A beginner’s guide from Ahrefs
Your SEO journey
starts here!
If you want to learn SEO, you’ve come to the right place.
Over the years, we’ve published tons of free educational materials on our <a1>SEO Blog</a1> and <a2>YouTube channel</a2>, helping millions of people to get more organic traffic to their websites in the process.
But the issue with these resources is that their content is unorganized. There's no clear starting point or pathway to SEO knowledge.
That's why we created this guide. Whether you're just getting started on your SEO journey or already know the basics, this page is your gateway to SEO mastery.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of growing a website's traffic from organic search results. It involves things like keyword research, content creation, link building, and technical audits.
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Businesses pay Google to be here.
Nobody can pay Google to be here. SEO is all about putting your website there.
These six chapters are all you need to build a strong foundation of SEO knowledge and start ranking higher in Google. If you want to dig deeper, each chapter has links to plenty of more advanced learning materials.
Before you start learning SEO, you need to understand how search engines work.
Learn how to set your website up for SEO success, and get to grips with the four main facets of SEO.
The starting point in SEO is to understand what your target customers are searching for.
Learn how to create content that ranks in search engines.
This is where you optimize your pages to help search engines understand them.
Links are how search engines discover new pages and judge their "authority." It's hard to rank for competitive terms without links.
It's important to make sure there are no technical faux pas that prevent Google from accessing and understanding your website.
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.
Links from a page on one website to another.
The words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for.
Keywords with low search volumes.
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.
Non-traditional search results (not a 'blue link') like videos, tweets boxes, or featured snippets.
Answers to search queries pulled from a top-ranking page that show up near the top of the SERP.
Search results with additional valuable information displayed alongside them (e.g., star ratings, cooking times, etc.)
Emailing relevant bloggers and journalists to tell them about your content.
Learn more industry jargon in our <a1>SEO Glossary</a1>.