Master SEO 2026: From Beginner to Pro with AI Techniques

SEO - The Fundamental Principles - Word Track

SEO - The Fundamental Principles - Word Track

To help aid your own study material, here is the word track for the whole SEO - The Fundamental Principles section of the course.

Section 3: Overview:

SEO, the basics. In this section, I'm going to cover what SEO is and explain exactly why it's important. I'm going to debunk some of the biggest SEO myths out there. We've all seen these SEO myths online, people claiming and saying the wildest things about SEO, such as it doesn't work, and so on and so on. I'm going to debunk all of those biggest myths, and I'm going to explain to you the two elements that make up an SEO campaign. So let's dive into it.

Section 3: What Is SEO And Why Is It Important:

What is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Organic traffic is any traffic that you do not pay for. So here's an example from Google. As you can see, I went over to Google and I typed in a yoga mat and from that keyword I get multiple listings on the page. The first type of listing I get is what we call the Google shopping ads, which is this big section up here. You can tell it's an ad as it says sponsored in the top right-hand corner. Below that, we have another ad as it says right there, and then below that, we had the organic listings. So when you optimize a website correctly for SEO, you're going to appear in their organic section.

So why is SEO important? SEO is super important for numerous reasons. If I go back to the example I just showed you of a yoga mat, if your business provides yoga mats, but your website does not show up for a search of yoga mats, then you're missing out on a ton of sales. While paid advertising, social media and other online platforms generate traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines. On top of that, organic search results cover more digital real estate, appear more credible to savvy searchers, and receive way more clicks and paid advertisements. For example, of all US searches, only 2.8% of people clicked on paid advertisements. That statement alone should tell you why and how important SEO is.

Section 3: Debunking SEO Myths:

Debunking SEO myths. We've all seen them online, people making wild and false claims about SEO all the time. Saying things such as SEO doesn't work, links are dead, et cetera, et cetera. In this video, I'm going to run through some of the biggest SEO myths and debunk them one by one.

First up, content is all you need or content is king. Whilst it is extremely true and content is super important, it's not the only thing you need in your SEO campaign. Another extremely important element is, what we call, links, which I'm going to go through later on in the course. So, this one is definitely false.

Page speed isn't that important. False. Page speed is super, super important. It's actually becoming more and more important every single year. One of the biggest reasons why page speed is super important is it all comes down to the user experience. Google's main job is to serve up and provide the best results for what the person searched for. So, for example, if someone goes onto Google and types in red shoes, they click your website, which is about red shoes, however, it takes ages to load that person's just going to hit the back button, go back to Google and find another website which results in a poor user experience.

So, as a result, Google's going to lower the rank of your website and give it less visibility in searches as it resulted in a poor user experience. And Google always wants the best experience for all of its users. So, page speed is super, super important. I'm actually going to go into page speed in a little bit more depth later on in the course.

Number three, links are dead. This is probably the one I see the most often and it's probably the one that is the most untrue. Links are super, super important in Google and, again, later on in a course, I'm going to show you exactly how important they are. And I'm going to show you the results you can get if we do utilize the links in the correct way. So, link building is definitely not dead.

Number four, higher keyword density helps you rank. False. This used to be true in maybe 2011, 2012, maybe 2013 as well. That was when Google's algorithm wasn't as advanced as it is now. Back in the day, you could literally create a page on your website, chuck your keyword on the page as many times as you want, and you'd rank at the top of Google because you mentioned the keyword so many times on your page. However, Google's algorithm is way more sophisticated now than it was back then, so these old tactics no longer work.

Number five, buying Google ads helped with organic traffic. False. This is 100% false. I've tested this myself multiple times on multiple websites. Buying Google ads does not give you any increase or any benefit in the organic search listings.

Number six, more pages help my site rank better. False. This isn't true. Adding more pages to your website is not going to help you get higher on Google. When it comes to SEO, the main thing you want to focus on is quality over quantity. Publishing five really high-quality pages is way better than publishing 500 low-quality pages. So, when it comes to SEO, please do focus on the quality. If you do that you're going to be sure you're going in the right direction to get in your website to the top of Google.

Section 3: The Two Elements To Every SEO Campaign:

All good SEO campaigns consist of two main elements. The first is Onpage SEO, and the second is Off-Page SEO. Onpage SEO refers to any change you make on your website to improve its visibility. Off-page SEO refers to any change you make off your website to improve its visibility.

Onpage SEO, so let's dig a little bit deeper and look at Onpage SEO in a bit more detail. So some examples of Onpage SEO optimizations you can make on your website would be updating the title tag, changing the <h1> tag, edits in the meta description of a page. If you don't know what these elements are at the moment, don't worry as I'm going to go through all of them later on in the course. However, the point I'm trying to make is as these are all actions you make on your website, these are classified as On-Page optimizations.

So for Offpage SEO, some examples of Off-Page SEO optimizations you can make would be to build a link to your website, get your business listed on an external directory, optimize your social profiles, and so on, and so on. These are all actions you implement off your website and as a result are classified as Off-Page optimizations.