Learning SEO

An open book on a wooden desk with a closed laptop, a cup of coffee and plants

Last updated: November 1, 2026.

A free book that covers SEO in 42 chapters, from how Google works and keyword research to technical SEO and e-commerce. You can read the whole book here, chapter by chapter.

Contents

Part 1: How Google Works

  1. Crawling
  2. Indexing
  3. Ranking
  4. Search Intent
  5. The Search Results Page (SERP)
  6. Why Doesn’t Everyone See the Same Rankings?
  7. Google Search Operators

Part 2: Keyword Research

  1. What Is a Keyword?
  2. How to Do Keyword Research
  3. What Is Search Volume?
  4. What Is Keyword Difficulty?
  5. How to Find Keyword Ideas on Google
  6. How Do We Place Keywords on the Site?

Part 3: Content and Pages

  1. How Does Google Understand What a Page Is About?
  2. How to Write Content Google Will Love
  3. Basic HTML Every SEO Should Know
  4. How Do Images Affect SEO?
  5. How Does Google Move Through a Site?
  6. What Should We Do With Old Content?
  7. Why Does Google Trust Content?
  8. How Do We Enrich Google Results?
  9. How to Plan Before Writing: The Content Brief

Part 4: Technical SEO

  1. How Does Google Crawl Sites?
  2. Why Is the Site Slow?
  3. How Can Google Understand Your Page Better?
  4. How to Do SEO for Multiple Countries
  1. Why Does Google Trust Some Sites More?
  2. How to Earn Strong Backlinks

Part 6: Measurement, Audits and Projects

  1. Reading Google Search Console Correctly
  2. Using SEO Tools Efficiently
  3. How Do We Measure SEO Success?
  4. How to Do an SEO Audit
  5. How to Run a Real SEO Project
  6. How to Build an SEO Checklist

Part 7: SEO by Site Type

  1. How to Do E-commerce SEO
  2. How to Do SEO for News Sites
  3. How to Do Local SEO
  4. How to Do SEO for Corporate and B2B Sites
  5. How to Do SEO on WordPress Sites
  6. SEO for Marketplaces, Classifieds and Large Database Sites

Part 8: The Big Picture

  1. How to Manage SEO Work
  2. A Holistic View of SEO

Preface

I have been building websites since 1999 and working in SEO for about 25 years. Even so, this book is called “Learning SEO”.

The reason is simple: SEO is a job where the learning never ends. Google changes, users change, technology changes. A practice we consider correct today may stop working in a few years. No matter how long you have been doing this, you have to keep learning.

The book grew out of a series I started on X on August 28, 2026, in Turkish. The original plan was 30 days. I would explain one concept a day and share short notes. The questions and comments made the series bigger; 30 days became 42, and notes of a few hundred words turned into chapters of a few thousand. What you are reading is the edited, updated English edition of that series, with the early chapters expanded.

Who is it for?

For people new to SEO, business owners who want more customers from their website, marketers and agency staff. You don’t need a technical background; where it is needed, I start from the basics.

But this is not a book of definitions. While explaining the concepts, I tried to show the real problems we have dealt with at İmza over the years and how we approached them. Most examples come from Turkey, but the logic behind them works in any market. I did not name clients unless necessary, and I tried to share the numbers and events as they happened.

How to read it

The book has eight parts. It starts with how Google works; continues with keyword research, content, technical SEO, backlinks and measurement; and ends with site types such as e-commerce, news, local and B2B. If you are new, start from the beginning. If you have a specific problem, jump to the relevant chapter from the contents; the chapters link to each other.

I only touch on AI search (AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and others) briefly in this book. That topic needs its own structure and much more frequent updates, so I cover it in a separate book, AI SEO.

A living book

The whole book is free here. I will update the chapters as SEO changes; each chapter shows its last updated date at the top. If you spot a mistake or have a question, you can reach me on X at @HasanYasar.

Thank you to everyone who followed the series on X, asked questions, left comments and pushed back. A large part of this book was written thanks to those questions.

Hasan Yaşar, November 2026