Learn SEO fundamentals and AI for automation and content creation

In this path you will learn the fundamentals of modern SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and we will introduce you to the use of generative AI to automate and produce content for your SEO strategy. This is a great course for any digital marketer, product manager or tech professional that has always been interested in SEO and wants to understand the fundamentals to start working on it for your web properties. We included a specific section about AI and automation to make sure you get all the tools to take advantage of SEO with a modern approach.

This skill path is fairly technical so this is great for people that are familiar with web development, javascript and general tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and others. We will teach you how to adapt and optimize your SEO  from a technical and non-technical perspective. 

Last but not least we will teach you how to present your SEO strategy, how to explain it to customers and stakeholders and how to align your product or technical team around SEO and priorities. 

By Marco Megali · Sr. SEO Consultant and Search expert

Skill objectives

Chapter 01

Introduction to SEO

This is an introduction to SEO and how it works. We will walk you through the basics, starting from how search works. Expert to learn also why SEO is still needed today and why it matters for businesses.

Skills: Search Engine Optimization

Video4min

Introducing How Search Works

Short video from Google that explains the stages of how Search works in the context of a website. This is critical knowledge for any Search Analyst. 

Link5min

Do you need an SEO?

Let's start this path with a famous piece of content by Google that explains why hiring an SEO agency or professional is an important and critical step for any online business. This initial course is important for Search Analysts to understand how Google think and position SEO in the broader context of managing an online property. 

Chapter 02

SEO Knowledge

In this long chapter you will learn all the most important fundamentals about SEO: several technical aspects are covered here. Don't be scared, you will have time to learn and digest the most advanced ones.

Skills: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, SEO and Content Optimization, Emerging Search Optimization

Video7min

How Google Search crawls pages

We continue our journey on learning the basics and fundamentals of Google Search: discover the steps that go into how Google Search “crawls" or finds and fetches web pages to display on Search, from URL discovery to fetching and rendering. Learn what Googlebot is, what it does, if Googlebot crawls every URL it finds,  why sitemaps can be helpful for your website, and much more! 

Link20min

Learn the basics of HTML

Basic understanding of HTML and its functions. This is a simple set of topics related to the basics of HTML: while it might sound not needed, having a strong HTML knowledge will be critical to work with SEO and understand technical situations you might face in your daily job. 

Video4min

The fundamentals of technical SEO

Great course covering a wide range of technical SEO topics, from crawling and indexation to HTTP response codes, international SEO and more. This course will introduce you to the most fundamentals aspects of technical SEO with a series of quick videos. 

Link10min

Canonicalization

In-depth guide to canonicalization from Moz and most common scenarios. 

Link10min

What Is A Robots.txt File? The best practices for robots.txt syntax

Robots.txt guide and syntax with use cases and practical examples. This is a must for everyone working with SEO. 

Link12min

What is an XML Sitemap? SEO Benefits and Examples

Detailed guide on XML Sitemaps, covering their role in crawling, different formats that can be leveraged for better discoverability and the various sitemap extensions that can be used. 

Link8min

HTTP Status Codes

Fundamentals and the most common HTTP status codes and their meaning. 

Link20min

URL Structure

Useful basic and advanced considerations when choosing the best URL structure for a website. 

Link47min

The role of content in SEO by Eric Enge

Learn how to improve and enrich your SEO strategy by creating useful content that feeds users’ needs. Explore how links can improve your website’s visibility and increase conversion rate with top SEO expert Eric Enge. 

Video10min

Managing SEO for Google Images

John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, dives into how images work on Google, using images to achieve your site's goals, and SEO and optimization best practices for images. This course will show you how to optimize images, how to title and describe them and many other key aspects. Images play a critical role in search and this course is highly suggested for SEO professionals, especially if you work on e-commerce properties where images are always critical. 

Video7min

Video best practices for Google Search & Discover

Danielle Marshak, Product Manager at Google, shares the best practices to help your videos appear in Google Search and Discover. Learn how Google indexes videos, features where videos appear on Google, and what you can do to optimize for these features. 

Video9min

Understanding structured data for web developers

Structured data are one of the technical ways you can improve ranking for your web properties. Ryan Levering, a Software Engineer at Google, shares how it can be helpful for your website, how to get started, and best practices around structured data. Learn how using structured data to describe your content can help Google connect you with your users. 

Link15min

Does Google index Javascript? Impact of Javascript rendering

About rendering and indexing. Why it is important and the impact of Javascript on rendering. 

Video7min

How Javascript influences SEO

In this video series Martin Splitt, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, explains how JavaScript influences SEO and how to optimize your JavaScript-powered website to be search-friendly. Understanding the relationship between Javascript and SEO is critical as Search Analyst. 

Link20min

How to crawl Javascript websites

Now that you have learned more about the relationship between Javascript and SEO, it's time for some practical examples. This is the official Screaming Frog's guide about how to crawl JavaScript rich websites and frameworks, such as Angular, React and Vue.js and identify dependencies with SF SEO Spider. A more technical course that will show you specific cases based on famous front-end frameworks that you will often find in your online properties. 

Link1h

Learn more about Web Vitals and their impact on SEO

Web Vitals is a Google initiative to provide unified guidance for web page quality signals that are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web. It aims to simplify the wide variety of available performance-measuring tools, and help site owners focus on the metrics that matter most, the Core Web Vitals. 

Link25min

How to Optimize Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Official Google content hub on web.dev about INP. It contains a series of articles about how to measure and how to optimize for it. 

Link12min

How to migrate websites: SEO Strategy, Process, & Checklist

A guide on how to strategize, plan and implement a website migration process. You will find yourself helping customers going through large and small migrations, learn the fundamentals of how to approach it. 

Link9min

SEO and Pagination: how to get it right

Actionable article, full of visual samples about how pagination works and how to get it implemented right according to different use cases. 

Link20min

Screaming Frog's guide about how to use the SF SEO Spider to log analysis

Screaming Frog's guide about how to use the SF SEO Spider to to log analysis 

Link10min

An SEO's guide to XPath

A very good intro to XPath and how it can be used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document. Learn more about the importance of it for SEO professionals. 

Chapter 03

Vertical SEO Knowledge

We will now dive deep into several specific use cases for SEO, from how to manage SEO for site in multiple languages to paywalls and e-commerce.

Skills: Local, International, and E-commerce SEO, Geo and Language Specific SEO Fundamentals, Local SEO

Link9min

Introduction to International SEO: managing websites in multiple languages and regions

International SEO is all about managing large website available in multiple languages and regions: selecting the right strategy to index them is not easy and requires specific experience. In this course by Moz there are all the core elements you need to learn to manage websites available in multiple languages, from the correct choice of the URL structure to the management of specific aspects of the pages. 

Video17min

Expanding your site to more languages

Google covers best practices for expanding your site to new languages or country-based language variations. 

Link8min

How to implement HREFLANG and use it without mistakes

Always on international SEO and multi-language website: HREFLANG is one of the HTML attribute you will need to understand and learn how to manage. This course covers classic issues and mistakes you want to avoid while using this attribute. 

Video36min

The best SEO best practices for news websites and publishers

Webinar with Jackie Lee from Similarweb and Barry Adams from Polemic Digital, where they discuss the intricacies of SEO for news publishers. 

Link7min

Managing paywalls and SEO

Paywalls are more and more present on news and publisher websites: learn how to manage them in the context of SEO. 

Video3min

An introduction to Local SEO with Greg Gifford from Semrush

Local SEO Course with Greg Gifford - Semrush Academy 

Link15min

E-commerce: how to structure websites and the perfect architecture for SEO performance

E-commerce websites need a strong knowledge of best practices and architectures when it comes down to their SEO optimization. In this guide by Conductor - a famous SEO enterprise software vendor - you will learn the most important aspects to consider in structuring an e-commerce: it starts from basic elements and dives deep into the importance of the information architecture, links and more. 

Chapter 04

Analysis and Reporting

In this chapter you will learn critical skills like keyword researching and get introduced to frameworks to present your SEO work to customers and stakeholders.

Skills: SEO Performance Analysis, Keyword Research Fundamentals, Link Analysis, SEO Analytics and Reporting

Link47min

An introduction to keyword research

Let's start this new chapter of our skill path for Search Analyst with one of the most important topics in SEO: keyword research. Understanding keyword research means understanding the business you will need to work with and that's why this is such a critical aspect of our job. In this course by Semrush there are all the most important concepts related to it. 

Link8min

Presenting and reporting your SEO work

An additional guide from Moz on how to do SEO reporting and how to present results to your customers and stakeholders. This mini guide is a great asset because it's simple and organized in multiple small chapters. It will guide you through all the considerations and steps you should take to present your work. 

Link18min

How to perform a basic backlink audit

Tactical guide from Ahref on how to use their toolset to do a quick but very insightful backlink audit 

Link15min

How to do an internal link audit

Auditing internal linking according to Inlinks. There are several examples and metrics that can be used. 

Chapter 05

Strategy and Planning

Being strategic about your SEO roadmap is a strong skill you will learn to appreciate over time: in this chapter we teach you what strategy means for SEO and how to build roadmaps that are driven by outcomes.

Skills: SEO Strategy, Project Management Fundamentals, Business and Market Trend Analysis, Conducting Technical SEO Audits

Video10min

What Is Strategy? It’s a Lot Simpler Than You Think

Before we dive deep into strategy in the context of SEO, let's learn about what strategy is really about. This initial course from Harvard Business School is really about understanding the concept of strategy and why it's important. In the next steps we will apply it to the specific realm of SEO. 

Link12min

How to build a great SEO strategy

Let's start talking about strategy in the SEO world: sometimes we get into the nitty gritty details with our customers and stakeholders but that's not the right decision all the times! Being strategic in your SEO approach can really change the quality of your work and improve results for your projects. Let's see how. 

Link15min

How to build SEO roadmaps that our outcomes driven

SEO and product teams suffer from the same problem: Sending lists of feature requests to development teams without a clear vision or purpose. If you have worked in the world of SEO for a while you know this is true. In this article you will learn how to structure your SEO roadmap in a way that prioritize outcomes for the business and has more sense for everyone involved. 

Link16min

Where to start to create your SEO strategy

Let's go back for a second to where you should start with your SEO strategy: this articles will teach you what are the step-by-step elements you should consider to build it from scratch. This is particularly useful if you want to put together everything we have learned so far about SEO strategy and see it applied to build one from scratch. 

Link13min

How to Develop Actionable and Impactful SEO Audits

Article that uncovers an approach of doing SEO audits that focuses on strategy, prioritazion and proactivity 

Link11min

How to present and communicate your SEO work - storytelling for SEO professionals

Storytelling for SEO. Very useful reflections on how to present your SEO work, especially on the technical side 

Link13min

How to get tech SEO changes implemented

Reflections and tactical advice about how to get the technical SEO implementations, starting from the auditing process 

Chapter 06

Consulting and Soft Skills

A consultative approach will let you focus on solving your customers' problems even before talking about SEO and search. In this chapter we introduce you to the consulting and soft skills you should get familiar with in an SEO role.

Skills: Service Relationship Management, Presentation and Public Speaking, Communication and Negotiation, Persuasion

Link12min

Using a consultative approach in SEO

An introduction to the power of using a consultative approach in your SEO projects to win more opportunities and create value for your customers. 

Link13min

Shared Understanding: align SEO professionals with other digital and product teams

This article will introduce you to the model of Shared Understanding, an effective way of creating alignment with other teams (like Product and Engineering) on your SEO roadmap. Shared understanding reduces the misunderstanding of what different specialists are working on and why they are working on it. This can help stop development or product teams green lighting a project only to turn around a few weeks later and state “actually we can’t do 70% of what we said we could do”. 

Link11min

7 critical communication skills that get SEO recommendations implemented

7 critical communication skills that get SEO recommendations implemented 

Video13min

Improve your results with top-down communication

Being an effective communicator will help you get better alignment and results in your projects, this is why we are including a specific course about top-down communication in our skill path. This is something used by every major consulting firm and an effective way to improve the way communicate with your stakeholders. 

Video14min

Data Storytelling – How to turn data into decisions

This video shares key data storytelling tips that help consultants stand out. Learn how to tell stories with data, combining data insights, visuals and a compelling narrative. 

Chapter 07

SEO automation, Introduction to AI for SEO and content creation and emerging trends

In this last chapter we briefly introduce you to the power of AI for SEO: how you can leverage ChatGPT and LLMs to generate content and improve your productivity in your daily tasks.

Skills: Python, Digital Content Creation and Distribution Fundamentals, SEO for Emerging Technologies

Link10min

Google SGE: Generative AI in Search, an introduction of how Search will change

Google SGE is an early step in transforming the Search experience with generative AI. When using SGE, people will notice their search results page with familiar web results, organized in a new way to help them get more from a single search. 

Link20min

The impact of Google’s SGE & What To do About it

Presentation with references on how to analyze the potential impact of Google SGE on SEO and how to measure it 

Video17min

How to create SEO content using AI

How to use AI to create SEO content that ranks using free tools available online 

Video12min

How the top 1% SEO professional use ChatGPT

Short but effective video on how to use ChatGPT in your SEO job. It starts with a lot of prompt suggestions and practical examples. 

Link12min

ChatGPT for SEO: 20 Ways to Leverage ChatGPT in your SEO Activities

List of practical uses of ChatGPT for SEO, from generating code to clustering, analyzing sentiment, formatting content and more 