Overview - Intro to SEO with WordPress.com

Stylised header image with the letters SEO introducing the topic of search engine optimisation.

Last updated:

August 29, 2023

Introduction

Understanding search engine optimization (SEO) is valuable for anyone looking to improve their site or blog for both search engines and humans. This SEO course will give you a solid foundation of what you can do to ensure people have the best chance to find your content when they search online.

By the end of this course, which provides an introduction to search engine optimization, you’ll have the knowledge and specific action items to set your site up for SEO success with optimized content that will attract attention, and more.

Before you start

Before we dig in, remember to keep our Resources section in mind. You’ll find the link in the right sidebar of every lesson. This section of our learning hub covers a range of information, including a glossary, FAQs and more, that is beneficial for all website creation journeys regardless of what you’re building or why.

WordPress is a dynamic, open source software that loves to keep us all on our toes with updates. These updates can bring changes to how things look and work, and from time to time there might be some differences you come across in our lessons. Take a look at our Help center or Support guides for more resources, whenever you notice that something may have changed.

Pro-tip:
Most links throughout our learning hub will open in the same tab, unless they include an arrow like this: ↗︎ If you prefer to open links in a new tab rather than leaving the lesson you’re on, press and hold the Control key on your keyboard (Command on Mac) then click the link.

When you come across images, look for outline circles on the images. They’re tooltips that will help to identify sections of the images. If they don’t have tooltips, they can be enlarged by clicking on them, or right click and open in a new tab.

Also, please be sure to fill out our surveys. Each survey allows you to choose which course you’re completing the survey for, so you can fill them out for every single course you take if you like (which would be wonderful). We keep them short and the information you provide in these surveys helps us with several things:

We get a better understanding of your starting point
It provides clarity on what your needs and expectations are
It helps us assess if we’re meeting your needs and expectations
It guides us in improving and expanding the resources we’re providing to help you
It allows us to provide feedback to our developers for product improvements

Thank you in advance for helping us, to help you.

Before you start survey↗︎ a course
When you complete a course survey↗︎ (which we also include at the end of each course)
Market research survey↗︎

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Inside this course

Understanding search engines and SEO
You’ll learn about different types of SEO and why search engine optimization matters, along with how your content ends up in search engines with an understanding of what searcher intent means to your content.
The ins and outs of keywords
From head terms to long-tail keywords, to research and utilization. Keywords are one of the most powerful aspects of your SEO efforts that you have full control over. You’ll learn how they play a part in your content, headings, media optimization, and more. More importantly, you’ll learn how to perform keyword research and use them effectively.
Best practices, structure, and linking
When you’re reading to dig in a bit deeper, we also get you started with understanding best practices, what structured data is, why internal linking is important, how to handle redirects properly.