, understand that being among the top 3 rankings in search engine results can be achieved, but not without great effort. Your webpages must earn that high ranking with high-quality content and best-practice SEO.

Even for the best websites, maintaining a top organic SEO ranking requires monitoring and content rework. The work at hand never slows — but neither does your competition.

Ready to learn? Let’s get the Bruce Clay SEO Tutorial started! It begins with keyword research.

Step into the SEO Tutorial

Looking for a short SEO Optimization Checklist? Try ours!