SEO Essentials

SEO Training Course Overview

This SEO training course covers the absolute essentials of search engine optimisation, i.e.

• How search engines gather data about your website
• How Google, Bing, et al. analyse users' search queries
• How search engines match queries to web pages in search results
• How search engines rank natural search results
• How users respond to search engine results pages (SERPs)
• How to analyse and evaluate your competitive search position
• How to identify your SEO priorities
• How to construct landing pages and SEO-friendly web sites

This is the shorter, and much more intensive, of our two SEO beginners courses. It is best suited to those who already know a little bit about SEO and web design, i.e. those who are confident that they can manage without a lot of detailed discussion and exercises using real-world examples from their own websites. We recommend our 2-day SEO Fundamentals course for those absolute beginners who need a gentler and more complete introduction to SEO.

That said, many absolute beginners have used this SEO course to build successful online businesses, including several who have gone on to become SEO consultants in their own right.

Our principal trainer, Dave Fisher, first taught this course in the mid-1990s and it has been continually evolving and updated ever since. The current version was last updated in early 2019.

Course Objectives

On completion of this SEO training course, you will be able to:

• Understand how search engines find and use your web site content
• Understand how prospective customers find and use your content
• Identify your SEO strengths, weaknesses and opportunities
• Distinguish SEO competitors from business competitors
• Identify your SEO competitors' strengths and weakness
• Identify which SEO strategies and tactics best suit your needs
• Begin implementing a credible SEO strategy
• Evaluate your SEO strategy outcomes, including return on investment (ROI)
• Progressively improve your SEO tactics and results

Target Audience

• Marketing staff
• Web content authors
• Web designers
• Web developers with SEO responsibilities

Training Pre-requisites

• Basic computer literacy
• Basic web literacy

Technical knowledge of web fundamentals (e.g. HTML and CSS) is not required — but having those skills will enrich your experience of this course, and enhance the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.

In the long-run, we recommend that non-technical marketeers, content authors and designers all learn some basic HTML (and possibly CSS) if they really want to do SEO properly.

Don't let the snake-oil merchants kid you, if you want a real edge over your principal SEO competitors, acquiring these skills is one of the quickest ways to get one — much cheaper and more effective than many self-styled 'SEO consultants'.

Training Style

This SEO training course is tightly focused on the practical steps you can take to improve your position in search engine results pages.

Even with the diversity of sites and businesses represented on publicly scheduled versions of this course, we can offer hands-on exercises analysing and evaluating your competitive SEO position — since these steps are, essentially, the same for most businesses.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for devising and implementing an SEO strategy — since every organisation's business constraints are unique, and implementing good SEO is entirely about devising a unique strategy for those unique circumstances.

Those who want hands-on exercises and support in the design and implementation phases, may want to consider 3 (non-exclusive) alternatives:

• Our 2-day SEO Fundamentals course, covering the same ground, but in much greater depth, with practical exercises on implementing a performance improvement stategy, and greater focus on your individual site
• Take a private (in-house) version of this course — i.e. one tailored specifically to your business
• Hire one of our SEO consultants to work exclusively with your business