10 Completely Free SEO Training Courses

Learning SEO doesn’t have to break the bank. There are plenty of quality free SEO courses teaching everything from the basics to keyword research to link building.

Here are ten that won’t cost a dime.

Course provider: Ahrefs

Duration: 2 hours

Instructor(s): Sam Oh

Level: Beginner

Link: SEO Course for Beginners

What you’ll learn

• The fundamentals of what search engine optimization is and how it works
• Why SEO is important
• How to do keyword research
• How to optimize web pages for search engines
• Beginner-friendly link building strategies to get backlinks to your site
• Technical SEO best practices for beginners

This comprehensive course is ours and covers the fundamentals of SEO, including keyword research, on-page SEO, technical SEO, and link building.

Course provider: HubSpot

Duration: 3 hours 51 minutes

Instructor(s): Rachel Sheldon, Matthew Howells-Barby

Level: Beginner

Link: SEO Certification Course

What you’ll learn

• How to evaluate and improve your website’s SEO
• How to build backlinks to your website at scale to increase your website’s visibility in organic search
• How to use insights from keyword research and reporting to improve your search performance

HubSpot’s SEO Training Course is tailored for marketers, content creators, and anyone looking to enhance their website’s visibility. Through practical lessons and real-world examples, the course participants will learn how to build a robust SEO strategy, analyze their website’s performance, and adapt to the changing algorithms of search engines.

Course provider: Google

Duration: 3 hours

Instructor(s): Google

Level: Beginner

Link: Make Sure Customers Find You Online

What you’ll learn

• How to get started with search
• How to make search work for you
• How to get discovered with search
• How to help people nearby find you online

This free course from Google Skillshop helps businesses discover ways to reach and connect with more customers online. It covers improving SEO and using online advertising (SEM) to boost sales and awareness.

Course provider: University of California, Davis

Duration: 28 hours

Instructor(s): Rebekah May

Level: Beginner

Link: Google SEO Fundamentals

What you’ll learn

• How to complete a competitive analysis on a webpage
• How to interpret brand recognition through social media
• How to create sitemaps and robot.txt files, plan redirects, and manage site errors
• How to use a variety of SEO tools to conduct an audience analysis and develop personas of your ideal buyer

Offered by the University of California, Davis, this course on Coursera delves into the fundamental aspects of SEO, including how search engines work and how to implement effective SEO strategies to attract more organic traffic.

However, due to its length (28 hours), it may not be the most suitable if you want to learn SEO fast.

Course provider: Yoast

Duration: 2 hours

Instructor(s): Joost de Valk

Level: Beginner

Link: SEO for Beginners Training

What you’ll learn

• What SEO is and what Google does
• Tips for quick wins to improve your site
• Insights into the content and technical side of SEO

This free course discusses what SEO is and how it works. Some of the important points from the course are how to use keywords to optimize your website, how to write content that Google likes, and how to make your website crawlable by search engines.

Course provider: Ahrefs

Duration: 2 hours

Instructor(s): Sam Oh

Level: Beginner

Link: Keyword Research Course

What you’ll learn

• How to do keyword research and drive targeted traffic to your website

This is our specialized course that focuses specifically on keyword research. It covers topics such as how to choose keywords, how to analyze search intent, and how to find low-competition keywords.

Course provider: Ahrefs

Duration: 1 hour 21 minutes

Instructor(s): Sam Oh

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Link: Technical SEO Course

What you’ll learn

• The fundamentals of technical SEO
• How to run a technical SEO audit
• How to optimize your website’s technical SEO

Another specialized course from us, this course is designed for those looking to dive deeper into the technical side of SEO. It covers advanced topics such as site audits, page speed optimization, and how to resolve common technical issues that can impact search rankings.

Course provider: Blue Array

Duration: 7 hours

Instructor(s): Damion Edwards

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Link: Technical SEO Certification

What you’ll learn

• What to consider when investigating a website from a technical perspective
• Which tools to use and how to interpret data
• How to crawl a website in the easiest and most efficient way possible
• What areas to check to comply with the Google Page Experience update
• How to choose structured data
• How to detect and resolve thin and duplicate content
• The common security issues and how to fix them
• Checking your internal linking to give your website the best chance possible to rank well

Aimed at professionals seeking to certify their expertise, this course covers a wide range of technical SEO topics, including crawling, indexing, ranking, and on-page optimization. From site architecture to schema markup, it equips learners with the skills to tackle technical challenges and improve website performance.

Course provider: Ahrefs

Duration: 44 minutes

Instructor(s): Sam Oh

Level: Beginner

Link: Local SEO Course

What you’ll learn

• How to do local SEO
• How to do local keyword research
• How to do local link building

Ideal for businesses targeting local customers, this course teaches the basics of optimizing for local search. It covers essential tactics for improving local visibility, such as Google Business Profile optimization and local keyword targeting.

Course provider: Ahrefs

Duration: 1 hour 48 minutes

Instructor(s): Sam Oh

Level: Intermediate to advanced

Link: Advanced Link Building Course

What you’ll learn

• How to find prospects with the “seed and lookalike” approach
• How to validate link building campaigns with a “blitz list”
• How to craft personalized and benefit-rich outreach emails
• How to create, structure and manage a link building team
• How to scale your link building operations

Focusing on one of the most challenging aspects of SEO, Sam shares his years of experience creating campaigns, sending outreach emails, and building teams. This is a must-finish course if you need help building and scaling your link building operations.

Final thoughts

The best way to learn SEO is to do.

So, don’t just go through the courses, take notes, and leave it aside. You need to actually execute to find out what works and what doesn’t. Create a website, implement the ideas you’re learning, and see if you can get more organic traffic to it.

That’s how you become an SEO pro.