The Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Your SEO journey starts here!

If you want to learn SEO, you’ve come to the right place.

This beginner’s guide, consisting of seven chapters, has everything you need to understand the basics of SEO and start ranking higher. You’ll also find links to useful resources from our SEO Blog and YouTube channel throughout, so you can forge your own path to SEO mastery.

/01
How Search Engines Work

Before you start learning SEO, you need to understand how search engines work.

Before you start learning SEO, you need to understand how search engines work.

/02
SEO Basics

Learn how to set your website up for SEO success, and get to grips with the four main facets of SEO.

Learn how to set your website up for SEO success, and get to grips with the four main facets of SEO.

/03
Keyword Research

The starting point in SEO is to understand what your target customers are searching for.

The starting point in SEO is to understand what your target customers are searching for.

/04
SEO Content

Learn how to create content that ranks in search engines.

Learn how to create content that ranks in search engines.

/05
On-Page SEO

This is where you optimize your pages to help search engines understand them.

This is where you optimize your pages to help search engines understand them.

/06
Link Building

Links are how search engines discover new pages and judge their "authority." It’s hard to rank for competitive terms without links.

Links are how search engines discover new pages and judge their "authority." It’s hard to rank for competitive terms without links.

/07
Technical SEO

It’s important to make sure there are no technical faux pas that prevent Google from accessing and understanding your website.

It’s important to make sure there are no technical faux pas that prevent Google from accessing and understanding your website.

/08
What AI Means for SEO

You can’t talk about SEO today without mentioning generative AI.

You can’t talk about SEO today without mentioning generative AI.

SEO Book for Beginners

We turned the seven chapters of our beginner’s guide to SEO into a beautiful hardcover book.

Take a look →
Ahrefs book

SEO Glossary

If you’ve read anything about SEO before, you’ll know there’s lots of industry jargon. But to keep things simple for now, here are a few key terms and concepts you should know.

Backlinks:

Links from a page on one website to another.

Keywords:

The words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for.

Long-tail keywords:

Keywords with low search volumes.

SERPs:

This stands for Search Engine Results Pages. They’re the pages that Google and other search engines show in response to a user’s search query.

SERP features:

Non-traditional search results (not a ’blue link’) like videos, tweets boxes, or featured snippets.

Featured snippets:

Answers to search queries pulled from a top-ranking page that show up near the top of the SERP.

Rich snippets:

Search results with additional valuable information displayed alongside them (e.g., star ratings, cooking times, etc.)

Outreach:

Emailing relevant bloggers and journalists to tell them about your content.

Learn more industry jargon in our SEO Glossary.

SEO for Local Businesses

People don’t search for local businesses in the Yellow Pages anymore. They use Google. Learn how to get more business from organic search with our SEO guides for local businesses.

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Looking for more resources? Check out our blog and YouTube channel.