Challenge yourself to learn if SEO is for you with a list of free SEO tutorials online. If it is, learn how to become a professional SEO specialist/expert and get paid for it.

Greetings, this is Joanna Vaiou and today is a great day as I made time to prepare a “how to learn SEO at home free for beginners ” step-by-step TOP Resources List.

My aim with this list is to help you understand if SEO is for you.

If you decide it is, the second part of my article includes tips on how to become a professional SEO specialist and get paid to do SEO, either as an employee or as an SEO business owner yourself.

Many times I am asked by social media acquaintances the following:

1. How easy or hard learning SEO is
2. If SEO is free (or how much it costs to learn SEO)
3. How long does it take to learn SEO?
4. How to become an SEO expert professional

Today I am giving back to my much younger self who struggled and anyone else who wants to learn SEO and save some struggle along the way.

I am sharing an A-Level list of free beginners’ SEO resources.

Why?

If I was a beginner today I would want to be offered the same.

I have consumed and used all the resources I am sharing with you today and this is why I recommend them here.

All these resources have helped me become a better SEO Professional and reach where I am today.

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Today I am giving back to all of you who are thinking of changing your life and in the future pursue a new job or a professional career in the SEO industry.

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While I don’t do SEO Training 101, I can give you my own personal wealth of Free SEO resources for complete beginners for you to start educating yourself and understand if:

1. You are right for SEO.
2. SEO is right for you.

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I Struggled to Learn SEO Fast

The struggle was real.

I struggled with information overload.

I cried as I had no one by my side to motivate me to keep going.

Nevertheless, I stuck to my guns.

I relied on my own power and worked on my own motivation through my involvement with Personal Development (another investment I made simultaneously to my SEO self-educational investment).

It took me four years to feel confident enough and start my own Organic SEO Consulting services company.

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Today, you don’t have to struggle in order to start educating yourself around SEO.

You will need though to work on your own motivation sources and build an amazing relationship with yourself.

All the SEO free tutorials and resources that I am sharing with you today are in the form of:

1. Article training materials & guides
2. Video training playlists from YouTube

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I have compiled a List with 15 Top FREE SEO learning & training Resources for Beginners for you to access at home.

Please note: MOZ offers all its courses for free through the end of May 2020.

Make sure you sign-up for MOZ Search Engine Optimization courses in time.

My SEO industry and the global community are AWESOME.

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What you don’t need to learn SEO

A great budget to learn SEO is not needed.

I remember when I started, I had 1300 Euros saved from all the previous years’ jobs that I had and decided not to go to another job but sit down and learn SEO.

Fact:

There are so many amazing free SEO educational resources laying around online by TOP reputable SEO companies and brands.

SEO Learning Budget

1. You will need money to buy and sustain a domain name to install a WordPress self-hosted website.
2. You will need to pay for your new website’s hosting.

The above costs are for you to practice all the things that you will be learning from the free SEO courses/resources that I am sharing with you today.

Fact: Learning SEO as a beginner is not easy.

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Learning SEO Free (without a mentor) requirements:

1. Your Positivity
2. Your Passion
3. Your undivided time
4. Your laser focus
5. Your willingness and comfort in spending countless hours online, reading, following SEO recommendations by your chosen online resources
6. Your never-ending “SEO knowledge updating” appetite and
7. Willingness to always test new SEO strategies and improve your SEO skills through trial and error

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Few of the TOP SEO Companies:

1. AHREFS
2. SEMrush
3. MOZ

, as well some other Search Engine Optimization Specialists from USA whose training I have been consuming religiously, offer free training guides for those beginners who want to learn SEO for free but don’t want to GO INSANE due to:

1. INFORMATION OVERLOAD online with the quantity and quality of SEO courses and teachings
2. Not knowing where to focus their attention and time on

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My aim with sharing these resources with you is for you to understand if you can see yourself doing SEO long-term.

The information here is more than enough for you to understand and go from SEO beginner to owning the basics of SEO knowledge that can set you off to a new job or professional career path.

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You may choose your favorite type of training resources or your favorite SEO brand from my list according to how you learn SEO better.

Some of us learn better with online step-by-step SEO training videos while others like to read articles.

 

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Best Free SEO Tutorials Online

Here I am sharing with you some Free SEO Resources. These are my own personally used suggestions from TOP reputable sources (SEO Personal Brands and Companies) on how to learn Search Engine Optimization.

I am in the SEO Industry since 2009 and one of the things that I found more challenging at my beginning was where to focus my attention on.

Now, I want to save you time and stress by offering my TOP recommended suggestions to you to dive in and understand if Search Engine Optimization is your "thing".

These are the resources that I would start with when it comes to learning SEO if I started today.

It took me 11 years to compile those and I am very happy to share these with you today.

#	Brand - Source	SEO Resource - Course Link	Notes	Free/Paid	Cost
1	ITHEMES	Learn Wordpress 101 Video Course	The first thing you need to do in order to learn and practice SEO is to get acquainted with a self-hosted SEO friendly platform. I started my SEO learning journey with Wordpress as I had no coding skills and found it friendly to use.	FREE
2	Chris M. Walker	How to Set up your First Self-Hosted Wordpress Website	After you familiarize with a self-hosted Wordpress administration interface, you can choose to start a website-blog on your own to start practicing content creation, blogging and SEO in a niche that you are passionate about	Free "how-to" Training video walkthrough resource	You need to pay for your chosen domain name and your website's Hosting provider
3	Chris M. Walker	SEO 101 for Beginners Video Training Series	Access 7 SEO beginners' training videos from scratch	FREE
4	Matt Diggity	SEO Beginners Video Series on YouTube	Learn the SEO basics from the ground up. Here, you'll be walked through keyword research, onsite optimization and link building	FREE
	Brian Dean	SEO Tutorial 2020	SEO Tutorial 2020	FREE
5	Brian Dean	How to Learn SEO Fast (in Record Time)	Brian Dean covers in 9 chapters (articles & video resources) the following SEO Topics: 1) SEO Fundamentals, 2) Keyword Research, 3) On-page SEO, 4) Technical SEO, 5) Link-building and Content promotion, 6) UX signals, 7) Video SEO, 8) Amazing SEO Case Studies, 9) The best SEO resources ever	FREE
6	AHREFS	Blogging for Business Video Course	Access 10 free video tutorials (almost five hours total) by AHREFS team. Learn how to blog for business	FREE	AHREFS is a paid SEO Tool that offers a free trial you can sign-up for
7	AHREFS	How to Learn SEO (and Stay Sane!)	A great article/guide from AHREFS on how you can use SEO	FREE
8	AHREFS	A Simple 7-Step SEO Tutorial for Complete Beginners	An awesome article/guide for SEO beginners on what SEO is and how it works	FREE
9	SEMRUSH Academy	Free SEO & Digital Marketing Courses	SEMrush offers a series of SEO & other digital marketing courses for free	FREE	SEMrush is a paid SEO Tool that offers a free trial you can sign-up for to use it
10	MOZ	Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization	Access an 8-Chapter Introduction SEO Course for Beginners by MOZ team	FREE	MOZ is a paid SEO Tool that offers a free trial you can sign-up for
11	MOZ Academy	MOZ Academy - Get all MOZ's SEO Courses for free	For a limited time , Moz offers all their courses in their Academy for free. You need to log in to your moz.com account (or sign up for free if you don’t have one) and use the code “wegotthis” at checkout to redeem your training	FREE for a limited time
12	Google Webmasters	Search Console Free Video PlaylistTraining	Google shares a beginners training video playlist on their YouTube Channel on how to use Search Console, the free technical and analytics SEO Tool to monitor your websites health and performance in time	FREE
13	MOZ	Google Search Console Guide/Training for Complete Beginners	Here you can follow Moz's article/detailed guide on how to use Google's free "Search Console" Tool to monitor your websites' organic performance and technical health	FREE
14	GOOGLE	Download Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines 2020 (Updated)	Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines pdf report, offers detailed insights on what human quality raters use in order to evaluate websites and SERPs. It doesn'’t directly affect rankings but their judgments are used to improve Google’s search algorithm. And if go the SEO route you should care about what Google raters want to see in order to remain at the sunny side of Google as they change their algorithms constantly	FREE
15	GOOGLE Analytics Academy	How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners	Google Analytics offers a free video training series on how to use Google Analytics free tool to monitor your website projects' overall performance	FREE

 

Best ways to learn SEO

Now that I know better how the industry works, I will share what matters most.

After 12 years in the SEO Industry which include:

1. 3 Years of learning SEO at home from online SEO courses
2. 1 year as an SEO Director at an Agency
3. The last 8 years at my own SEO Strategy/Consulting & Project Management business

If I started today I would change the following:

Instead of working only on my own SEO projects during the first 3 years, I would go to small businesses and ask them to do their SEO for free so I can get the experience faster for as many projects as possible.

This way I would also build my expertise, my portfolio, and trustworthiness FASTER in the industry, with the documentation of the results that I would bring to the #businesses I work with and their testimonials.

In the SEO industry, it counts how good you are in bringing results for the businesses that trust you, in your ability to present yourself, and of course your soft skills.

How long does it take to learn SEO?

This question of how long it takes to learn SEO to become an SEO Expert depends on many different factors. How fast can you practice SEO on as many projects as possible so you feel confident enough to sell your own SEO services to others?

Only you can answer that for yourself. Every question in the Search Engine Optimization industry requires a custom reply that includes many different scenarios and depends on multiple factors.

How long does it take to become an SEO Expert and start getting paid?

I started learning SEO by myself online in March 2009.

I shared more details about my SEO Solopreneur Career journey in a few international media outlets.

To sum it up, when I first started, I had no mentor to teach me by my side how SEO works.

The Struggle was REAL… How the Years of my Life Went Since early 2009

1. It took me 4 years to start my own remote SEO business.
2. It took 4 more years to become profitable.
3. It took 3 more years to start living a lifestyle that includes traveling, saving, investing and spending money as per my priorities & desires.

It took me 4 years since I started learning SEO online by myself, to feel confident and competent enough as an SEO Expert to start my own Solopreneur business.

These four years also included one full year as an SEO Director in a big Web Performance Agency with top-tier clients such as Mini Cooper Hellas, BMW Hellas, Coca Cola Hellenic, and other multinational high-end brands.

After that, in early 2013, I started supporting my own clients and have been working independently as an SEO Contractor remotely for partnering companies.

Four Years – Why?

The reason why it took me 4 years to start my own SEO professional services business venture was the restricted budget I had at that time.

I started my online SEO training from mostly free tutorials online and YouTube videos.

So, I had no mentor to guide me, take me by the hand, and show me the correct way fast.

SEO Learning Timeframe Defining Factors

• Your budget

This factor is pretty clear. If you are on a restricted budget, you will mostly learn from free SEO tutorials online.

This can slow you down if you don’t have a clear direction from someone who you trust and is already successful as an SEO Professional.

If you have a decent budget you can make it faster by paying for a mentor or take a paid course and practice what you learn. This strategy will offer you case studies to show as proof of your expertise as an SEO professional.

• Your level of passion and love for SEO

SEO is not for everyone. It is really demanding in terms of the personal time, focus, and attention of a person.

It requires that the aspired person reads and stays up to date with the industry developments that change frequently and rapidly.

If you realize that spending unlimited time online reading, testing in order to draw your own conclusions in your niche in terms of what works and what doesn’t, then you will keep on doing that and will become more competent faster.

• Your self-motivation

Even if the person has the best mentor to take them by the hand and show them how SEO works step by step, how quickly one becomes competent enough to call themselves SEO Specialists, depends on how self-motivated they really are.

You need to be very determined and in love with your SEO craft. You must aspire to become better and better in your craft (constantly).

• The quantity of the different projects you work on and brings results

This one is pretty clear. The more projects the aspired person works on, the more case studies they have as proof that they know what they are doing and the sooner they will feel like Experts in SEO.

Learning SEO free & fast at home requires access to the right SEO training tutorials, video courses & guides.

I just delivered that to you.

These free online SEO tutorials will be enough for you to learn as fast as possible what SEO is, how it works, and if you can see yourself pursuing it.

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What it is like to Learn SEO at home online

To learn SEO by yourself online as fast as possible (without investing in 101 mentoring or other paid training), get ready to put on your architect, civil engineer, and your construction worker outfit/suit.

Imagine that you are assigned to build yourself a building, as big or as small as you fancy, alone, with no other team members to help you by doing what you are not good at.

You will do everything by yourself and you will always have Google and Youtube to ask questions.

If you go through my free resources and feel that SEO is the right profession for you, visit my article on how to become an SEO Expert professional and actually get paid for it. It is my personal journey and it worked for me.

I hope my experience helps you find your own way that fits your goals, your values, your desired lifestyle, and the fulfillment that you seek in your personal and professional journey.

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Bonus Resources:

👉 Learning SEO with free resources by Aleyda Solis

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Bonus Video: How to UNCOMMONLY Stand Out on Google with Your Personal Brand