Search engine optimization weighs heavily in most digital marketing strategies, so getting a leg up with your SEO skills won’t just benefit you but also your business.
On the first page of search engine results, the first five organic results account for about 68 percent of all generated clicks. The higher you can boost your search ranking, the more traffic your website will receive.
The following are 10 free courses that you can take online to level up your SEO skills. These courses cover a wide range of SEO-related topics. Think about what will benefit your marketing efforts most to help choose which courses you want to register for.
‘SEO Fundamentals Course’ from Semrush
This free “SEO Fundamentals Course” is offered by Semrush. It focuses on search engine basics, technical SEO, link signals, on-page signals, SEO for mobile, other ranking signals, international SEO and local SEO.
The course is great for anyone who wants to learn the basics of SEO or just brush up on certain topics. Upon course completion (which takes about four hours), you’ll have a better understanding of how to do SEO and to drive more traffic and customers to your website.
‘SEO Training Course’ from Moz
The free “SEO Training Course” course is offered by Moz through Udemy. It’s all about learning and understanding the basics of SEO.
The course includes learning:
- SEO strategy development
- Site audits and structure
- Keyword research basics
- On-page SEO fundamentals
- Link-building and off-page SEO
- SERP features
- Reporting on SEO
This beginner-level course takes about three and a half hours to complete.
‘SEO Certification Course’ from HubSpot Academy
This free “SEO Certification Course” is offered by HubSpot Academy and focuses on website optimization, link building, keyword research and more.
Specifically, you’ll be able to:
- Evaluate and improve your website’s SEO
- Build backlinks to your website at scale to increase your website’s visibility on the search engine results page
- Use insights from keyword research and reporting to improve your search performance
This course takes about two and a half hours to complete.
‘SEO Certification Course’ from eMarketing Institute
The free “SEO Certification Course” is offered by eMarketing Institute. The 156-page ebook caters to SEO beginners.
You’ll learn what search engines are, how they index websites and how they rank them. In addition, other course topics include:
- Search engine friendly design
- Understanding how keywords work and why keyword research is an important part of SEO
- Link building
- Different search engine protocols
- How to track and measure success
The self-paced course (due to the nature of the ebook) has a free certification test in which participants only have 60 minutes to complete.
‘Optimizing a Website for Google Search’ from UC Davis
The free “Optimizing a Website for Google Search” course is offered by UC Davis through Coursera. You’ll learn the ins and outs of optimizing a website, which includes conducting an initial audit as well as presenting your findings and recommendations.
Hands-on activities include:
- Learning how to select and apply appropriate keywords throughout a website
- Incorporating keyword research in a content marketing strategy
- Optimizing a site for local search
You also will learn strategies for setting goals and expectations, building effective analytics and reports, as well as communicating SEO improvements.
This intermediate-level course takes about 14 hours to complete.
‘SEO Link Building Basics’ from Udemy
The free “SEO Link Building Basics” is offered by Udemy and focuses on how to secure good links that make sense from relevant websites. It’s about the basics:
- Why links matter
- Link-building myths
- Link-building mistakes
- Keyword research
- Anchor text diversity
- How to analyze a link
- How to analyze a website’s entire backlink profile
This beginner-level course will teach you how to find target sites for link prospecting, including analyzing a competitor’s backlinks, using advanced search in Google and how to analyze a website.
It’s a short course, taking less than an hour and a half to complete.
‘Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies’ from UC Davis
This free “Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies” course is offered by UC Davis through Coursera. It focuses on technical, mobile and social strategies for increasing website traffic.
You’ll learn how to build SEO for international audiences through content localization and global team alignment. The techniques discussed include:
- Optimizing mobile-friendly websites
- Making mobile apps discoverable
- Leveraging social media to drive organic SEO traffic
You also will learn how to identify key SEO metrics and collect, interpret, validate, and report success to your clients and stakeholders.
This intermediate-level course takes about 25 hours to complete.
‘Website Performance Optimization’ from Google
The free “Website Performance Optimization” course is offered by Google through Udacity. It focuses on how to optimize any website for speed by diving into the details of how mobile and desktop browsers render pages.
You’ll learn about the Critical Rendering Path, or the set of steps browsers must take to convert HTML, CSS and JavaScript into live websites. From there, you’ll start exploring and experimenting with tools to measure performance. You’ll also learn strategies to deliver the first pixels to the screen as early as possible.
The course includes recommendations from PageSpeed Insights and the Timeline view of Google Chrome’s Developer Tools to find the data you need to achieve immediate performance boosts.
This intermediate-level course takes about one week to complete.
‘Search Engine Optimization’ from Springboard
The free “Search Engine Optimization” is offered by Springboard and helps participants build a strong framework in search engine optimization, explore how to optimize a site for organic traffic and learn how to track and measure results.
Specifically, you’ll learn:
- An introduction to SEO
- The history of SEO
- Keyword research and content planning
- On-page optimization
- Technical SEO
- Link building
- Results and reporting
The course spans half a dozen sections, with 53 resources, and takes about 44 hours to complete.
SEO isn’t the only topic you can level up on through free online courses. Be sure to check out our suggested courses on email marketing and social media as well.
See if you’re making any of these 13 common SEO mistakes.
