SEO Workshops: Which Free and Paid Courses Are Best?

SEO is not unlike other industries. It can be easy to explain from the top down, but when you dig into it, every single topic is made up of dozens of sub-topics, and on down the line, until it's something you can spend a decade mastering and still feel like you have more to learn. That's nothing unusual. If anything, the unusual part is that many people feel like they can dive right in, get everything right by following a few cheap guides, and be one of the Next Big Sites.

The truth is that SEO has so much depth that it can take a ton of time and research to learn how it all works. Even just building a basic understanding of everything you need to know, from technical SEO to content marketing to the tools available to use, is a huge undertaking.

Fortunately, you're not alone in trying to learn, and many of the best businesses and SEO experts have developed courses – both free and paid – to help you learn. I've done some digging and put together a list of my favorite courses, what they can teach you, and why you might want to use them.

If you have a favorite course I haven't mentioned, please let me know in the comments!

Before we begin, here is a disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of these courses in any way. None of these are affiliate links, I haven't been paid to promote any of them, and I have no existing relationships with the course providers. I've just looked into them, taken them when relevant, and am offering my opinions. I get nothing out of this if you choose to take them.

Building a Budget for SEO

In the sea of free courses, with thousands of hours of video, lectures, millions of words of web posts, and eBooks, why would you ever want to pay for an SEO course?

There are, in my mind, three reasons to pay for a workshop, course, or class.

• The first is that many of the best ones come with a certificate of completion. These certificates can be useful in certain situations, such as when you're trying to work with big companies, though they aren't as useful if you are just working on your own.
• The second is that often, there are added benefits to a paid course, like access to premium tools, consulting with a course owner, or an exclusive community. Those communities aren't always the most useful, but sometimes the networking opportunities are worth it.
• The third is that they're often more structured and focused. A lot of free resources just kind of toss information at you and hope you absorb it, while the people who actually know how to teach and convey information will charge for those services.

I will say that there generally aren't any "secret tricks" or special tips you can only get from paid resources. All of the relevant information is available for free to be an SEO expert.

Paid courses are just often better at teaching you and conveying that information.

How do you decide how much to spend on a course? Think about the income you're making from a website now and how much value you would get from a boost. If you think you can make your money's worth out of it, it can be worthwhile; if not, maybe pass for the time being. I wouldn't recommend a $1,000 course to someone making $50 a month on their blog, but if you're making $850 a month, you can boost yourself enough to pay for it relatively easily.

Regardless, there are a lot of options for all levels, so just find something that appeals to you within your budget and go for it.

You'll probably learn something no matter what!

Top Free SEO Workshops and Courses

First, let's start with the free courses.

It does need to be said that, by necessity, free courses are generally going to be less valuable than paid courses. They're often either broad and shallow, meant to give you an idea of what you're getting into with the SEO career, or they're relatively simple and gloss over a lot of details.

Free courses tend to be best if you're relatively new to SEO and don't know your way around just yet. There are a few gems out there, though.

UC Davis' Google SEO Fundamentals

This is a course on Coursera, provided by Rebekah May from UC Davis.

It's a very well-regarded course with four modules, encompassing about 30 hours of content.

It's all relatively basic content – a module on on-site SEO, one on off-site SEO, one on keyword theory, and a more general introduction module – but it gives you a great starting point if you have pretty much no idea what SEO is.

Essentially - if you're a novice and you don't even know the jargon to get started, this is a great way to learn.

Free Search Optimization Tutorial for WordPress on UDemy

Another free course from a course platform, this one is centered primarily around WordPress and has a lot of useful basic information for technical SEO. It has a lecture about Robots.txt, one about site speed, a couple about using Yoast, and so on.

It's not super in-depth, and it does have some advice I wouldn't necessarily call required (including a lecture that is essentially just an ad for a plugin), but as a crash course in technical SEO, it's a good place to start.

Almost Anything on Semrush Academy

Semrush is one of my favorite SEO tools, and as it turns out, they have a whole academy section full of dozens of useful courses, mostly focused on niche topics.

For example, you have a course on the theory of marketing analysis next to a course on optimizing a LinkedIn profile next to a course on using emojis in marketing.

Some of them are goofy, some are narrow and not what you'd want to dig into right away, and others are super useful.

Fortunately, they're all free, so you can just dig in and learn anything that catches your eye.

Almost Anything on HubSpot Academy

I have my gripes with HubSpot – it's not my favorite the way Semrush is – but you can't argue that they aren't one of the biggest brands in marketing.

They know their stuff.

HubSpot is also broadly recognized, and unlike a lot of other courses, their certificates carry some weight. On the other hand, a lot of their courses are focused on using their tools rather than on general information, and a lot more aren't relevant to SEO but rather to business in general.

That's still useful but outside of the scope of this post.

The Best of AhrefsTV

Ahrefs is another of my favorite marketing tools. This page is a landing spot for Sam Oh (the VP of Marketing for Ahrefs) and his YouTube content, where he goes through a ton of useful SEO information, from link building to content marketing and more.

It's some of the most tightly focused YouTube marketing content, and unlike a lot of other marketing courses on YouTube, it's not just a thinly veiled shill for a product.

Yoast SEO Academy

Yoast has two academy products, a free version, and a paid version. The paid version gives you more access to more courses and a copy of Yoast Premium, but the free version is a pretty good overview and set of informational courses for beginners.

Personally, I think about half of what's locked in the paid version is also low-value enough to be in the free version, but that's not my choice to make. Stick with the free version until you're sure you want what the paid version offers behind its $99/year paywall.

LearningSEO.io

This is a full website dedicated to a lengthy course and roadmap of SEO, starting with the fundamentals and growing into everything from deep SEO to automation to alternative search engines to how best to keep up with SEO news.

It's actually a surprisingly deep and detailed resource for something on a .io domain, I was initially surprised. Give it a look!

Top Paid SEO Workshops and Courses

When someone has something valuable, and you want it, the best deal is to pay for it. Paid SEO courses tend to be more specialized, dig deeper into subjects, or give you added benefits like access to specialized tools, communities, and expertise. That doesn't mean all paid courses are better than all free courses, but it does mean if you're joining a paid workshop, you're taking it more seriously and are given more serious attention in response. Usually. Just be cautious of scams, and make sure to read reviews of the workshops you consider before you buy in.

Local SEO Shuriken

Local SEO Shuriken sounds like a local-focused course, but it has a lot more to it than just a few local tips.

It starts with some basic SEO information and tips, including things like setting up WordPress for SEO, establishing a good site architecture, and so on. Later modules dig deep into competitive research, company branding, maximizing off-site SEO, and a lot of valuable local SEO techniques. There's access to a community, lifetime updates to the course, and a bonus guide as well. The full course is a bit under $100.

Traffic Think Tank

TTT is a fairly well-known course hub and resource for mid-level and advanced SEO. It's expensive – the self-guided platform access is $100 per month, ongoing – but it's all reliable and updated information.

TTT is a Semrush product, so if you like the free content from Semrush I linked above, this is sort of like the next step up. It's spendy, but it's fairly worthwhile if you can make use of that information to boost your income.

Moz SEO Essentials

Moz is another of the biggest names in SEO, and their certifications carry some weight, which is the main reason I'm including it here. The course is $600 for a six-part course and exam series, with a certification at the end.

If you're a blogger, small business owner, entrepreneur, or similar, you probably don't need this course. If you're a digital marketer and you want to be hired and work for larger corporations, earning the certificate is something you can put on a resume.

Other SEO Courses

There are a couple of other courses I wanted to put here because someone will probably mention them, but I didn't want to put them in the main categories for one reason or another.

Gotch SEO Academy. Gotch is well-known to know his way around SEO, and I understand that he knows what he's talking about. I don't know that his academy has anything truly unique or groundbreaking in it, but it's very comprehensive. There are two reasons why I don't recommend it. The first is that it's only sporadically open, and you have to apply; it's not a course you can just pay for and take, which means a lot of people reading this won't have access to it. The second is that it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000. He even has a big landing page dedicated to trying to convince you that it's worth the money. And you know what? Maybe it is. I can't say for sure because I don't have an extra $10k unaccounted for at the moment.

Coursera, Udemy, Masterclass, etc. I listed a couple of individual courses from platforms like these above, but I don't really have more specific recommendations. They're huge platforms with thousands of creators and instructors creating courses for them, and they range from some of the simplest information out there to some fairly advanced courses. If you have specific recommendations, let me know in the comments. I just didn't feel like digging through all of it to find the gems myself.

Your Recommended SEO Workshops

I know that this is only scratching the surface of what exists out there on the web. I've tried to stay away from the most extremely expensive courses and the most basic stuff that isn't really beneficial, but I know I've missed a ton. So, if you have a list of courses you've taken and enjoyed, let me know in the comments so I can check them out.