How can I educate myself on SEO for my new blog?

One of the best resources BY FAR for SEO is SEMRush.com.

Their free PDFs (https://www.semrush.com/ebooks/) will keep you awake for nights!

Let me know if I can help you further.

Anything from Ahrefs. They have a great Facebook group and their "Blogging for Business" is money worth spent. One of the best SEO trainings that are out there ($799, but well worth the money) - https://ahrefs.com/academy.

Also, SEMRush has excellent trainings- https://www.semrush.com/academy/courses. There technical SEO is a must for all beginner SEO folks - https://www.semrush.com/academy/courses/18/lessons/509.

Moz is a great source of info, however all the information can be very overwhelming and be careful that you are not reading old and outdated info. SEO has changed a lot in the last few years. So, if you're reading an article from 2016, chances are algorithms and such have changed.

There is so much content on SEO - some good and some shady. My feedback is to find your 2-3 reliable sources and stick to to their information as your "source of truth."

My go-to are:
- Ahrefs (blogs and Facebook group)
- SEMrush (courses and and blog)
- MOZ (Whiteboard Friday and current info only)
- Grow & Convert (GREAT blog content - https://growandconvert.com/articles/)

Good luck. SEO can be a ton of fun.

Michelle Urban
www.marketing261.com

This would be a good place to start:

https://www.yourgrowthmachine.com/blog/wiki-strategy

https://www.yourgrowthmachine.com/blog/build-content-machine

https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year#chapter1

If you have anymore questions, please feel free to ask.

Install a browser plugin like "Alexa Traffic Rank" or "SEOQuake" or some kind of Domain Authority Checker, and make a habit of taking a look at the position of a website when you visit it for the first time. It'll help you greatly in understanding what type of websites / content work, which don't.

SEO to many people seems like this big mystery and this very technical skill, but in reality it's just using content to drive traffic.

Years ago there was a lot more gamesmanship to SEO. You could essentially lazily trick your way into the search rankings. If you're curious to learn more about this look into Made For Adsense or MFA as it was called. Essentially people could throw up poorly written one page web pages with keywords stuffed in and get to the top of Google.

Over the years algorithms and AI have become much more advanced, they can tell if something is readable and written in a quality manner. It's also much more about user engagement and if people are actually finding that content helpful.

SEO these days is less about backlinks and on site page structure and tags and more so just about creating quality content.

Sure it will help to learn a bit about SEO. Learn about H1 and H2 tags, link structure, how to get backlinks, but don't spend too much time getting hungup on the ins and outs and just create quality content.

If you're a business trying to drive traffic try to think of questions a potential customer may have or ask and write content that addresses those questions.

#1. Decide to invest just enough time to solve your specific goal and then move on to the next goal. DO NOT LEARN JUST TO LEARN (that's a hobby, not a business)
#2. Read Google's Guide on SEO https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
#3. Read this short article, it's the BEST SEO ARTICLE I HAVE EVER READ https://moz.com/blog/every-site-is-linkbait-linkerati-worthy
#4. Publish content that webmasters will WANT to link to (ie. it's genuinely useful for THEIR audience which ideally is YOUR audience as well)
#5. GET LINKS THAT WILL SEND YOU LEADS if you sell anything by picking up the phone and calling people or reaching out proactively somehow just as if it were sales itself you are doing.
#6. Choose keywords your prospects are using by looking at the Google's Keyword tool, and start out with longer tail phrases until you start noticing that you can rank for harder and harder ones
#7. Did I mention to avoid learning for the sake of learning? It's a black hole that will suck your life up with no return. Just learn what you need to know to solve the next problem directly in front of you and then move on :)

There are a few great websites about SEO out there. I reccommend: https://moz.com/learn/seo and https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday , https://ahrefs.com/blog/ and https://backlinko.com/blog to start with. That should give you more than enough material to study :) Also, https://searchengineland.com/ for frequent updates about what's new in SEO.