Looking to take your site’s traffic to the next level? The following 8 are some of the best SEO courses that can help you boost your traffic, no matter if you are into affiliate, display ads or agency/freelance SEO.
How we handpicked the best SEO Training
There’s no shortage of SEO courses out there so what are the main factors we used to handpick the best SEO courses for this list? One of the most important factors is who’s behind the courses: we made sure that they are courses from actual, veteran SEOs with credentials. You really do not want to risk your site’s future on some random person’s advice!
Second factor is course refresh. Since SEO is ever changing, the courses selected need to change with it, so frequent updates are a must. A last minor consideration is that there is a community that comes with the training. No matter how good the course, you’ll always have questions so a community is always a big plus.
Given the factors above we skipped free SEO courses. Many of them are from people who have very little actual SEO experience themselves and the courses are seldom updated nor do they have a community attached.
Plus, most of these are free because they have an agenda to promote services or particular SEO software. As the saying goes, “There ain’t no free lunch”!
So with that being said here’s the handpicked selection of the best SEO courses you can find online.
Best overall: The Authority Site System
Starts from scratch: Yes
Community: Yes
Best part: The checklists & SOPs
Price: $497 (or 6x$249)
Site: TASS
If there is one thing that is guaranteed for those starting their website or starting SEO, it is overwhelming. Mark and Gael, two “nice guys” of the industry take the best SEO course title for the simple fact that they provide everything that you need to create a successful website in a straightforward way.
How so? This training has everything tied to an easy-to-follow checklist at every turn. Article writing? Checklist. Niche selection? Checklist. It makes things organized and easy to follow, reducing overwhelm and confusion in the process.
Additionally the production value is one of the highest (Got to love that light and sound setup!) and that makes watching the course a pleasure. If you are looking for the best SEO courses for beginners, TASS might fit the bill as it starts from scratch and ramps up the difficulty in a manageable way.
Downsides? This course is somewhat dependent on the Elementor page builder (They use it as examples but you are free to adapt) and it only covers the basics. You will learn the most important foundations to earn your first dollars online, but the rest is reserved for their Authority Hacker Pro training. This makes TASS somewhat limited but a great choice for beginners.
Best for affiliates: Affiliate Lab
Starts from scratch: Yes
Community: Yes
Best part: Large, generous updates
Price: $997 (or 2x$597)
Site: Affiliate Lab
Matt Diggity is considered one of the top affiliate SEOs in the world. One of his exploits is ranking for “Garcinia Cambogia” related terms at its peak popularity and he’s still ranking in tough-as-nails affiliate niches like health.
He also owns an agency that currently manages 100+ websites for other affiliates. This is important because every trick or strategy he finds true with those sites, he puts it in his Affiliate lab training. As the name suggests this is a course geared towards affiliates and Matt is one of the best to learn from.
His style of SEO is extremely methodical, which might be a turn off for some, even though the course does start from scratch. To give you an example of his methodical side, in one lesson he reveals the best ratio of keyword anchor links vs pillow terms (Click here, check this out, etc) so that Google doesn’t flag you as over-optimizing.
The best part of the course is the very generous updates. In the last few months there’s been added a management module, copywriting module and topical authority module to name a few.
The downside is not the content but the structure, you will have to figure out where certain pieces of the puzzle fit together for yourself, but there is no better training for affiliates.
Best for bloggers/display ads: Niche Site Profits
Starts from scratch: Yes
Community: Yes
Best part: Simplicity of system & forum
Price: $497
Site: Niche Site Profits
By and large, there’s only two ways to monetize your site: Affiliate or Display ads. While it is true that you can earn dollars with affiliate vs pennies with display ads, these snowball into serious income.
Case and point: Jon Dykstra. He earns $115,000+ per month solely from niche blogs with ads turned on. Pennies earned consistently add up quickly!
In his course, best for bloggers who like a content-first approach, he reveals everything you need to know to earn big with simple blogs.
Jon’s style is pretty much the opposite of technical but his results (and his students’ results) prove that you can use a publisher’s approach and win big. You of course get his decades worth of expertise on how to get the maximum for each view, how to keep the users on your site and more.
The downside is that there’s only a handful of times per year when you can get this course as Jon runs a tight knit forum and wants to keep it that way. The wait is worth it however, not only for the course itself but because the forum is really one of the best you’ll find around the web on the topic.
Best SEO course for on-page: On-page Optimization
Starts from scratch: Yes
Community: Yes
Best part: Link building optional
Price: $795 or $97/month
Site: IMG
There are only two types of factors when it comes to moving the needle in SEO: Factors you can control and factors that you can’t control. The good news is, one of the biggest ranking factors IS totally within your control: On-page optimization and it’s enough to really push your rankings no matter your site.
Kyle Roof is one of the most respected SEOs around because his on-page is so good he ranked number 1 on Google for “Rhinoplasty Plano” with a site filled with Lorem Ipsum (Dummy latin text). In the most comprehensive course on the subject, “On-page Optimization” Kyle reveals exactly where Google is expecting keywords, how to rank with your own site’s built-in ranking power & more.
Because this is THE course on the subject, it makes the course a bit long. Turns out a lot goes into making your page the most favored in the rankings! But it is worth it, especially given that this method is not really dependent on backlinks: All you need is your own site and strategic interlinking. You can get this course either as a one time payment or with an IMG Membership.
Best for advanced SEOs: SEO Blueprint 2
Starts from scratch: No
Community: Yes
Best part: Unique strategies
Price: $597
Site: SEO Blueprint
Even if he isn’t “out there” on social media like other SEOs, don’t be fooled: Glenn Allsopp is really a “Wizard behind the curtains” type of SEO so to speak (He’s behind the detailed blog). His course, SEO Blueprint 2 is a bit different as his premise is that the fundamentals of SEO are largely the same, but the game is won in finding novel ways to actually accomplish those goals.
Take link-building, it’s as old as SEO itself. How do you get those is the ever-changing part of the equation. Sure, you could technically send a cold email to try to get a link, but Glenn instead teaches how to leverage Zapier to do the heavy lifting.
There’s also quite a few topics covered and it is one of the few in this “best SEO courses” list that touch upon ranking GMBs (Google My businesses) and even has live SEO audits as part of the package, so it’s pretty far-reaching.
While it does touch upon the basics, it is a real treat for those looking for advanced SEO training. The star here might be the “Superpixels” concept that teaches how to find the Achilles heels of larger, better funded competitors in order to beat them.
Did we mention he has one of the best branding for an SEO course?
Best for established sites: Content Audit
Starts from scratch: No
Community: Yes (if IMG)
Best part: Traffic turnaround
Price: $1000
Site: SEO Playbook / IMG
Most of the contenders on this list of the best SEO courses have one thing in common: They all start from scratch. While this is great for beginners, what if you have a site that is already established but is an SEO train wreck…what do you do?
Enter the content audit by Robbie Richards, this is one of the few courses that shows you what to do with the content that is already ranking. Complete with many spreadsheets, this is one of the most actionable courses you can get as by the end of it you’ll have a clear gameplan on how to turn your site around.
The downside of this course is that it is technical SEO heavy and has lots of spreadsheets. But this of course comes with the territory…but the end results in terms of traffic gains are worth it. Unlike most courses that teach content creation, the content audit helps you leverage content you already have without having to throw money at new articles.
There’s two ways to get this: On Robbies’ own site as part of his larger SEO Playbooks package (However there is a waitlist) or through IMG.
Best for Agencies: Bring the SEO
Starts from scratch: No
Community: Yes
Best part: Hands on, accountability
Price: $5,500 (Free call)
Site: Bring the SEO
When selling SEO services, there’s 3 aspects you need to keep on top of: the actual SEO work, the selling of those services and the fulfillment of those services. The difference between a struggling agency and a thriving one is in the last two. If you have a least 10k MRR in your agency and want to scale, John Romaine is a well respected SEO coach and his “Bring the SEO” is one of the best SEO courses to do so.
The course is divided into two main sections: Business and campaign. One has to do with everything from mindset to cash-flow while the other gravitates towards what happens when you actually get the client.
Unlike most courses, this is hands-on training for a couple of months with accountability, so this is really reserved for agency owners who are action takers. The course is delivered in a forum style so it is a bit rudimentary but it works because it allows for easy interaction.
At $5500 this is one of the most expensive in this list of the best SEO courses online but if you are into agency SEO, this is something an extra client or two pays for in a month.
Best value SEO course: IMG (40+ SEO courses in 1)
Starts from scratch: Yes
Community: Yes
Best part: New courses monthly
Price: $97/month
Site: IMG
There’s a dilemma facing many beginner SEOs: They need the information to succeed and yet most training is out of their price range from the get-go. The minimum price for a respected SEO course is at least $500.
So if you are looking for value, IMG is sort of a Netflix™ for SEOs where you get access to 40+ SEO courses and a slew of other goodies like SEO tests and a dynamic community.
Subject-wise it covers pretty much everything that falls under the SEO umbrella: copywriting, technical SEO, local SEO, domains, content marketing, pagespeed, conversion rate optimization and more. This is great as no single person can really be an expert on so many aspects of SEO, so getting experts to teach their respective fields is quite a treat.
There’s a new course added on a monthly basis but the upside is also the downside here: Since there is SO much to IMG it can feel like drinking from an SEO firehose!
How to get an unfair advantage with SEO courses
No matter which one of the best SEO courses above you settle on, nothing quite equals applying what you’ve learned on an aged domain like Odys provides. One way to look at it is like this: Your site is like a seed, the courses are fertilizers and Odys is the soil you plant on.
Instead of starting from scratch on dry ground, you get domains with built-in SEO power that multiply your search engine optimization efforts.
Conclusion
Hope you enjoyed the selection of the best SEO courses online. The best all-around for beginners is TASS. If you are into affiliate SEO and technical SEO that would be The Affiliate Lab or Niche Site Profits if you are into display ads or looking for a method based on simplicity.
If you want the best deal around that is IMG with the 40 courses, and if you are more advanced, Content audit or SEO Blueprint 2.
