From Zero to Cited: The Free SEO Course

You run a business. A clinic, a law firm, a bike shop, a cybersecurity vendor. Doesn't matter which. You want to show up in Google, and now you want ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews to mention you too when someone's looking for a recommendation. This free SEO course walks you through both, in 10 parts, with a hands-on step in PostKing after every lesson.

Most SEO content out there assumes you're still hunting for a niche or building links off a spreadsheet of cold emails. You're not. You've already got a business, a client list, and a Tuesday afternoon you'd rather not burn on a lecture. We built this course for the founder who just needs a plan.

Pew Research has tracked a steady climb in people turning to AI chatbots for questions that used to go straight to a search bar. Google's own Search Central guidance hasn't budged on the other side of that shift: a page that answers a real question better than the next result still wins. Both are true at once, and this course treats ranking in Google and getting mentioned by AI as the same job.

This series is built to actually get finished: one part at a time, inside the tool you're already using to publish.

Who This Free SEO Course Is For

This course is for people who already run something. A clinic booking patients. A firm billing clients. A shop selling bikes. A vendor selling security software to other businesses. You don't need to hunt for a niche, because you already picked one the day you opened your doors.

This course skips niche-hunting and link-building outreach, tactics that matter more for publishers chasing traffic for its own sake than for a business like yours.

What you get is a way to learn SEO for free that assumes you already have a business, a website, and about an hour a week to spend on it. That's the whole audience this course was written for.

How to Read This SEO Course for Beginners

Read it in order. Parts build on each other: Part 4 assumes you did the keyword work in Parts 2 and 3, and Part 9 assumes you've actually published something by then.

Do one part a week, not all 10 in a weekend. Each part ends with a specific task inside PostKing, like running a competitor gap report or drafting a content brief, and that task is the whole point of the lesson, not an extra.

If you're brand new to search, treat this as your SEO course for beginners starting line. Skip nothing, and resist jumping to Part 7 just because AI search feels more urgent than keyword research. Keyword research comes first for a reason: it's the foundation everything else in this course builds on.

The 10 Parts of This Free SEO Course

Ten parts. Each one gives you a step to actually do. Here's what's inside.

Part 1: Does SEO Still Matter When Everyone Asks ChatGPT? (AI Search Visibility Course, Lesson 1)

Yes. The why matters more than the yes. You'll run an AI visibility check inside PostKing to see whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews already mention your business, your competitors, or nobody at all.

Part 2: Keyword Research Fundamentals (SEO Course for Beginners Basics)

A solid SEO plan starts with one seed keyword, not a hunch. You'll go from seed to full research to a shortlist, using PostKing's keyword tool to cut a long list down to the dozen terms worth chasing first.

Part 3: Finding Keyword Opportunities for a Business You Already Run

Your competitors are already ranking for terms you're missing. That gap is your fastest research shortcut. You'll build a competitor profile and a gap report that shows exactly where you're behind and where you're already winning.

Part 4: From Keyword Clusters to a Content Roadmap

Keywords only earn their keep once they're sorted into a plan. Group them into clusters, turn the clusters into a roadmap, and turn the roadmap into briefs your writer (or you, at 11pm) can actually follow.

Part 5: Free Tools and Content Pages

Tool pages and comparison pages earn links and traffic without you asking anyone for anything. You'll build one of each inside PostKing, using templates that consistently pull organic traffic for other small teams.

Part 6: Writing Articles With AI Without Sounding Like AI

Most people publish a draft, not a finished article. It shows. You'll go draft, voice, humanize, AI-check, then publish, and learn to spot keyword cannibalization before it splits your own rankings against each other.

Part 7: Getting Cited by AI Search (AI Search Visibility Course Module)

Ranking in Google and getting cited by an AI answer share a foundation, but they're not quite the same skill. You'll run a monthly AI visibility audit and learn what actually gets a page quoted instead of skipped over.

Part 8: Competitor Intel, Comparison Pages, and Distribution

Your competitors already told you what works. You just have to read their site like a strategist instead of a customer. Build a full competitor workup and push your content out through social and Reddit, where a fair share of your future AI citations actually start.

Part 9: Maintaining Your Rankings

Rankings decay. A page sitting at position 3 in January can drift to position 9 by June if nobody touches it. Pull your Search Performance data and refresh the pages losing ground before they fall off page one.

Part 10: The Minimal Effective Dose

You don't need to run every lesson in this course every week forever. You'll walk away with a 30-day checklist covering the minimum that keeps you visible, so this becomes a habit instead of an abandoned bookmark.

Want it straight from Google? This one's worth the watch.

What This Free SEO Course Skips, and Why

You already run a business, so picking a niche from scratch is a problem for someone starting at zero, not for you.

Cold-emailing strangers for links is slow, and it rarely pays off unless you've got someone doing it full time. The tool pages and comparison pages you'll build in Part 5 earn links on their own.

Google's own guidance says so, and a decade of updates backs it up: sites built to manipulate rankings tend to lose them eventually.

Learn SEO for Free: Start With Part 1

10 parts, one hands-on step each. No reason to wait for a better week. Start with Part 1, run your AI visibility check, and see where you actually stand before you plan anything else.

Does ChatGPT already know your business exists, or are you still guessing?

Start with Part 1: Does SEO Still Matter When Everyone Asks ChatGPT? →