SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, can be quite a daunting subject. Where does one begin? There is an avalanche of information – blogs, portals, webinars, seminars, trade shows, books, and many, many experts on the subject (not all of whom have the best people skills).

As someone who teaches , I often get asked, “Where are the best SEO Tutorials?” Here’s my list of some quick places to get started with SEO, focusing on the concept of basic SEO Tutorials:

1. Google SEO Guide

The Google SEO guide is perhaps my No. 1 recommendation as a starting place on basic SEO. This guide is published by Google for your average web designer or marketer. It emphasizes ‘on page’ SEO but has many great ‘best practices’ for tag structure and content..

2. SEO MOOC: Massive Open Online Course in Search Engine Optimization

This is a new concept. A MOOC is an easy-to-take, online course in a subject – in this case SEO. This new SEO Tutorial starts with a focus on basic marketing, and then goes into on-page SEO as well as off-page SEO, including link building. Easy and basic. Find out more about this .

3. SEOMoz’s SEO Guide

SEOMoz, now just ‘Moz,’ publishes a pretty good SEO tutorial. My complaint here is that it does get a bit wordy and a bit overwhelming. The ‘Moz’ people are pretty much computer nerds, and so they tend to give too many esoteric details and not enough big picture, but still an excellent starting point on SEO. Get it here.

4. Search Engine Land’s ‘What is SEO?’ Guide

Another nerd tutorial comes from Search Engine Land, here. Like the SEOMoz guide this one has a bit ‘too much’ information but if you read it with a strong cup of coffee and no distractions, you’ll come away learning a lot about SEO and how it works.

5. Webconfs: SEO Tutorial

Webconfs has a nice clickable guide. What I like about this one is you can zig and zag among content areas, choosing only the content that either a) interests you or b) you don’t really understand. Plus this site has amazingly good SEO utilities, so check out their free SEO tools while you’re there! You can get it here.

6. WordPress SEO Guide

If you are into WordPress, you’ll want to install the fabulous Yoast SEO plug-in. But then what do you do? Yoast publishes a nifty WordPress SEO guide, here. Again, a little heavy on the technical mumbo-jumbo but an excellent guide.

If you are looking to get started in SEO all of these guides are a good starting place, as is (of course) my ‘Top Ten SEO Tools Webinar,’ which I will next teach live in October. You can watch it in video format,

Published: July 15, 2013 | Updated: October 14, 2013