SEO Step-by-Step Tutorial: 3 Essentials for Beginners [+ Next Steps]

By lbrowning@hubspot.com (Laura M. Browning)

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You want to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), but where do you start? We were all SEO beginners once, so take heart: There’s lots to learn, but I’ve got plenty of expert advice and a step-by-step guide to get you started.

We’ll start with some basic SEO vocabulary, review a step-by-step SEO tutorial to help you get your SEO strategy off the ground, and get tips from HubSpot SEO pro Victor Pan and SEOFOMO newsletter founder (and one of the world’s best-known SEO experts) Aleyda Solís.

Table of Contents

SEO Basics
How to Learn SEO
SEO Step-by-Step Tutorial

SEO Basics

Understanding the foundational SEO vocabulary is important. Let’s dive into a few key terms:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Tactics to optimize your website to provide the high-quality information searchers look for. Good SEO also helps you rank higher in search results for specific keywords so people can find your content.
On-page SEO: Any website optimizations that improve search rankings, like the keywords used in your content or back-end elements like site structure.
Off-page SEO: Any actions that improve your search engine rankings outside your website, like backlinks from other websites.
Link building: Links to your website from other high-quality websites that build authority and credibility.
SERPs: Search Engine Result Pages are the results page you see when you conduct a search on Google or another search engine.
White-hat SEO: Optimization tactics that align with accepted and recognized best practices.
Black-hat SEO: Optimization tactics that manipulate search engine algorithms to rank websites higher in SERPs. These tactics are often unethical.
E-E-A-T: E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. It’s part of Google’s search quality rater guidelines and one of the factors Google uses to determine a page’s relevance and authority.
Keyword: Words or phrases users type into a search engine to find content related to their search. As an SEO, you want to include relevant keywords in your content that align with search intent so your site appears in related searches.
Keyword research: The process of finding keywords people enter into search results related to your business to help you inform the words to use in your website pages and content.
Organic/organic results: Any results in SERP that are unpaid and that appear because of a page’s relevance to the search query.
Organic traffic: Organic traffic is traffic that comes from organic results.
Rank/page ranking: Where your site falls in SERPs for a specific keyword.
Ranking factor: A ranking factor is an element that impacts where your site may fall in search results, like your page authority.
Search intent: Search intent is why a user conducts a search.