Right now may seem like the worst time to get a hold of an SEO course.
This is due to the most recent Google algorithm update, which fundamentally changed 50% of search results worldwide.
What makes it even more terrible is that no clear solution is in sight–people are still left in the dark on how to recover their website rankings as Reddit, Quora, and other authority sites are hogging the first pages of SERPs.
NOT TO MENTION–the upcoming AI Overviews feature is expected to push organic search results down the page and provide instantaneous answers to user queries, defeating the purpose of organic pages appearing here!
With all this doom and gloom, however, why is it still a great time to get a hold of SEO courses?
As people are abandoning the SEO ship, calling it dead for the umpteenth time, it’s time for you to take advantage of the confusion, frustration, and anger among people by continuing to learn new skills, implement and experiment with new tactics, and monitor the results to see which one works.
After all, this isn’t the first time Google “died.” In fact, it has been dead for years–it just so happens that today's changes have made it incredibly difficult for people to rank using the same old tactics.
Just because things are not going their way after building their entire business around SEO, it’s time for them to pack their bags and leave. In that case, let them walk, as those willing to weather the storm will ultimately benefit from standing by SEO, just like in the previous years.
That said (and what many things I’ve said!), below are the best and most effective SEO courses you will stumble upon not just this year but for years to come.
These courses are constantly updated to reflect the current search landscape and offer an exclusive community where you can talk among members about issues and successes. More importantly, they contain tried-and-true and out-of-the-box tactics and strategies to push your SEO knowledge to the next level.
- SEO Side Hustles 24/25—Charles’s course is a breath of fresh air in the current SEO landscape. It embraces the challenges and shows you how to keep your site ranking on SERPs.
- SEO Blueprint—Glenn Allsopp’s course is a different take on SEO, with new ideas and a step-by-step approach to analyzing websites through the eyes of search engines and SERPs.
- Search Logistics 28-Day SEO Challenge—Matthew Woodward’s free course offers a series of simple and actionable tasks to help beginners learn and implement SEO.
- The Ultimate SEO Training 2024 + SEO For WordPress Websites—Joshua George’s course on Udemy is highly rated and teaches beginners everything they need to know to rank a WordPress site.
- The Affiliate Lab—Matt Diggity’s premium course—shows you step-by-step processes for building and monetizing content sites with continuous updates to help your site resist algorithm changes.
- Internet Marketing Gold—This monthly membership site gives you access to over 48 premium courses from various SEO experts covering many topics and strategies.
- The Authority Site System 3.0/Authority Hacker Pro - Gael Breton and Mark Webster’s course shows you how to build a profitable authority site, with updates on creating high-quality content with AI and content templates.
- Semantic SEO (Fundamentals) Course—Koray Tuğberk Gübür’s course explains the science behind semantic SEO and provides a repeatable process for building a website’s topical authority.
- The Blueprint Training—Ryan Stewart’s course helps agency owners scale their business with a modern 5-pillar growth framework. It includes video training, templates, live boot camps, and a private Slack community.
#1 - SEO Side Hustles 24/25
Charles’s recently released course, SEO Side Hustles 24/25, is your perfect gateway to today’s SEO landscape. It not only details the changes Google has and will be making soon but, instead of shying away from the challenges they present, also welcomes them.
It’s a refreshing take to the constant doom-and-gloom that you see online from people. Of course, his optimism towards the future of SEO isn’t just lip service–there are many methods and techniques you can use and implement today to help your site remain relevant on SERPs and attract just as much traffic from Google, if not more.
Ironically, most of his suggestions are about undoing what you think you know about SEO and more about building a legitimate and sustainable brand that’s independent of organic search traffic.
His advice still focuses on tactics leveraging SEO to help your website stand against the competition. However, he also discusses how search engines are just one of many channels for generating online visibility and that your site won’t rank on Google unless it becomes an established brand. This means you must burst the SEO bubble and open yourself to other traffic-generating and brand-building ideas to get there.
Charles also put a lot of emphasis on the use of AI in your SEO workflow.
Just like Google’s algorithm changes, AI is something that you should embrace to help you create better content faster, improve productivity, and get more things done. There’s really no excuse for you not to develop and execute SEO and other marketing strategies for your site and clients now that AI is continually becoming much better at assisting you in these tasks.
For its selling price of $79, the course is a great introduction and even a bridge from yesterday’s SEO to today, as well as how your business can succeed and withstand the looming threats of AI Overviews and more algorithm changes.
#2 - SEO Blueprint
Glenn Allsopp is one of this space's best and most respected SEOs. He’s been known to share great insights and analyses on Detailed.com (formerly Viperchill) through the years, which usually gets tons of engagement on social media. The reason is due to his unique outlook and approach to SEO, adding to the depth of the ideas he publishes online.
Instead of looking at SERPs and websites like your usual SEO would, he just sees things differently, paving the way for distinct ideas nobody would have ever thought of.
That’s also why SEO Blueprint is a must-buy SEO course. It’s a window to Glenn’s methodical approach of looking at websites in relation to search engines and SERPs and provides you with ways to how
Unlike most courses here, which have starting points and progressions, Glen’s course is all over the place, in a good way. Let me explain:
The sections are divided into modules, which are your standard SEO practices: on-page, link building, local SEO, and others. Each has lessons about different things you can do about that specific practice.
They aren’t necessarily listed in chronological order, so you can watch one lesson video and skip to another lesson down the page that interests you the most. That means you don’t have to follow a specific sequence of watching the videos to get the most out of its teachings.
This might be confusing at first, especially if you’re a beginner SEO, but once you get into the swing of things, no one else has the ideas, insights, and information Glenn has.
You can build your SEO workflow using the processes he shared in each module. This means you need to have a certain level of SEO knowledge before getting his course. But for $597 for lifetime access to the course, future updates, and a private Facebook community, you are getting your money’s worth and then some.
#3 - Search Logistics 28-Day SEO Challenge
Matthew Woodward is another SEO stalwart who built his SEO empire in 2012 with his blog MatthewWoodward.co.uk. He made thousands of dollars monthly through well-written and in-depth content, mostly via affiliate commissions, and has published monthly income reports to prove it. From here, he pivoted to build Search Logistics, a fully managed SEO service provider, and LinksThatRank, a link building agency.
At the core of his success is his understanding of the SEO fundamentals, which he shares in his 28-Day SEO Challenge. This free course allows you to learn from Matthew himself as he teaches you how he ranked his website to great effect.
Upon signing up, you’ll receive access to your course dashboard, which contains the tasks you must complete within the week. Each task is very actionable and gets straight to the point, perfect for people with little SEO experience. It also shows you examples of good and bad SEO that you can use as reference points. Finally, you can move to the following lessons unless you complete the current one. This is a great way to ensure you take time to perform the tasks and keep yourself accountable.
You can speed-run through this course to complete it. Or you can do each lesson one day at a time, taking time to learn and absorb everything the lessons and tasks have to teach you. Regardless, despite being free, the course contains direct and practical information that SEO beginners would appreciate.
#4 - The Ultimate SEO Training 2024 + SEO For Wordpress Websites
If you’re looking for a more comprehensive and affordable SEO course for beginners, look no further than Joshua George’s The Ultimate SEO Training Course on Udemy. Joshua is the founder of ClickSlice, UK’s award-winning SEO agency, and has been hired by the UK government to teach SEO to professionals.
His course is among the highest-rated and most popular on the platform, with over 10,000 5-star user reviews. Joshua is a natural teacher, and his passion is palpable through his teachings, even when the topic gets very complex. His extensive knowledge of the different SEO practices doesn’t hurt, making this course a must-own even if you’re an intermediate SEO.
Joshua also chose WordPress as the platform to implement the best SEO practices. Since this CMS is the most widely used among site owners (and with good reason), it only makes sense for him to teach you how to set up and optimise your website on SERPs.
The course tackles everything you need to know about ranking a website, from keyword research to measuring your progress. There’s also a section on how to speed up your WordPress site and execute most of its tactics using Semrush to help improve your productivity. As with most Udemy courses, there’s a quiz at the end of each module to help reinforce the learnings in your mind.
#5 - The Affiliate Lab
Matt Diggity is the closest thing to an SEO influencer these days. Aside from the success of his SEO agency, The Search Initiative, his YouTube channel has surpassed 100,000 subscribers quickly. On the other hand, his Chain Mai SEO Conference (CMSEO) has consistently sold out in a few hours since he restarted it in 2023.
His popularity can be attributed to the helpfulness and quality of his published content and how he makes SEO easy to learn and understand with his trustworthy step-by-step processes.
The majority of his teachings that you watch and read online are fully expanded in The Affiliate Lab, Matt’s premium SEO course. For $999, you get lifetime access to all his modules, from The Beginner Lab, where he details everything you must know about setting up and optimising your website, to the Website Flipping Masterclass, where he teaches how to develop your exit strategy for your money-making website.
It is important to note that the Affiliate Lab teaches the content site model of website building and monetisation, which is what the March 2024 Update has been targeting. So, some of the strategies taught in this course may not be effective now compared to before.
If that’s the case, why should you still get a copy of this course then?
Matt knows that, while SEO was once the main source of traffic for content sites, building a brand is important to sustain your site’s rankings and authority. That’s why he and his team continually update the course to include new modules unrelated to SEO, like the Affiliate Email Marketing and the YouTube for Beginners modules. Implementing the lessons from these modules should help make your website more resistant to algorithmic changes and updates.
#6 - Internet Marketing Gold
I can simply feature some of the Internet Marketing Gold (IMG) courses, but that would be too much to write about. Instead, I recommend signing up for a monthly membership at $97/month to access over 48 premium courses from various SEO experts.
IMG is the brainchild of Kyle Roof and Andrew Stevens of SEO agency High Voltage SEO. They have mobilised SEO from different countries and backgrounds to foster a community of like-minded individuals willing to teach their exact tactics and strategies for growing their site’s organic traffic.
For starters, Kyle Roof’s excellent courses, “On Page SEO Optimization” and “White Hat SEO,” are the bedrocks in which IMG stands out. As the guy known for ranking a page with lorem ipsum text on the top of SERPs, Kyle delves deep into his processes and scientific approach to SEO without deferring to any black hat tactics. This allows your site to achieve sustainable rankings without fearing being de-ranked by Google after an algorithm update.
But what if you’re a link builder? IMG has also got you covered–courses from Kasra Dash, Bibi Lauren Raven, Ted Kubaitis, and others teach you how to develop and launch results-driven launch link building campaigns.
The platform also offers many AI courses from Viola Eva, Terry Power, Taylor Kimball, and others to help you level up your SEO skills and knowledge and prepare for AI's upcoming changes to organic search.
We can go on and on about the courses, all of which tackle unique and specific angles on ranking factors that you can apply to your client websites and other projects.
#7 - The Authority Site System 3.0/Authority Hacker Pro
The Authority Site System (TASS) course runs similarly to The Affiliate Lab. Both teach you how to build a content site that generates traffic to its pages by getting them to rank at the top of Google SERPs, converting visitors into affiliate sales and commissions. As mentioned, Google has been hard on these types of sites, so there’s a chance some of the teachings in TASS won’t be as valuable now as they were back then.
However, just like Matt, course instructors Gael Breton and Mark Webster are two of the most trustworthy and authoritative (pun intended) SEO people around. Both also run the Authority Hacker blog and podcast with great success, on top of their other SEO ventures, so you know that they practice what they preach. So, if there’s anyone who can find ways to overcome the algorithm changes, it’s these guys.
For $330 for the next six months, the course covers the essentials of building an authority site, starting with the niche selection process and ending with advanced tactics to help site owners maximize their traffic and income generation. In between are processes, templates, and SOPs for researching keywords, creating helpful content, and setting up your affiliate links to make things easier.
The course has also been updated with new modules for creating high-quality content using AI, helpful content templates to pattern your posts on sites that increased their rankings after HCU, and more.
Once you’ve built an authority site, you can level up your subscription by joining the Authority Hacker Pro group. It’s separate from TASS but has most TASS “graduates” or those who could create a profitable website by following the course’s direction. The Pro group contains resources for helping your writers and VAs manage your site and maintain its same excellent quality before handing the keys to them–if not even better!
#8 - Semantic SEO (Fundamentals) Course
Koray Tuğberk Gübür is synonymous with semantic SEO and topical authority. Through the past few years, he has been on a tear with his extensive knowledge of the Google patents and theory to fully understand how to leverage semantics the way Google algorithms do in the context of query processing and use it to rank websites without the need for off-page factors.
However, as we've come to know about semantic SEO generally, it’s not as simple as covering the topic as comprehensively as possible. It’s about the actual science involved with how Google organises information in its Knowledge Graph and how it processes web pages based on their content and context to determine which pages go on top of search results.
I’m not going to pretend I know semantic SEO beyond, which is why you need the Topical Authority Course to help break things down for you even more. For $997, you’ll have access to Koray’s repeatable process of building a website’s topical authority to maximise its keyword rankings. It also includes regular updates, new methods when available, and a private SEO group to discuss his teachings. Also, you must renew your course subscription for $500 every year to continue getting access to its modules and receiving updates.
Mind you, the course is not only information-heavy; it’s also dense with Google patents and terms that might go over your head unless you’re already well-versed in semantic SEO. So, before you purchase the course, check out Koray’s YouTube channel for case studies and samples of his teachings to give you a better idea of what you’re getting into.
#9 - The Blueprint Training
If you’re an agency owner and wish to scale your business to greater heights further, The Blueprint Training is for you. Led by Ryan Stewart, fractional CMO and managing partner of legal marketing agency Webris, the course changes your approach from a traditional SEO agency to a modern one that involves its five-pillar growth framework.
Aside from the video training you’ll receive upon purchasing the course ($199/month or $1,999/year), you get its suite of templates (proposals, project planning, traffic projections, etc.), monthly live bootcamps led by Ryan himself, private working sessions via Zoom with a guest expert, and a private Slack community. All these help you get the most out of your subscription and stay one step ahead of other agencies.
Among the things you’ll find useful from the course and everybody in the community, the templates are the ones that really take centre stage. These are battle-tested and guaranteed to convince your prospects to become your clients. For those who are already your clients, the templates provide the necessary information about the campaigns to keep your team account and impress clients with your great work.