If you have a blog but aren’t seeing the traffic you want, you need to master SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the art of getting your blog posts to rank on Google (preferably on the first page!), and it can be the difference between making ZERO money with your blog, and hitting 5 figures a month.
Yes, you read that right – you can earn 5 figures a month from blogging.
However, while many bloggers focus on growing their social media accounts, the amount of people who will actually click onto your blog from social media is minimal, and history has shown us that what is the hottest app right now, may not actually stay that way in the future.
If you want to make money blogging and create an income stream that will still pay off in years to come, you have got to draw your readers in organically, from search engines using SEO.
It’s that simple.
In this article, I’ll be reviewing what I believe to be the best SEO course for bloggers on the market right now.
I have used this course myself, and despite the fact that I consider myself to be pretty SEO savvy, I learnt a lot from this course, and today I want to share my thoughts with you.
Here is my review of SEO Roadmap by Nina Clapperton, an SEO course for bloggers.
SEO Roadmap – The Best SEO Course for Bloggers
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and it basically means making sure your website gets featured in the search engine results pages (SERPs) without paying to be there.
This means more eyes on your posts, more subscribers to your mailing list, and more customers buying your products or clicking your affiliate links.
Sounds good, right?
Free vs paid SEO courses for bloggers
There are hundreds of questionable SEO ‘agencies’ and ‘consultants’ who violate Google’s Terms of Service and charge thousands of dollars for the privilege.
While you could pay these people your last dime to possibly increase your blog’s visibility on Google, you probably can’t afford to do that, and to be quite honest, you don’t need to.
With that being said, many of the free SEO courses out there are not worth your time.
They all repeat the same basic information that is fine to get started, but isn’t enough to give you the jump you need to be able to start making real income from your blog.
In my opinion, if you’re serious about blogging and SEO, you need to invest in a paid course.
Whether or not you choose to take this course is up to you, but at some point in your blogging career, you’re going to need to enrol in an SEO course at some point.
Keep reading for my review of SEO Roadmap by Nina Clapperton.
SEO Roadmap Review
What is SEO Roadmap?
SEO Roadmap is a complete roadmap (see what I did there?), to creating a blog that ranks, with actionable strategies and deep dives into every area of SEO relevant for bloggers.
Its full name is actually SEO Roadmap for Travel Bloggers, which, y’know, suggests that it is only for travel bloggers.
Although Nina herself is a travel blogger and tends to give examples and tutorials using her own blog about Canada, bloggers in all niches can benefit from her SEO strategies.
As long as you are a blogger rather than the owner of an e-commerce site (for example), SEO Roadmap is for you.
Take the example of Not Your Boss Babe.
I am using some of the techniques in SEO Roadmap to grow this website, and it has nothing to do with travel!
What you will learn
This SEO course for bloggers is broken down into the following sections:
- Introduction
- Page Speed
- Keyword Research Strategy
- Competitor Analysis
- On-Page SEO
- Writing SEO Content
- Establishing Your Authority
- Intentional Internal Linking
- Backlink Strategy
- Content Audits
- Bonus Material
Each part is comprised of individual modules that guide you through the course one step at a time.
For example, in the Keyword Research Strategy section, you have the following:
- Intro to keyword research
- Finding topics with free SEO tools
- Finding topics with Keysearch
- Evaluating keywords with Keysearch
- Long tail keywords
- Zero search volume keyword strategy
- Determining user intent
- Keyword cannibalisation
The lessons are in video format, and unlike many other ‘gurus’ who promise to make your web traffic explode, Nina is actually really bubbly and personable (as opposed to salesy and obnoxious).
You can adjust the speed of the videos, so I found it most helpful to watch the video at a normal playback speed to begin with, pausing whenever I needed to make notes, and then watch it again at a speed of 1.5x to catch anything I missed.
There are transcripts at the bottom of each video, but they are autogenerated, and so they contain quite a few mistakes.
I found the transcripts quite difficult to read and so I only used them if I needed to quickly check something.
Pros and Cons of SEO Roadmap
Pros
Lifetime access
If you purchase SEO Roadmap, you will have lifetime access to all the course materials, unlike other blogging courses such as Travel Blog Prosperity by Jessie Festa, which is a subscription-based model.
This is super helpful because it lets you work through things at your own pace rather than rushing through the material in order to spend the least amount of money possible (which has never helped anyone).
It also means that you can go back and refresh yourself on the teachings in months (and years!) to come.
SEO-focused
This might sound obvious, but many other blogging courses out there focus on every single element of blogging, meaning that their scope is wide but not deep.
With this course being entirely focused on SEO, you can rest assured that every single element of SEO that you need to know about features on this course, because SEO is something that you simply can’t succeed in if you only have a basic knowledge.
SEO spreadsheets
The tracking spreadsheets provided in the course have been instrumental in helping me organise my blog posts, keywords, ranking positions and more.
Nina has designed her SEO spreadsheets to complement specific lessons on the course, and you can follow her as she works her way through her own site and spreadsheets, before taking what you’ve learnt and applying it in the exact way that she does.
Cons
Autogenerated video transcriptions
While SEO Roadmap is definitely suited to video format, being able to read a proper transcript is always useful, and while the autogenerated transcripts were okay for a quick skim read, they were full of mistakes and parts which just made no sense!
This is really the only part of the course that I think could be improved on, but fortunately it’s a simple enough fix.
Who is SEO Roadmap for?
SEO Roadmap is for people with a beginner to intermediate level of SEO knowledge, although advanced bloggers will still find value in this course.
It can work for bloggers from all niches, although it isn’t designed for people who are just thinking about starting a blog, because many of the tasks involve updating old content and existing pages.
Final Thoughts on SEO Roadmap
SEO Roadmap costs $697, and there’s no denying that that is a lot of money.
SEO is not something that you will see overnight results with. It is a long game that will take months to start seeing results with, so if you’re thinking about spending your rent money on this course, don’t.
However, if you have the money, are willing to put in some hard work, SEO Roadmap is worth the money in my opinion.
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