11 Essential Tools to Learn Basic SEO

For the most part, everyone has heard of SEO even if they are not familiar with how it works or why it needs to be done. Maybe you need a refresher course on SEO?

There are 11 essential workflow tools to learn the basics of SEO.

What is SEO and what does it do for us?

SEO is search engine optimization and what it does is help you rank in the search engine results page. We’ve all been told to create content with keywords that are optimized for the search engines. So what exactly are the search engines looking for and what aren’t they looking for?

The search engines are looking for valuable content that answers questions or give tutorials as well as providing the user a good experience.

What they do not want to see is keyword stuffing, buying links, unfriendly mobile sites, or tons of ads. These things will get you lower rankings or worse yet labeled as spam.

11 tools to help with workflow SEO basics

These tools will help you learn SEO basics as well as give you a refresher on basic SEO. They will help you from start to finish of promotion of your site.

1. SEO Powersuite – This suite helps you go from start to finish in your SEO campaign workflow by starting with helping you find your keywords, assessing your current rankings, improve your site, and improve your backlinks. It can also help you social media backlinks.
2. Moz Pro – this is a tool that is suited for that are just beginning SEO. It contains a website auditor which will help you better optimize the pages on your site; also a keyword tracker that will let you know how your keywords are doing once a week.
3. Get Good Grade – offers guides on writing and marketing with SEO and how to get better content and page rankings.
4. Content Marketing Reference Library – offers tons of reference material with 10 different categories: Content essentials, planning, exploration, both idea and content formation, marketing, traffic generating, marketing case studies, content auditing, and business building.
5. Keyword Finder – aids you with keyword research in order to help you write better content.
6. Editorial calendar – this tool allows you schedule content, assign writing, and generate ideas and topics, and communication for your team.
7. Yoast SEO – this allows you to have real-time content analysis functionality and many more features to streamline your site and works with WordPress.
8. Google Trends – allows you to understand how searches change over time, allows for keyword research, as well as buyers behavior, trends in demand and market limitations, and even your competitors’ approach.
9. Ghost Lab – this tool helps you test across all devices so you can be sure that your site is loading on all platforms with speed.
10. Content Strategy Generator Tool – allows you to get trending data, ideas for topics and keywords and much more.
11. UpCity – a good tool for anyone that is new to SEO. Offering a checklist of tasks to complete so you cover all the bases. Check this out if you are looking to simplify your SEO experience.

10 Tutorials on SEO

Besides the 11 tools above there are plenty of good tutorials online to learn SEO. The 10 below are the tutorials we most recommend for not only people who are new to SEO but those who are looking to brush up on their SEO.

1. Moz.com is one of those sites. It offers a course on SEO Basics then goes in deeper on using and how to make SEO work for you. You can combine that with Moz’s  SEO learning page.
2. SEOBook’s 7-Day Guide – this guide does a great job of teaching you the basics of SEO
3. Google Search Engine Optimization Guide – coming straight from Google this tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about SEO. From what the search engines look for to how to get better page rankings and beyond.
4. Googles Digital Marketing Course – once you have done the search engine optimization guide you really need to take the digital marketing course so you can learn how to put it all together and get it out in front of a targeted audience.
5. Google Analytics Academy – free courses from Google are in-depth training on how to use Analytics to your benefit, from eCommerce to mobile, and test your knowledge. Some of them come with a certification.
6. Copyblogger’s Internet Marketing Education – this is a great free course that consists of 15 e-books, an e-mail based marketing course in 20 installments, and a reference list of their most important material.
7. Quick Sprout’s Guide to SEO – an infographic-style guide to SEO that contains 9 chapters, it is easier than a book and more advanced than a basic explanation.
8. Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide – this is a great tutorial on using the keyword planner for beginners written by Brian Dean. Anyone new to keyword research must read this guide.
9. Learn SEO – walks you through 16 chapters on SEO from beginning to end what it is, why you need to use it, how to use, and where to go from there.
10. SEO Made Simple – another great tutorial that goes in depth on SEO and explains the differences between good (white hat) and bad (black hat) SEO practices.

There are so many good sites that offer help and tutorials on SEO but the sites listed above our most recommended sites. When you put those to use with tools listed above that you can learn SEO and why you need to use it with your marketing plan.

Conclusion

The tools and tutorials above will help you learn the basics of SEO while you work on your first SEO project. You can then move on to more advanced SEO marketing tools and strategies for your site in order to get higher page rankings in the search engines.