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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Google SEO by University of California, Davis

4.6
stars
9,876 ratings

About the Course

Ever wonder how major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo rank your website within their searches? Or how content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users? Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This course is the first within the SEO Specialization and it is intended to give you a taste of SEO with some fun practices to get seen in Google. You will be introduced to the foundational elements of how the most popular search engine, Google, works, how the SEO landscape is constantly changing and what you can expect in the future. You discuss core SEO strategies and tactics used to drive more organic search results to a specific website or set of websites, as well as tactics to avoid to prevent penalization from Google. We hope this taste of SEO, will entice you to continue through the Specialization!...

Top reviews

KP

Oct 2, 2023

This was a very helpful introductory course which helped me to understand further areas of study I need to pursue in order to be effective in this field! Thanks UC Davis, I really enjoyed this course.

SS

Aug 9, 2016

Great course, very informative!! I can tell the classes are starting to be structured differently though. Not too much meat to this first course... reserving my opinion, until I go through a few more.

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1951 - 1975 of 2,607 Reviews for Introduction to Google SEO

By Divya G

•

Jun 4, 2020

The career section in week 1 was a bit detail for an introductory course, but I nonetheless enjoyed the whole experience of joining this course. It was really fun and informative to learn about the evolution of web and SEO, the algorithms that govern it and the best practices we ourselves can follow. Thanks a lot Rebakah May, UCDavis and Coursera for offering this course :)

By Ilaria U

•

Mar 27, 2024

The course was clear, although already a bit outdated in 2024, specifically in the final module, when talking about personas and social networks (such as Twitter, now X). The course is also biased to a US point of view and market. Some broad concept can be valuable worldwide, but details and case study were only US-based. I will search for more European based case studies

By Annika W

•

Mar 9, 2018

Great course for total beginners to SEO. It gets you acquainted with some basic concepts, though doesn't get you to the point where you could actually apply the knowledge - later courses should hopefully do that. More concrete examples comparing sites applying and not applying certain strategies would have been incredibly helpful and made memorizing the material easier.

By Jessie T L C I

•

Jul 6, 2020

The Introduction to Search Engine Optimization was a very informational and basic course for those who are interested in starting their career in SEO. I think they could've focused more on strategies we could implement but as it said in the title, it is only an introductory class. I'll recommend this to people who are interested in starting their SEO journeys.

By Emily K

•

Apr 20, 2020

Interesting course. It is very technical on the history of SEO and very granular on how algorithms are done. Gave me good insight on what to look for while managing my SEO agency. It would have been helpful to have it tie more into the marketing and social media and how to tie those elements together from a marketing strategy, but overall I am glad I took it.

By Christine R

•

Oct 27, 2017

I appreciated the background on search engines and their development.

In terms of overall course structure I would prefer a 1hr video rather than so many 3 to 7min segments with 10 second transition times inbetween. It doesn´t allow to get into a concentrated flow state of mind, and is quite disruptive in the non-digital business model use of the term.

By Brovchuk Y

•

Nov 28, 2016

Very interesting course for everyone, who wants to try themselves in SEO and learn more about it.

I put 4 of 5, because I hope, that in future there will be subtitles in other languages, except English. It would be much easier in understanding for people from no English-speaking countries.

Thanks a lot for new for me information and good luck!

By Gheorghii C

•

Jan 25, 2021

I would appreciate a more hands-on practical approach as this course promotes the understanding of what is SEO and how it came to be which is very important but might bot be exactly what is expected by most students when in-rolling.

Nevertheless, this is a great experience and lots of high-value learning material, especially for beginners.

By kamila s

•

May 21, 2017

I really liked the course, it helped me to understand the basics of SEO. However, I feel that part of the material was too easy and the other one a bit too complicated. I think that for example the SEO career topic could have been shorter and instead we could have learned more about the google updates or expand more of a "SEO jargon".

By Ricardo G R

•

Jul 2, 2020

This was very good introduction to SEO. You get to learn about the history of search engines and how every Google update changed the landscape. However, sometimes I felt the content could've been richer and some reading were outdated. Besides that, I highly recommend this to anyone looking to get their feet weet on SEO knowledge.

By Sneha

•

Dec 24, 2022

I learned the basics and introduction to this course. This course is a pavement for me towards my ultimate goal. Thank You, Coursera team, respected teachers, and editors who worked and made this course for us. I am happy that i got this opportunity and now excited for starting the next part of this course.

Thank You,

Regards,

Sneha

By Elaine H

•

Aug 3, 2020

Very informative on the development and history of search engines, and detail on how to avoid bad SEO practices on Google's search engine.

Would be also useful to digital marketers, branding marketers, and content creators. To widening knowledge on the online search practice and improving brand/blog/website online presence.

By Mathis

•

Nov 23, 2019

The course offers some nice guidance on how to start a career in SEO, basic models and concepts of SEO are being explained. I am very happy with what I got out of this course. One thing that could be improved is the conceptualization, a more clear structure can be very helpful especially to possible first-time learners.

By Chelsea S

•

May 14, 2019

This was a helpful overview and introduction to the basics of Search Engine Optimization. There was a lot of occupational information, which I wasn't too personally interested but I can see how that might be useful to others taking this introductory course. I found the material was easy to get through and well laid out.

By Fahed M F

•

Nov 1, 2020

Thank you so much for this course because it is very informative.

What I would improve is the video content by adding timelines and infographics to help see the story flow, the changes that were made especially when mentioning historical evolution of search engine and algorithm.

Faithfully yours,

Fahed Michel Fahed

By Grzegorz F F

•

Oct 5, 2022

It was nice, very good, educational and positive. I think adding projects would be beneficial. Plus some of the mentioned articles and studies were not mentioned in the study section, or at least not that I am aware of. Overall I give 4 stars and I might do another course from UC Davis in the future. Thanks.

By Annette B

•

Jul 25, 2016

The course focused too much on careers in SEO, and the required personality traits. SEO is part of many other career streams, so spending 1/2 of the course on SEO as a career was a complete waste of time for me. Did enjoy the historical walk-through of the GA algorithm, and the point to refocus on. Thanks

By Brittany E

•

Aug 8, 2017

Great introductory course with useful information. Appreciated the glimpse into what a day in the life of SEO looks like and all of the advice for getting started. Would have liked an opportunity to practice some optimization techniques. I audited the course so perhaps that was available in the full course.

By Akshay R

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Feb 26, 2016

I liked the course contents, especially the Google algorithm evolution and the assignment to do an SEO analysis.

I felt the first week content related to the jobs in the field of SEO was a bit long and could have been shortened since many aspects were repeated in the "consulting/agency" and "in-house" roles.

By sarah r

•

Mar 9, 2021

I liked and learned more things in this course, but I think the first and second weeks could be combined and the third week could be divided into 2 weeks because in the third week we learn lots of things about Google's algorithms and it needs time more than one week, I had had resume my third week twice.

By Jhonattan M J

•

Apr 29, 2021

Great overview but I am still missing how to explain SEO to someone non-related and with zero background in IT, Marketing or Business. This would make the SEO introductory course more compelling and attractive for foreign learners. Being an SEO beginner and content writer myself I found it interesting.

By Kenji G M

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Apr 22, 2020

The information provided is great, but I think it could use a bit of an update, specially in the resources since they seem to all be from 2015 or before. But as an Introductory course it gives you a very fair understanding of what it is, how it works, and a bit of an insight of the industry of SEO.

By Amanda B

•

Nov 3, 2017

Good background and basic info. Well organized. I feel like the bottom line of the whole course could have been summed up in about two mintues: SEO is so complex now that all you have to do is make high quality content and a stable, recognizable brand. Gaming the SEO system doesn't work. The end.

By Mir E H

•

Aug 8, 2020

very good Course. its more on history of seo and how it evolve. i think it should include what is backlink? how you to start seo as beginner? how to check content? because this are the factor you will do seo with.

Thanks to Coursera for this lovely course. wish they will evolve as seo does.

By Daniel F

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Aug 11, 2020

The course didn't keep me so motivated, unfortunately. I doubt it was the fault of UC Davis (the instructors were quite nice!), but perhaps my growing lack of interest in the biased SEO field. I'm a writer and think that adhering to Google's brand-biased guidelines strips me of creativity.