How to learn SEO - a beginners’ guide to Google’s first page

By: Arik Marmorstein, Spectroomz founder

In this post, I’ll share how I learned SEO from scratch and was able to rank on Google’s first page. 

Contents

1. 7 months ago I didn’t know anything about SEO

2. What is SEO

3. How to learn SEO

4. What should your SEO studies include

5. Should you take an SEO course

6. Should I learn SEO or outsource

I’m a founder and marketer with 8 years of experience. I have founded a crowdfunding platform that enabled people to raise over $10M, and some of my other projects were on TechCrunch, FastCompany, VentureBeat, and more. 

But I got all that without really knowing SEO. That’s a shame.

7 months ago, when I started Spectroomz, I have decided to focus on SEO entirely. No more ads. No more doing your own PR. No more marketing magic tricks. It’s time for people to find me and not the other way around. 

Fast-forward to today

Today, I’m ranked on Google’s first page for several keywords I targeted. Here’re two examples.

I’m also among 0.4% of the sites who were able to rank on Google’s first page for the keywords they target in less than 60 days (only 5.7% of the sites make it to Google’s first page in less than a year, and of these sites, only 8.7% do it in less than 60 days).   

I’d like to guide you on how to learn SEO and get your site ranked on Google’s first page. 



SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of getting a site’s ranked as high as possible on a search engine. It mainly refers to Google’s search engine, but you can do Youtube SEO or Bing SEO as well. 

Organic traffic vs Ads

Using Google ads you can get your site ranked on the top of Google’s first page in no time. But we are not discussing this. We are talking about getting your site on Google’s first page without ads. 

Here’s what it looks like

Why is organic traffic so valuable?

You don’t have to pay for it like you pay rent. 

With ads, all you need to do is pay. And as long as you pay enough you can be there. Like renting a house. But at the second you stop paying, poof 💨, you are gone. 

COVID helped flip the switch for me. The first thing many companies gave up on is marketing. If your entire marketing strategy was paid marketing before COVID, you are now in trouble. But if you had a solid organic growth strategy (like SEO), COVID impact on your company is more moderate.

And companies understood that. Job posting for SEO jobs in the US increased since March 2020

But doing SEO isn’t free as much as building or buying a house isn’t free. Your initial “investment” is bigger. The process is longer. But eventually, you build yourself an asset, which if maintained properly, can remain valuable without paying. 

70% of the world’s traffic comes from search engines. 

Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s search engines are responsible for 70% fo the world’s traffic. When you do SEO you tap this huge pool of traffic. 

Organic traffic is more reliable 

When you made it to Google’s first page, you also gain reliability. And that reliability means people click on your site more than on ads. Way more. The average CTR (click-through rate) for search ads is 3.17%. The top 4 organic results get anywhere between 13%-30%. X4 to X10 CTR. 

So investing in SEO makes sense. Now let’s see how to learn SEO. 

I Googled a lot of questions before starting to learn SEO. “Can I learn SEO on my one?”.  “Can I learn SEO at home”, “How fast can you learn SEO” and more. I’ll first answer these, then describe how I learned SEO and what would I have changed. . 

“Can I learn SEO on my own?”

You can definitely learn SEO by yourself. That’s what I did. 

You’ll need time to learn and a project to practice what you learn. But you can totally do it your own. Of course, you can do it from home (not that COVID has left us many options). 

“How fast can you learn SEO?”

There are many factors that determine how long will it take you to learn SEO. Here are a few:

• How much time do you have? I spent around 770 hours in the past 6-7 months on my SEO learnings. I include practicing of course. 

• Do you have a purpose for learning SEO? Do you have a project or a company you want to promote? Do you want a career in SEO? If you have a clear purpose it’s easier to stay motivated through the relatively long process of seeing results. When you are motivated you spend more time learning and practicing, and the process is faster.

• Different people have different learning curves. My wife would probably learn faster than me. 

• Are you consuming the right content at the right phase? If you spend time learning from the wrong sources or learning in a less ideal order then it will probably take longer. 

Overall, you never stop learning SEO. I learn every day. But I would say that you’ll start seeing results anywhere from 2-12 months on a new site. If you working on an established site with domain authority (think of it like reliability in Google’s eyes), it should be faster. 

How I learned SEO

I started Spectroomz and that was my “SEO lab”. I used mainly two resources which I found helpful. Ahrefs blog and Backlinko. I found those complimentary. 

My process was kind of similar to how search engines work. I crawled from one article to another, following the internal links in these blogs. 

But I didn’t do it all at once. If I had, it could have been overwhelming. 

Instead, I learned something and implemented it right away on my site. 

Implementing doesn’t take an hour or so. It could take days. But it’s important to implement what you have learned. 

Using that process I started seeing results. I also started learning and gaining my own insights from the process. Don’t give up on thinking for yourself. 

But my process could have been more efficient. 

So how would I learn SEO today?

I’d improve my process by having a clearer structure of my learnings. I think having a clear curriculum could have helped me navigate my learnings and be more efficient. 

This is the curriculum I would learn today

1. SEO fundamentals

   1. What is SEO

   2. How Google decides which content gets a chance (as much as we can know)

   3. How sites stay ranked high

2. Keyword research

   1. What is keyword research

   2. Types of keywords people search for

   3. Keyword difficulty 

   4. Forming a list of keywords

   5. How to choose which keywords to focus on

3. On page and Technical SEO

   1. What is on-page SEO

   2. Optimizing the content

   3. Optimization around the content

   4. Technical SEO

4. Off-page SEO

   1. Building backlinks

   2. Other ways to gain authority

   3. Ongoing content optimizations


The best way to learn SEO is a matter of personality. You know yourself. 

Some people will prefer a structured course with video tutorials and practice. 

Others can “build their own course”, as I did. It’s harder though and takes more time. 

Some need to be invested (course’s fees if it is not a free one) in order to maintain motivation and others don’t need that type of motivation.

I prefer the written word, but I’m from the ’80s :) Others prefer video, which is fine as well. 

Free online courses vs a paid one

There are free online SEO courses out there. I didn’t take one, but I did learn from free resources which definitely taught me a lot and got me results. 

There are also paid SEO course. I didn’t take any too. 

It really depends on your philosophy when it comes to paid vs free. In many cases, paid courses will go the extra mile for you with ongoing assistance, templates, and tools. But it isn’t always the case. 

I prepared an SEO course with templates and tools for Spectroomz freelancers so the learning process will be easier for them. I think that they could learn faster that way, but I also refer to other resources. 

It all comes down to your focus and budget. If you own a small business or a startup and (like any founder) have lots of responsibilities, I wouldn’t do my own SEO. It takes time.  

I’d definitely learn the theory though (an SEO course would be helpful here) so I’ll know how to choose and talk to the SEO freelancers or agencies I hire. 

If you either don’t have the budget for an SEO freelancer or agency (US average retainer for SEO freelancers is $1,000), or if you see SEO as a strategic growth channel for you, I’d strongly consider doing it yourself. That’s what I did. You can also do part of it yourself and outsource some of it. 

Good luck!