Over the years, we have been deeply engaged in the field of SEO and have produced hundreds of professional analysis articles and practical cases. In order to help learners master the essence of SEO in a systematic way, this ultimate teaching guide is specially integrated, covering: SEO self-study path planning, analysis of the latest search engine algorithms, practical tool teaching and traffic increase strategies. This guide summarizes our many years of practical SEO experience and teaching essence. Through a structured knowledge system and actionable optimization techniques, it will help you fundamentally understand the logic of SEO operations and gradually build professional website optimization capabilities!
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a marketing strategy that adjusts the website content and technical architecture to allow web pages to obtain higher rankings in Google's natural search results. Research shows that 81% of consumers will search for information online before shopping. This is a critical opportunity for companies to increase brand exposure and obtain free traffic through SEO.
There are two main ways to get exposure on Google:
"Build a website that is recognized by Google and loved by users, so that when the target customers need you, they will naturally find you."
In the era of AI technology, friends engaged in SEO should pay special attention to:
Content construction is still the core key of SEO optimization. According to Google's official SEO guidelines updated in 2025, content that is "completely automatically generated by AI" will not be considered high-quality content. Therefore, even if AI can be used to assist in writing the first draft, it still needs to be written and optimized by an editor with marketing expertise to ensure that the content is practical and truly helpful to users.
Based on our practical experience, AI-generated content still has many flaws, such as grammatical errors, inaccurate information, unclear logic, etc. Therefore, if you want to use AI to assist in content production, please be sure to conduct manual review and proofreading to ensure quality.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) refers to all marketing methods conducted through search engines,including "SEO (Search Engine Optimization)" in natural search results and paid advertising such as "PPC (pay-per-click keyword advertising)". Both fall under the category of SEM.
However, in practical workplace situations, many people simply refer to “keyword advertising” as SEM. If you are confused about the definitions of these terms, it is recommended to refer to this in-depth analysis article.
In fact, there is no absolute answer, because the marketing goals and benefits of SEO and keyword advertising are different (see the comparison table below). It is recommended to first evaluate the brand’s current resources and goals, and then decide how to plan marketing. In practice, we usually recommend a "dual track approach" to achieve more complete and stable growth in SEM.
| Project | SEO (Search Engine Optimization) | Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing goals | Establish long-term stable natural traffic and brand exposure to attract potential audiences | Quickly import traffic and exposure to accurately reach specific target audiences |
| Benefits | It takes a long time to invest, but once there is an effect, the impact is far-reaching and lasting | The effect is quick and obvious, but the exposure will be lost after the investment is stopped |
| Controllability | Low, need to cooperate with Google algorithm changes | High, can customize advertising strategy and adjust optimization in real time |
| Resources required | SEO consultant, content editor, website engineer | Advertising budget, advertising pitcher |
Of course, some people will ask: Why is SEO optimization so important?
Whether modern people are feeling unwell, encountering difficulties at work, or looking for a restaurant to eat at on the weekend, the first thing they do is open Google to search. This also means that there is huge market potential behind "search marketing".
In addition to the advantage of huge search volume, SEO search engine optimization has many practical benefits:
Many companies often ask: Can we do SEO ourselves? The answer is – of course!
In-house SEO is generally encouraged as long as the following key conditions are met:
If the business itself has the above conditions, then it has the ability to optimize SEO on its own.
However, if resources are limited, you can also choose to slowly develop an SEO team internally, or cooperate with an external professional consulting company to gradually build up the search competitiveness of the website.
Before you start learning the details of SEO, it is important to establish some core concepts first, which will make your understanding and implementation smoother:)
The operation principle of search engines can be simply divided into the following 4 steps:
Simply put, making your website found, understood, indexed, and ranked high by Google is the essence of SEO!
The reason why our website can be found, indexed, and even ranked at the top of the search result page (SERP) by Google is all due to the operation of the Google search algorithm behind it!
Google has dozens of algorithms, each responsible for different scoring items: such as user experience, website content quality, website security, link structure, etc.
The focus of SEO is to make our website meet the expectations and scoring standards of these algorithms.
Understanding algorithms has two major benefits:
| Algorithm Name | Main Function | SEO Practice Suggestions |
|---|---|---|
| Panda (Panda Algorithm) | Evaluate the quality of website content and combat "content farms" | Create original, in-depth and practical content to avoid a large number of repetitive and weak articles |
| Penguin (Penguin Algorithm) | Check the quality of backlinks and combat black hat SEO behavior. | Refuse to buy links, avoid irrelevant or hidden links, and value the authenticity and value of links. |
| Hummingbird | parses natural language to better understand search intent. | Use natural and fluent sentences to write content, and don’t pile up keywords rigidly. |
| RankBrain | machine learning algorithm intelligently analyzes search behavior and website content | optimize user experience, provide valuable content and highly interactive website architecture |
Additional Notes:
In the process of learning SEO, you may hear many people mention the terms "white hat", "black hat", and "gray hat". These are actually descriptions of different SEO operations, and each method will bring different levels of risk and reward to the website.
Legal, safe and long-term business approach
What is White Hat?
White hat SEO is an operation method that fully complies with Google's official guidelines, emphasizes "user-centricity", and pursues the overall improvement of website quality and experience.
Common white hat practices:
Suitable for:
Those who want to operate a brand or e-commerce brand for a long time and value stable ranking and reputation.
High risk of cheating and violation
What is Black Hat?
Black hat SEO is a method of quickly manipulating rankings by violating Google's regulations. Although it is effective in the short term, once detected by the algorithm, it is likely to be punished or even removed from the entire site!
Common black hat techniques:
The risk is extremely high and it is strongly not recommended!
Walking on the edge, effective in the short term but risky
What is Gray Hat?
It is between the white hat and the black hat. On the surface, there is no violation, but in fact, it may be crossing the red line. Such tactics may sometimes be deemed acceptable by the algorithm, but may sometimes be targeted.
Common gray hat techniques:
Suitable for:
Advanced operators, but requires a high level of SEO risk awareness.
Although black hat or gray hat SEO may show results in the short term, in the long run, it is white hat SEO that can truly enable a website to grow steadily and gain trust.
Just remember this sentence:
“Google also wants good websites to be seen, and following its logic is the best SEO strategy.”
Learning SEO can often feel daunting, not only because it is a large field with a wide range of implications, but also because it is a relatively opaque field. Although Google has released some instructions for its search algorithm, the overall structure is still incomplete. In addition, most information on the Internet is scattered and fragmentary, so beginners often feel confused and frustrated when searching for information and understanding content.
Even so, we strongly encourage everyone to bravely study on their own. After all, "search" is an irreversible trend in the future, and SEO is one of the core capabilities that all marketers should possess.
Based on MySEOSites many years of experience as an SEO instructor and consultant, he found that the biggest bottleneck for most novices when it comes to SEO is that "the information on the Internet is too complex and lacks systematization." Therefore, many people end up paying for courses just to save the time and frustration of searching for information.
But in fact, as long as you can establish a complete learning framework, you can greatly reduce the confusion of learning. This architecture diagram we usually use in teaching not only clearly sorts out the learning context of SEO, but also corresponds to our team's daily optimization process. Each one is an indispensable skill in practice, and is the core knowledge that you should master in depth during the self-study process.
Below we will also organize the key concepts and further readings one by one to help you walk more clearly and with more direction on the road of self-study.
Initial goals and strategies are crucial in any website optimization or marketing effort, and this is also true in the field of SEO. If the strategy deviates from the beginning, the overall optimization results will be less than expected. The foundation of SEO optimization strategy often comes from "keyword strategy", and the formulation of this strategy begins with the key step of "keyword research". Therefore, it is recommended that beginners start from this point and master the core concepts of keyword research first, which will form the basis for subsequent successful optimization.
The first step in researching a keyword strategy is to select the keywords you want to operate on. Many beginners may encounter the following confusion at this stage:
At this time, we need to use the "keyword analysis tool" to conduct in-depth research. Through these tools, we can obtain data such as keyword search volume, competitiveness, and search trends, so as to understand the size of the keyword market and user behavior, and further determine the direction of keyword selection. In addition, these tools can help us analyze competitors’ keyword strategies and provide more ideas and inspiration.
[Students who study by themselves can continue to study in depth and read the following SEO teaching articles]
After selecting keywords, the next step is to analyze keyword types. Keywords can be divided into three types, each of which is displayed differently in the search engine results page (SERP):
For example: The SERPs for the keyword “headphones” are mostly shopping websites, while the SERPs for “headphone recommendations” are more likely to be information articles, which reflects that Google believes that users have different intentions when searching for these keywords. Therefore, when developing a keyword strategy, we need to first evaluate the form of the search results and choose the most appropriate page for optimization.
[Students who study by themselves can continue to study in depth and read the following SEO teaching articles]
SEO Keyword Strategy 2: Search Results & Keyword Types
The final step in your keyword strategy is to create a “keyword map.” This is a planning tool that is used to sort out the keywords that different consumers need at different purchasing stages and map them to appropriate website content.
For example: In the case of selling ergonomic chairs, we can analyze consumers’ needs at each stage of their purchasing process and infer what questions they will search for. Based on this information, we can design exclusive keywords for different stages and map them to specific landing page content, thereby improving the page’s search ranking and conversion rate.
Technical SEO is a very important part of SEO. It focuses on the technical architecture of the website to ensure that search engines can effectively crawl the website content and rank it smoothly. If the website's technical structure is not user-friendly, search engines will not be able to correctly parse the website's content. Even if the website's content is high-quality, its ranking may be affected. Therefore, the website's technical architecture must be search engine friendly, which is the basis for any subsequent SEO optimization work.
The first step in technical SEO is to make sure Google can find and crawl your website. The principle of how search engines work is that Google's crawlers will first perform a "crawl" to visit your website and read its content, and then perform an "index" to store the website's information and display it in the search results. If your website is successfully indexed, it means that it will appear in Google's search results.
There are many factors that affect Google's retrieval and indexing, such as the website's architecture, website speed, etc. To confirm whether your site has been successfully indexed by Google, you can use Google Search Console or use the Site command to check the index status of your site.
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
Website architecture is crucial to SEO. You can compare website architecture to the location of a restaurant. If the restaurant is located in a cramped and hard-to-reach place, customers will stay away even if the food is delicious. The same is true for SEO. If the website structure is not conducive to search engine crawlers, even the best content will find it difficult to achieve good search rankings.
When designing an SEO-friendly website architecture, we need to optimize the following technical SEO items:
| Item | Description | Impact on SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Sitemap | is a file placed on a website that lists the website's URL, image links, video links, etc. | It helps search engines understand what pages are on the website. |
| Internal links | plan the interactive path of the website pages, usually navigation pages, sidebars, etc. | Affect the crawling status of the crawler and the weight transfer between pages |
| Breadcrumbs | show the path of the current page to assist users in navigation. | They help search engines understand the structure of the website and improve the presentation of search results. |
| Robots.txt | controls which pages should be crawled by the crawler and which pages should not be crawled. | It prevents search engines from crawling unimportant pages and avoids overloading the website due to excessive crawling. |
| Canonical | tells search engines which page is the "canonical page" to avoid duplicate content issues. | Avoid duplicate content affecting SEO and tell Google which page is the original version. |
| Schema | is a syntax for marking the content type of a web page (such as articles, recipes, products, etc.) | to help search engines understand the content of the page and improve the display of compound search results in SERP. |
| RWD website architecture | Responsive web design automatically adjusts the page display on devices of different sizes | Improve Google search efficiency and reduce the error rate of mobile website |
| JavaScript Checks | if your website uses JavaScript to generate content or links. | Google may not be able to read content generated by JavaScript, which can affect your website's SEO performance. |
| Redirection Check | whether the website has correctly set up 301 redirection and 404 error page. | Redirection errors will affect SEO. Correctly setting up redirection can improve the website's user experience and search ranking. |
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
Understanding the website architecture and performing correct technical optimization are the basis for ensuring that the website can be successfully crawled by search engines and displayed in search results. If the website's technical architecture is not user-friendly, even if the subsequent SEO strategy is good, it will still not achieve the desired results. Therefore, technical SEO is the most basic and essential step in any SEO work.
In the previous SEO tutorial, we have covered keyword strategies and technical SEO of websites. Next, we will focus on how to improve the SEO ranking of websites through Google's algorithm. Google uses dozens or even hundreds of "signals" to analyze the quality and relevance of websites. These signals are called "Ranking Factors" or "Ranking Signals."
The SEO algorithm is very complex, so when learning, we can divide these factors into two categories: "quality signals" and "relevance signals". The following will introduce these two types of signals in more detail.
Quality signals are key factors that Google uses to determine whether a website is a high-quality website. They mainly focus on the "importance" and "user experience" of the website, which are the core factors that affect website rankings.
Domain Authority (DA) or backlinks is a key factor in SEO. Google uses backlinks to determine the credibility and importance of a website. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website's authority will be and the better your ranking will be.
In addition, "brand power" will also affect the weight of the website. Long-term brand management, cooperation with public relations media, and strategic backlink construction can all help improve the weight of the website.
suggestion:
Google attaches great importance to the user experience of the website, which is an important factor affecting SEO ranking. Google has a "Core Web Vitals" to evaluate the performance quality of a website, including its loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
In addition, the website's HTTPS security, mobile version experience, and avoiding pop-up ads will also directly affect SEO rankings.
suggestion:
Relevance signals are signals that Google uses to determine the relevance of a website to specific keywords. These signals mainly come from elements such as website content and web page titles. Google uses these elements to determine whether a web page is relevant to a particular search query.
Google places great emphasis on the quality of website content and considers it a key ranking factor. Website content should be professional, practical and helpful to users, rather than just stuffing keywords for SEO ranking.
suggestion:
The process of writing SEO articles can be divided into three stages:
suggestion:
When writing SEO articles, structure is very important, and a good structure helps improve SEO performance. With the right title, appropriate paragraphs and keyword density, your article can get higher exposure in search engines.
Reference articles:
These steps and concepts will help you improve your website’s SEO ranking and attract more valuable traffic. If you want to learn more about how to optimize your website content, you are welcome to read more detailed SEO articles and practical exercises.
SEO is a field that requires a lot of trial and error. When learning SEO, data observation and analysis are very critical. Data not only provides a basis for us to plan keyword strategies, but also plays an important role in performance monitoring, ranking tracking, website health diagnosis and other aspects. For SEO novices, understanding and mastering the use of data can greatly improve the efficiency of learning and implementing SEO, allowing us to discover problems and adjust strategies more quickly.
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
After understanding the importance of data analysis, how do you start observing this data? In practice, we can rely on a variety of SEO tools to assist with data analysis and website optimization. There are many SEO software on the market, each with different functions. Common ones include "Google Official Tools", "Keyword Planning Tools", "Website Analysis Tools", "Speed Detection Tools", etc. Here is a list of some commonly used SEO software tools:
The free tools provided by Google are indispensable for SEO. These tools not only help us track website traffic and performance, but also assist us in checking technical issues to improve SEO results.
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
When planning your SEO keyword strategy, keyword analysis tools are indispensable. These tools can help us analyze keyword search volume, competition, and search trends, and monitor rankings, giving us a clearer direction for keyword attack.
Common keyword tools include:
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
Web analytics tools focus on analyzing the performance of your website, including user behavior and goal achievement. In addition to Google Analytics, you can use these tools to further analyze your website's data:
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
Website speed directly affects SEO rankings. Google standards require faster website speeds, which not only helps with user experience but also helps improve website rankings. You can use the following tools to check if your site speed meets the requirements:
[Students who are self-taught please continue reading the following SEO teaching articles]
These tools can help you gain insight into the health of your website and make improvements based on the data, ultimately improving your website’s SEO ranking and user experience.
On e-commerce websites, product search volume and conversion rate are the core of SEO success. However, many large e-commerce websites such as Amazon, eBay, etc. often dominate the homepage of search results. For small and medium-sized e-commerce websites, the success of SEO lies in content optimization, especially the SEO of product descriptions, titles and images.
Here are some practical SEO optimization suggestions:
As the SEO field is constantly changing, it’s important to keep up with Google updates and industry trends. In addition to professional SEO learning resources, here are some recommended websites and platforms:
Learning SEO is a long process. Many people hope to master SEO quickly, but in fact, it requires a lot of practice and accumulated experience. It is recommended that beginners be patient when self-studying. It takes at least half a year to a year to deeply understand the basics and advanced concepts of SEO. Although there are many resources available for self-study nowadays, the key to ultimately mastering SEO lies in whether you can effectively organize your learning materials and develop the habit of reading SEO news and practicing every day.
When you start learning and practicing SEO, it is very important to check the SEO status of your website regularly. Here are some common questions and suggestions to help you check and optimize your website.
These questions and suggestions can help you quickly perform an SEO health check to ensure your website performs optimally in search engines. Regularly checking and optimizing accordingly will help improve your SEO results!
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