WHAT IS SEO?: What Does Google Want?

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of SEO, let’s focus on what it’s all about first!

I guess you kinda know this already, but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in Search Engine’s, so that they receive more high quality traffic.

This is done through a series of steps, all of which serve to help Google view your site as worthy of serving up to their users.

But here's what a lot of people don't think about when they're trying to master SEO...

Ask yourself for a second, "What does Google really want?"

I'll tell you...

They want RELEVANCY. 

In other words, they want people to use their search engine, and to find exactly what they are looking for every single time. 

That way, people will keep using it, and they'll be able to keep making money off advertising.

If for any reason, people used Google and didn't find what they were looking for, there would be the danger that they'd stop using it and find another search engine, right? 

As you can imagine, this would have a serious impact on Google's revenue. 

So to prevent this from happening, Google go out of their way to serve up relevant content to their users. 

So while the SEO courses we'll cover in this article may all vary slightly, you'll find that they are all heavily focused around sending Google relevancy indicators.

In other words, the secret to ranking well is to tell Google exactly what your site is about, and make it clear and obvious to them.

Your primary goal should be to optimize your site so that it gives Google searchers exactly what they are looking for.

SEO TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION: Why Should you Learn SEO?

As I’ve stated already, I believe that SEO is a skill that will allow you to make as much money as you like, once you master it and once you have a solid business model to apply it to.

The ability to be able to rank a website on the first page of Google is an incredibly valuable skill. 

In my opinion, making money online comes down to 2 things…TRAFFIC and CONVERSIONS.

While SEO doesn’t deal with the “Conversions” aspects of making money online, it can play a critical role in taking care of the “Traffic” part.

You see, it all starts with driving high quality targeted traffic to your website or offer. 

The more targeted the traffic is, the more chance there is that it will actually be looking for whatever your site is offering. 

In other words, when SEO is done correctly, it connects Google searchers with what they are looking for a.k.a relevancy!

When done correctly, SEO will produce the highest quality traffic to your website or offer. In other words, it will be laser targeted traffic that is actually looking for what you are offering them (cha ching!).

The heat map below shows the estimated breakdown of traffic on Google's first page. 

You'll see that a whopping 33% of traffic goes to the number one spot. 
That means that if you can learn how to rank websites effectively, you can gobble up all that traffic and send a flurry of quality traffic to your website and offer.

Your traffic will have what is known as “search intent”, and users will discover your site by searching for what it’s about.

Trust me when I say that of all the skills on this planet you can learn and master, SEO is right up there with the very best of them.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that there are a ton of ways to make money with your SEO skills.

You certainly don’t need to do SEO for other clients. In-fact, I’d say that is one of the worst ways to make money with SEO.

I’ll dig into how I am using SEO to make a full time living online later in this article. 

For now, I’m gonna take you through the very best SEO courses out there, to teach you the skills you need to make you an SEO wizard.

The Top 5 SEO Courses for 2021

#5) SEMRush Academy SEO Training

Price: Free

Yup, that's right.
This course is totally free, and on top of that you can actually tell that the team over at SEMRush care, as they have put a ton of effort into creating a well rounded platform here.

You may already be aware that SEMrush are the creators of some of the most useful SEO tools on the market.

Whether you’re looking for help with keyword research, rank tracking, backlink auditing or pretty much any other SEO task, SEMrush is the choice of thousands of SEO experts.

What you may not know though is that they offer a learning center known as SEMrush Academy.

Best of all, the academy is totally free to join and start using.

Once you sign up, you’ll find that the training offers SEO, PPC and Content Marketing tutorials, and will give you a pretty well rounded overview of everything SEO related.

You'll find that each of the courses has a high level basic structure, which is then sub divided down into sub topics. 

These are all broken down into a series of video lessons, which are followed by a quiz right after. 

As corny as it sounds, I'm a fan of quizzes as I find they help you retain the information you've just learnt.

While the videos are pretty solid, the content is fairly high level. That said, it's a great way to get into the world of SEO if you're a total newbie, and considering it's free you have absolutely nothing to lose at all by jumping into the videos.

You'll also get a lot of extra training on how to use the SEMRush tools as well, which is a cool bonus if you're a subscriber to them.

#4) ClickMinded SEO Certification

Price: $497

The Clickminded SEO Training course packs 74 videos into 6 hours of content. This keeps each video short, sharp and to the point which I really like. 

I don't know about you, but I'm not one for long-winded videos filled with fluff.

The training is put together by SEO veteran Tommy Griffith who's been playing at a very high level in the SEO game for over a decade now. 

He's worked with the likes of Paypal and Airbnb just to name a few, but now focuses on ClickMinded full time.

Once you dig into the course videos a little, you'll soon find that there is nothing new here...well at least nothing that you can't find on other people's SEO blog posts. 

That's OK though...I don't mind that to be honest, and I think Tommy would be the first to admit that.
What you're paying for is the fact that you'll save a ton of time by getting all this information compressed into one training course, rather than having to browse all over the internet to find all the info yourself for free. 

The course outline can be broken down into:

The course also focuses more on SEO strategies that will get long-term results. 

You're not gonna find quick hacks in this course to beat Google's latest algorithm update. 

Instead, you'll find solid strategies that aim to keep your site pinned to the first page of Google for the long haul.

All in all it's a pretty solid course, although it's not cheap that's for sure.

#3) Traffic Think Tank Academy

Price: $120 / month

The idea behind Traffic Think Tank Academy is that it's the online learning platform where respected names in SEO drop their knowledge on the exact processes, tactics, and strategies that that they use in the industry themselves.

The course contains over 200 hours of video content, broken down into various SEO topics. Not only is this broken down by sub topics, but also skill level, allowing more advanced students to bypass the "easy" stuff.

What's pretty cool about this academy is that you get ongoing support which includes access to monthly 1:1 Q&As where you're able to tap into the minds of SEO pros and get help with any questions and issues you might have.

Alongside the Academy, members get access to a Mastermind group which has around 700 members. 

This is all done through the Slack platform. I guess this is one of the criticisms of the academy for me in that I do wonder if this wouldn't work better in something like a Facebook group. 

It can be pretty difficult to stay on top of all the content and posts, especially if you miss a few days.

In my opinion, it's a great resource for SEO fans, although I'm not sure it's the best option for newbies as the information overload can be pretty severe.

On top of that, the monthly cost may also be a little steep for someone just starting out.

#2) HubSpot Academy SEO Course

Price: Free

The HubSpot Academy training aims to teach you how to evaluate and improve your website's SEO.

The course boasts that you'll learn a ton of awesome SEO skills, including how to build backlinks at scale, which will improve your sites SERPs.

You'll also learn how to use information gathered from keyword research tools, and apply it to your SEO strategy in a meaningful way.

The course is pretty short (just over 2 hours). It's broken down into 6 lessons made up of 23 videos, which are followed by quizzes. 

Once again, I like the quiz idea because I find that it helps me retain the knowledge better.

The training covers the following:

• SEO Basics
• On Page and Technical SEO
• Keyword Research for SEO
• Link Building Strategy
• Website Optimization
• SEO Reporting

From the modules above, you'll discover the basics of SEO fundamentals, which ensures that you start with the right foundation.

It's all about having the right SEO strategy and these intro videos make sure you get that locked in.

You'll then learn how to perform effective keyword research, and learn all about topic cluster content strategy.

Link building is always an interesting topic, and in the 3rd module you'll learn about building relationships with the right people to ensure you win in this area of SEO.

In the closing modules, you'll cover how to make sure you're giving Google what it wants (RELEVANCE), by optimizing your site to ensure that Google knows exactly what it's about.

You'll also learn how to monitor and track your SEO efforts, so you can remain proactive rather than reactive.

#1) SEO That Works - Brian Dean

Price: $900

If you've done any digging into SEO, you've no doubt come across Brian Dean, or at least his website Backlinko.

Brian is one of the rock stars of the SEO world, although he certainly doesn't play the attention seeking role that you'd associate with a rock star.

He kicks off his SEO That Works training course by covering what is currently working in the world of SEO. He talks about the importance of high quality content, combined with a solid backlink strategy.

He then covers some solid strategies for finding bloggers to outreach to in order to get backlinks from. He uses tools like Ahrefs to do this, and this is one of the cornerstones to his link building strategy.

Next he steps you through how to create the type of content that goes viral, and is bookmarked and shared.

His theory is that if you write content that is highly informative and helpful, people will be more likely to share it and refer back to it over time.

Bookmarks and shares are both solid indicators to Google.

If users are bookmarking and sharing your content, then it tells Google that your page is worthy of a high ranking, so that other users can find it and benefit from it too.

A lot of what he covers is logical, but it's good to hear it from a pro and some of his strategies were new to me at least. 

You may be pleased to know that he does also cover some more technical SEO subjects such as improving your UX signals to ensure your site has a high level of usability.

All in all, if you're looking for a reliable, solid SEO course, that will teach you how to get SEO results that last, then I'd highly recommend Brian Dean's SEO course.

On top of that, he also drops insane SEO content on his YouTube channel on a regular basis, so make sure you check that out.

Sure the course is a little pricey at $900, but I'm OK with paying money to learn a skill that could make me 10X that back.

The one thing to note though is that the course is not always open to new members. This could be kind of annoying, if you are ready to pull the trigger but are forced to wait.

In my opinion, Brian Dean's SEO That Works training is the best SEO course on the market. 

That said, there's still one fundamental problem with every SEO course. 

Do you know what it is?...

Conclusion

The Problem With Every SEO Course

In my opinion, there's one big problem with almost every SEO course on the market. 

They don't teach you how to actually use your SEO skills to build a profitable, long-term business.

Most SEO courses are designed to teach you the skills you need to run an SEO agency, which ranks other people's websites, and improves their search ability in Google.

There's just one problem with that. 

Once you've ranked their site, and got them to #1 in Google, what's stopping them from dropping your services. 

In other words, as a thanks for all the hard work you did ranking them, you'll find yourself out in the cold, looking for a new client to replace the monthly revenue you've just lost.

This is the reason why I gave up doing SEO for other people. I just couldn't take the risk of them dropping my services.

...and let me tell you...with SEO, they will always drop your services eventually. No one pays you forever.

Luckily, I've found a better way to use my SEO skills, which ensures that my clients keep paying me for many years to come...and it's pretty passive too.

Introducing...Local Lead Generation

For the last few years, I've been using my SEO skills to build a local lead generation business that is now making me $30K a month, fairly passively. 

As I've already mentioned, the problem with doing SEO for other people's websites, is that once the site ranks, they can just show you the door. 

With local lead generation, this is not the case. 

With this business model you are always in total control of everything. Here's a quick breakdown of how it works. 

Let's say you build a tree service website for your local area. You rank the site in Google, and people start to visit it. 

When this happens, you drop a call tracking phone number on the site and then find a local tree care company to redirect the number to. 

When people looking for a tree care company find your site in Google and call the number, they are redirected to the tree care company themselves, who take the call.

When this happens they pay you, and they are happy to do so, because you're sending them more potential customers (leads).

They might pay you a flat fee per lead (say $20), or a flat fee per month (say $750), or a commission deal (say 10% on any closed business).

Here's why I prefer local lead generation to doing SEO for other clients:

In my opinion, local lead generation is the best way to build a reliable and profitable online business that can still be paying you passively 20 years from now. 

Compared to traditional SEO, there is no comparison. 

Here's more info on local lead generation, with some of my real life examples.