SEO Fundamentals track
Covers the core concepts every SEO practitioner relies on: how search engines crawl, index and rank pages, how searchers express intent, and how to build pages that are easy to find and easy to understand.
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What SEO is and what it can realistically do
SEO makes a site easier for search engines to crawl and understand, and more useful to the people searching. Learn what it can and cannot influence, how organic results differ from ads, and how to set honest expectations.
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How Google crawls, indexes and ranks pages
Google Search works in three stages: crawling, indexing and serving results. Learn what happens at each stage, what can block a page, and how to tell which stage a problem belongs to.
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Search intent: matching pages to what searchers want
Every query carries a goal. Learn the four common types of search intent, how to read intent from the results page itself, and how to choose the right page format before you write a word.
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Keyword research: finding the words people actually use
Keyword research is about understanding demand: the words people use, what they want, and which page should answer them. Learn where keyword ideas come from, how to group them by intent, and how to choose realistic targets.
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Title tags and meta descriptions
The title and snippet are your page's first impression in search. Learn how Google builds title links and snippets, why it sometimes rewrites them, and how to write ones that describe the page accurately and earn the click.
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Headings and content structure
Structure turns a wall of text into something people can scan and search engines can understand. Learn how to use headings as an outline, what Google says about H1s, and how paragraphs, lists and tables each earn their place.
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Internal linking: helping people and Google move through your site
Links between your own pages are how Google discovers content and understands what matters. Learn what makes a link crawlable, how to write useful anchor text, and how to find important pages that lack links.
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Image optimisation: alt text, formats, sizing and lazy loading
Images make pages useful and slow them down in equal measure. Learn how to write alt text, choose file formats and sizes, and use lazy loading without hurting your most important image.
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XML sitemaps and robots.txt
Sitemaps tell Google which URLs you want found; robots.txt tells crawlers where they may go. Learn what each file does, what belongs in it, and the difference between blocking crawling and blocking indexing that trips up so many sites.
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Duplicate URLs and canonical basics
The same content often lives at several URLs. Learn why duplicates appear, how Google chooses one canonical URL to show, and how to signal your preferred version with redirects, rel=canonical and consistent links.
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Google Search Console fundamentals
Search Console is Google's own view of your site. Learn how to verify a property, read clicks, impressions, CTR and average position correctly, check individual URLs and spot indexing problems before they cost traffic.
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Introduction to structured data and rich results
Structured data describes a page's content in a format search engines can read precisely. Learn what JSON-LD looks like, how rich results work, why valid markup does not guarantee them, and the rule that markup must match what users see.
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Website performance and Core Web Vitals basics
Fast, stable pages keep visitors and support search performance. Learn what LCP, INP and CLS measure, the thresholds Google uses, the difference between lab and field data, and the common fixes for each metric.
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Ethical SEO: optimisation versus manipulation
Google's spam policies draw the line between helping search engines understand a page and tricking them. Learn the main policies, how manual actions and spam updates work, and how to recognise risky tactics before they cost a site its visibility.
Ready to test yourself?
The CrunchWiser SEO Fundamentals exam has 30 questions across these topics.