How to ACTUALLY Learn SEO in 2020

– Hey, in this video I'm going to show you howto actually learn SEO, so before we jump in, make sure you subscribe to my channel because I'm gonna bepublishing a lot of videos just like this one in the near future, so give this video a bigthumbs-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 othervideos you've probably seen about how to learn SEO because I'm not gonna focuson 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 availablefor free everywhere online, so I'm not gonna get into that because the truth is anyonecan find information, but if it was as easy as justgetting 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'mgoing to cover in this video, so let's talk about how youcan learn SEO the right way, so back in 2011 I startedmy very first website, and it was an absolute ghost town.

It had no traffic for monthsand months and months, and no matter what I did Ijust 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 alittle 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 mytraffic substantially, and I even made my veryfirst 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 usedSEO to grow that website I got absolutely obsessed with it, and so I started creatingwebsite after website because I really justwanted to get better at SEO.

I actually wasn't too concernedabout making a ton of money.

I just wanted to get better at SEO because I knew if I canconsistently 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 andstart 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 usedto learn SEO the right way, and how to learn it fast, and learn it in a waythat it actually sticks, so that you can continue to be an expert and continue to get resultsnow and into the future, so the very first thing you have to do is you have to get base knowledge, so there's unlimited informationabout SEO on the Internet.

You can go into Google and search.

You can go into YouTube and search, but really, this is, ofcourse, a little biased, but you can just go rightinto my YouTube channel, or go to the Gotch SEO Blog, and you'll pretty muchfind all the information you need to know about SEO and to give you that baseknowledge that you need before starting to take action, before moving on to the next step.

Now, before you takeall the base information that you're going to learnand start acting on it, you need to understand that not all actions inSEO are created equally.

Some actions produce 100times bigger results, while some actions producevery little results, so knowing the differencebetween those actions is absolutely critical, and that's really what makesa difference between people who are extremely effectivein 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 thoseactions 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 postsand 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 phrasesthat you're going after, so for example, if you're targeting howto 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 toconvert 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 tohit them with a sales pitch, so it's best to, when it'san informational asset, to go after something that's a little lower barrier to entry, so that would be like tryingto get their e-mail address, and you can offer a leadmagnet or something of value in exchange for their e-mail address, and then transactionalpages, on the other hand, would be built to actuallyconvert the searcher into a lead or into a customer, so if you were a dog trainer in St.

Louis, and you wanted to rankfor 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 informationwas designed to educate, the transactional is designed to convert, so knowing the differencebetween those two is completely dependent onunderstanding search intent, but I won't go deep into that because I have a tonof videos on my channel about search intent, and make sure you watch those, but regardless, understanding how to createnew keyword-targeted content and how to improve existingcontent on a website is one of the most fundamentalSEO skills that you can learn 'cause the truth is websites are filled withthin, duplicate, outdated, and just sometimesstraight-up bad content, and so you have to understandhow to go through a website and find these issues, these content issues, and then know what to do withthe content once you find it, so in a lot of cases you will actually end up havingto delete a lot of content or consolidate or even redirectcontent to primary assets, but once again, I havea video on my channel about how to do a content audit, so make sure you watch that, but understanding howto create SEO content and how to optimize existing content is a fundamental SEOskill you have to learn.

Number two is link building, so I know there's a lot ofstuff out there right now about how links don't matter, but there's so much evidenceshowing that they still matter and have mattered pretty much forever, so it's kind of a silly discussionoverall, but regardless, it is very, very difficultto rank without links, and it can be done, but you'd have to be willingto wait a very long time to be able to get those results, and so if you're willing towait 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 evena 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 theycan 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 themost high-quality links is going to definitelyoutperform 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'sgonna 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 ofthe most important factors for SEO performance, so make sure you learneverything about it, so the third high-impact area that you need to study and learn is user experience optimization, and so a lot of thetechnical SEO optimization that you'll go through will improve user experience, but anything you can do in a website that improves user experienceis going to benefit SEO, and most importantly it's goingto benefit your conversions, and so it's a criticalpiece of the puzzle, and so understanding how to create andoptimize existing content, understanding how to acquire links, and understanding how tooptimize for user experience, if you get those three right, and you understand those, and you really hone in ongetting 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 criticalbecause 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 consistentlytesting your pages and trying to improve your pages so that they convert atthe maximum that they can, so that you're getting themost out of all the traffic that's going to your site.

Okay, so now that you know that you need toestablish base knowledge– – Knowledge.

– and you need to focus on the high-impact actions within SEO, the third and most criticalpart of this process, which I always recommend topeople 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, whenyou start your own project, and you use that as yourtesting breeding ground, you will learn so incredibly fast, and this is the processthat I recommend doing, so while you're gettingyour 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 ofmy videos, for example.

Go and watch one of my videos, and when you see somethingthat's actionable, take that action item and put it what I callon a future actions list, and so what I do is Iliterally take actionable items from content, books, videos, whatever, and I put it on a future actions list so that I am accountable totake action on that information, and so you need to havethat process in place because otherwise you'll justconsume, consume, consume, and you won't actuallyact on the information, and so everything that you have consumed doesn't matter unlessit'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 actuallydemonstrate that information, so for example, there maybe some college professors that know a ton about business.

They may know the history of business.

They may know everythingyou could ever imagine, historically, about being an entrepreneur, but they've never actuallystarted a business.

They've actually never grown a business, so that applies in SEO too.

There are tons of peoplewho know everything, every single nook and cranny about SEO, but honestly, a lot ofthem 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 toexecute on that information and knows how to get real results, and the only way to get real SEO results is to act on every pieceof information that you get so that you can learn fromit 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 questioningeverything at all times, but the way to reallyquestion it the right way is to actually act on it and get that feedbackbased on your own actions.

Now, the good news is that I've done a massive amount oftesting 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 ofstupid 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 waymore experienced than I am because I know that I do notwanna 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 gothrough all the failing, and the testing, and the experimentation, and the time-wasting.

I don'twanna go through any of that.

I'd rather just bypass all that and work with someone whoalready knows what they're doing, and so understandingthat principle is huge because at the end of the daywe 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 doit 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 actfar more than you consume.

I recommend about a 90/10 split, so 90% of your timeshould be spent acting; 10% of your time should be spent educating yourself and learning.

Okay, so let me review howto learn SEO the right way, so step number one, establishthe base foundation, so learn just enough so that you can start to takeaction on the information.

Number two, learn the mostimportant 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 getreal-life experience in SEO, and even if you're alreadyan experienced SEO, and even if you've workedon SEO campaigns before, it's still really important to have your own side projectsbecause it keeps you fresh.

It keeps you thinking 'cause when you have tostart something from scratch, it forces you to think ina 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 throughthe entire process of how to start a niche site, so if you wanna startyour own side project at an affordable price, thatis 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 youtoday about how to learn SEO, and to be honest, if you wanna not have togo through all the testing, and all the failure, andall the time-wasting, and honestly, wasting a ton of money like I did for many, manyyears trying to learn SEO, you can actually justjoin Gotch SEO Academy, which over 800 other SEOs arealready inside there learning, and what it is is an exact, step-by-stepSEO 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 gothrough that entire phase of trying to learn, andtesting, and failing, and doing all kinds ofstuff trying to learn SEO.

Instead, you can justlearn a proven SEO process that's based on real-life experience, and you can save a ton of time and money, and you can actuallylearn SEO the right way so that you can startgetting better rankings and more traffic, and you can really growany company that you want.

It's such an incredibly powerful skill, but like I said, I'm notgonna pitch you super-hard about Gotch SEO Academy.

I just hope this video gaveyou a nice little framework for learning SEO the right way, and if you got a lot of value from it, please like this videoand leave a comment below, and if you're notsubscribed, please subscribe because I'm going to bepublishing 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).