6 Best SEO Courses for Startup Founders

Let me guess...

You’ve tried to learn SEO before. You probably signed up for some SEO course or watched a bunch of videos. And quickly realized... most of it just doesn't click...

Sure, these resources cover SEO but it just doesn't seem relevant to you.

Well, that's because, sadly, most SEO courses aren’t designed for startup founders.

They’re too general. Too surface-level. Too stuck in old-school tactics that don’t match how software startups grow.

But you won't find any of those SEO courses here.

I’ve rounded up the only SEO courses worth looking at—especially if you’re a founder trying to get real traction, with limited time, budget, and no team.

So, let’s dive in.

Here’s how they miss the mark:

• They start with basics you don’t need. You’ll lose hours learning what a meta description is. Or setting up a plugin you’re never going to use. That’s fine for a beginner. Not for a builder.
• These courses assume your business model is simple. SEO for a local plumber is very different from SEO for a new SaaS product. Different search behavior. Different buying process. Different goals.
• They obsess over blogging. Sure, content is important. But just publishing blog posts every week won’t get you customers. You need SEO strategies that support your product, not just your blog.
• They often jump into enterprise tactics (for who knows what reason.) And you really don’t need to worry about international hreflang strategies. Or crawl budget audits. You need your first 10 pages to rank.
• They throw everything at you. Keyword research. Backlinks. Technical SEO. What' smore, they do so without telling you what to do first. Or what will actually work given where your startup is now.

Here’s what you need instead:

• A clear SEO roadmap that will help you build your startup's organic growth.
• Strategies that focus on early traction.
• Lean, startup-ready strategies that you can do given your current resources and timeline.
• Templates and tactics you can apply without hiring a team, and more.

That’s what the best SEO courses for founders should deliver.

And that's certainly what the first one on my list does.

I’ve been helping startups grow with organic search for over a decade. And I kept seeing the same thing: most SEO advice doesn’t fit the way startups grow. So I built the course I wish every founder had access to when starting out.

If that’s you, here’s what you’ll find inside:

Complete SEO Roadmap

At the core of Stacking Pancakes is the complete, step-by-step SEO roadmap that walks you through building your SEO program from scratch. With each lesson, you’ll tackle one part of your SEO strategy. That’s it. One clear, focused task at a time.

And it's all fully practical. Sure, each session starts with theory. After all, you should know why you're doing what you're doing, right?

But then, it moves to practice and shows you exactly how to do it.

The roadmap guides you through everything you need to do to propel your startup in the organic search:

• It explains how startup SEO works, actually
• Helps you develop search personas (which may be different from your buyer personas, mind you!)
• It shows you what you need to do (continually) to build your startup's organic authority
• It helps you conduct a performance review and get a sense of your current situation
• The roadmap guides you through initial site audit
• Building taxonomy
• Keyword research
• Strategy development
• SEO roadmapping
• Content planning
• Backlink analysis
• and even guides you through creating your first commercial pages.

It really is everything you need to know and do to kickstart your SEO!

Additional Courses on High-ROI SEO Tactics

You’ll also get access to shorter, focused trainings on things covering topics such as:

• How to grow using AI search
• Getting visibility on YouTube
• Startup-style keyword research
• Traffic forecasting that helps you pick the right battles

Templates You Can Actually Use

This isn’t theory. You’ll get the exact templates I use with clients like Refiner and Userlist. Keyword docs. Forecasting sheets. Content outlines. All customizable, and built to get work done.

Library of AI Prompts

Stacking Pancakes also includes an ever-growing library of the most useful ChatGPT prompts for SEO.

Make sure that AI delivers exactly what you need it to deliver with a collection of AI prompts for various critical SEO tasks.

One Price, Full Access

The course costs €195 one-time. No subscriptions. No gated modules. Pay once, get lifetime access to everything.

(Oh, and if you wonder about the name - Stacking Pancakes... Well, it's hard to believe it at first sight but the name is actually startup-related, too.

You see, a very good friend of mine always compares the MRR business model to stacking pancakes.

It's so on the mark, isn't it?

So, with his blessing, I used his saying as the base for my course's name.)

HubSpot SEO Certification

Hubspot offers a beginner-friendly course that's naturally focused heavily on inbound marketing and content SEO. It is what Hubspot excels at, after all.

And you know what, Hubspot's SEO certification is probably one of the most accessible free SEO courses available today.

The course walks you through the basics of how search engines work, how to optimize content for intent, how to approach link building, and how SEO ties into a broader content strategy.

Lessons seem quite polished, easy to follow, and great for anyone completely new to SEO.

But, and this is important—Hubspot's SEO course was designed for marketers working within a CRM or inbound marketing team, not startup founders building a product from zero.

This doesn't mean that the information in the course is wrong. But sometimes, you have to "translate" it to your situation to be able to fully get what you need to do.

What’s good:

• Clear breakdown of search intent
• Strong emphasis on content strategy
• Polished videos and visuals

What’s not:

• Very HubSpot-flavored. Built for inbound marketers, not founders.
• Light on technical SEO
• No startup-specific strategies

Price: Free

Ahrefs SEO for Beginners

This is a free SEO course taught by Sam Oh from Ahrefs. It's the same guy you see on the company's amazing YouTube videos.

And I have to say, Ahrefs created one of the more hands-on courses out there that largely focuses on practical implementation.

In the course, Sam walks you through concepts like keyword research, link building, and content optimization—offering real examples throughout.

But the thing is, the course is naturally totally Ahrefs-centric. It's especially helpful if you already use or plan to use Ahrefs, as most of the demos lean heavily on their toolset. But if you're not, you might find it challenging to translate the advice to other tools that you use.

Also, while practical and concise, you may find that the course lacks specific startup-focused guidance, and assumes a more general marketing use case.

What’s good:

• Clear, no-fluff explanations
• Great for keyword research basics
• Actually teaches how SEO works

What’s not:

• Very Ahrefs-centric. Most demos assume you’re using the tool.
• No prioritization or lean strategies
• Not built with startup realities in mind

Price: Free

Moz SEO Essentials

MOZ is basically a legend in the SEO software space. It's (I think) the first ever SEO platform launched, and certainly one that largely contributed to educating generations of SEO practitioners.

And needless to say, MOZ offers a paid, beginner-to-intermediate course that covers most core SEO concepts.

Moz built this program for marketing professionals looking to deepen their understanding of SEO through structured learning.

As a result, the course includes multiple modules, quizzes, and a certificate upon completion.

It will teach you about SEO fundamentals, on-page elements, link building, and audits. However, while thorough, it’s not tailored to the fast-paced needs of startups, and you’ll likely need to skip or adapt large portions if you're doing this solo.

What’s good:

• Structured lessons and quizzes
• Strong on fundamentals
• Recognized certificate

What’s not:

• Slower-paced than most founders need
• No advice on modern, AI-driven SEO
• Not built for scrappy execution

Price: Paid (around $395)

Google SEO Fundamentals (UC Davis on Coursera)

This course, led by UC Davis and hosted on Coursera, takes a more academic approach to SEO. It’s part of a larger SEO specialization and digs deep into how search engines function at a technical level.

And so, you’ll learn about crawling, indexing, ranking, as well as keyword strategy and on-page optimization.

But here's the catch. The course is informative, that's true. But the structure and pace are more suited to learners who want theory over quick wins. And that might not be ideal if your goal is to move fast and break things.

What’s good:

• Deep, technical look at SEO
• Recognized certificate

What’s not:

• Long. Slow. Academic.
• Little startup context
• No real-world execution tips

Price: Free (or paid if you want certification)

Semrush Academy

I have to say, I've been impressed how much effort (and resources, including money - they did buy Backlinko and Traffic Tank to expand the academy, after all...) Semrush Academy dedicates to growing this set of short courses.

Taught by in-house experts and industry practitioners, the Academy courses introduce you to every aspect of SEO: keyword research, competitor analysis, technical SEO, and more.

The content is easy to digest and well-produced, especially for beginners looking to get familiar with SEO terminology and tools.

However, the academy requires an SEMrush subscription, making it a good SEO course if you're their customer already.

What’s good:

• Bite-sized content
• Strong on keyword research
• Some lessons by industry pros

What’s not:

• Very tool-driven (you’ll need a Semrush account)
• No startup focus
• Content strategy is generic

Price: Free (with Semrush account)

Here's a quick breakdown of how these courses compare—based on what really matters for startup founders:

I know that I've been talking a lot about what makes good SEO courses for startups, and why only some courses fit the bill, and so on.

But I want to drive this issue home a bit further. And the best way to do it is by showing you what building organic visibility for your startup actually looks like.

Because let's face it; you’re not trying to grow a blog. Or rank for generic top-of-funnel keywords. Or position your company in local Maps results.

You’re trying to:

• Get in front of your ideal customers
• Drive real signups, not just pageviews
• Scale a lean, repeatable growth channel

I like to think about it in terms of stages that you have to go through. And naturally, these stages might look differently for different startups. However, in general, you need to go through these three stages to kickstart your SEO

Stage 1: Foundation

There's no way to achieve startup SEO goals without laying the groundwork first. You absolutely must get the basics right. There is no way around it.

And in practice, this means:

• Audience and market research: Identifying your search personas (vs. buying personas). Naturally, there is an overlap between the two but there are also certain unique characteristics of the people you are trying to attract online that you need to be aware of. (I.e., the person searching for the software within the company might not be the person who's pulling out the credit card to buy it.)
• Building authority: There is no chance that your startup would ever rank with out it.
• Gearing up the site: And that doesn't just mean technical SEO but also building up the taxonomy, and more. The goal is to organize your site so Google (and AIs) understand it (homepage, features, use cases, comparison pages)...
• Research: From topics to keywords to develop the complete SEO strategy for your startup.
• Tracking: Set up analytics and search tracking properly from day one

This is also when you start producing content—but it’s content with a job to do. Not “thought leadership”, etc. but pages that solve, convert, and scale.

Stage 2: Traction

This is where the first signs of growth show up.

You double down on what’s working:

• Your best-performing keywords? Add more content around them.
• Pages that convert? Build supporting internal links.
• Competitive gaps? Go after them while you’re still agile.

This is also the time to:

• Begin link building (yes, it matters—but smart, not spammy)
• Optimize existing content (meta tags, internal links, search intent)
• Build authority trust through consistency

You’re not chasing traffic. You’re chasing impactful traffic.

Stage 3: Scale

At this stage, SEO has become a real, fully functioning marketing channel.

And that's not because you went viral. But because you showed up, week after week, with:

• Structured content
• Focused optimization
• Strategic execution

So, this is the time to start scaling your efforts to:

• Target more competitive terms
• Build deeper authority
• Leverage clusters, automation, and smart workflows

This is when your SEO engine stops needing hand-cranking every week. It starts compounding.

A quick note here: I’m not saying these are bad courses.

They might be great for the right audience.

But if you’re a startup founder trying to get traction fast, weeeeellll, they’re probably not your best option.

Yoast SEO Academy

Yoast has a huge library of SEO training content. But most of it revolves around using the Yoast plugin in WordPress. And the strategies are usually geared toward bloggers or small local businesses.

If you’re a founder building a product in a competitive space, this course just won’t go deep enough—or fast enough—for what you need.

ClickMinded SEO Course

ClickMinded offers solid foundational SEO training with a marketing team lens. It's highly polished. But it assumes you’ve got time to learn frameworks, build systems, and execute like a full-time content team.

That’s not most startups.

If you’re solo or scrappy, it’ll feel like too much overhead—and not enough traction.

Udemy SEO Mega-Courses

There are dozens of popular SEO courses on Udemy. Some are 20+ hours long. Some have 100,000+ students.

The problem? They’re not curated for quality. And many are out of date or hyper-focused on content tactics that don’t reflect how modern SEO actually works (especially post-AI search).

If you go this route, tread carefully. You may end up spending more time unlearning than learning.

Startup SEO is its own beast.

It’s lean. It’s fast-moving. It has to work with limited time, budget, and team. That means you need a different kind of roadmap.

Most SEO courses weren’t built for that. They aim wide, miss the mark, and leave founders piecing together strategies that don’t fit.

A few offer a decent starting point.

One was built for the job.

👉 Ready to build an SEO strategy that actually works for your startup? Check out Stacking Pancakes