How to Learn SEO in 2026?
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Intro
I run monthly live SEO townhalls to chat about anything and everything SEO, you can also bring your own questions or tips that you’d like to share. You can watch recording of previous sessions here, or signup and join us for the next one!
These sessions always inspire me, and last time someone asked, “How do you learn SEO in 2026?” That really got me thinking...
We’ve come a long way. SEO has evolved into a vast ocean that requires continuous learning if you want to keep sailing (such a dramatic analogy, right? That's totally me, not the AI helping me write this post 😂).
AI is also a big part of this evolution, so I thought it was a great question to answer in this newsletter. So, hold tight!
What is SEO today?
First, I want to set the stage to what learning SEO includes today and the areas of knowledge you should pick up. I, by no means intend to overwhelm you, we are all still learning. But it’s important to begin with the end in mind.
SEO imo covers a lot more area than we used to. Auditing reddit and finding brand interaction opportunities for your social team, or auditing your YouTube Channel and optimizing the content and descriptions, not just to rank on YouTube but also to rank those videos better in search, and get your brand cited in AI answers using those videos (YouTube gets cited 25% of the time in AI answers).
You may be wondering at this point… OMG do I need to learn all of this? not right away… you’ll build your knowledge overtime, with every audit and every client and every new SEO article you read… but you gotta cover the basis.
1# Cover the basis
People in this industry would eat me alive if I said anything before saying this: the fundamentals are still the fundamentals. If you want to learn SEO in 2026, you still need to master many of the same concepts you had to learn years ago.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, here’s what I recommend:
If you can build your own test website, please do. It costs little more than a domain name and about $4/month for GitHub, and you can build your own website from scratch using Claude Code. This is the best learning environment—better than any course I can recommend.
If you don't want to build a website, find a small website you'd like to audit instead.
Next I recommend you go through Google’s SEO Starter Guide. As you read and learn, keep going back to your website and apply what you've learned.
For example, the documentation talks about the site: search operator (e.g., site:wikipedia.org). Go try it in Google Search and see what happens.
Don’t understand something? The good news in 2026 is that you can ask ChatGPT, or join one of the many SEO communities and ask your questions there. I also run an SEO community, apply to join here.
In my opinion, Google's documentation is the best place to start. If you're looking for something more comprehensive that will set you up well, I'd also recommend the SEO specialization certificate on Coursera. By the end of it, you'll have the knowledge expected of a junior SEO.
2# Quality content
Google recommends creating “helpful content”... but what exactly is helpful content?
One of the best places to start is Google’s own “Search Quality Rater Guidelines: An Overview”
I highly recommend reading it and creating your own content audit checklist as you go. It’s a great way to turn what you’re learning into something practical that you can reuse.
You can also upload the document to NotebookLM. It can generate a podcast based on the file, and you can ask questions about the document and get answers grounded in its content.
3# Uncle Tom
What about doing SEO for platforms like ChatGPT and Claude?
Well, some people call this GEO...
And if you haven’t heard, using the term GEO is very inflammatory for some people in the SEO industry. Is SEO the same as GEO? Is that even the right question? The debate goes on and on...
I don’t really get into that debate anymore. Call it whatever you want—you can call it Uncle Tom for all I care. 😂
I highly recommend you devour this resources to get on top of this field:
That’s it. That’s my advice!
4# Signup for the right resources
LinkedIn is great, but newsletters are even better. Here are a few newsletters I recommend. I’m not affiliated with any of them (except, of course, my own 😉).
SEORiddler.com: a newsletter by yours truly, it’s not really a beginner level newsletter, but it opens your eyes to new ideas, and shared actionable tips as well.
seroundtable.com: that’s where I go for news, you’ll find every single thing that ever happened any day in SEO there, that’s a given.
Mike King’s iPullRank newsletter: big topics, in-depth AI/SEO research, and so many gems in there.
Tech SEO Tips Newsletter: this one is by Nikki Halliwell, I had her on my podcast one time and she’s awesome and her newsletter is no less if you want to build a good technical SEO foundation.
SEO Notebook by Steve Toth: short actionable tips on SEO and GEO, definitely worth a spot in your inbox.
5# Wash, rinse, repeat
If you feel the resources I recommended above are not enough, you’re right—you need practice. That’s where you truly grow and learn.
Audit more websites. Audit big websites too: Amazon, Wikipedia, CNN, and others.
Learn to find patterns. Every time you use Google, ask yourself: Why is this URL here?
And That’s a Wrap (Almost 😄)
I hope I didn’t overwhelm you—please don’t be! We’re all learning, and anyone who says otherwise is simply not being honest.
Take baby steps, learn as you go, and try to find a mentor who can guide you if you can.
Good luck!
That’s that for today folks and see you in the next newsletter!
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Disclaimer: LLMs were used to assist in wording and phrasing this blog.