I want to give you an honest, detailed look at what the SEO University cohort actually covers, because ‘six-week SEO course’ describes a wide range of things — from basic video collections to hands-on instruction with real feedback. This is the latter, and the curriculum reflects what is actually driving results in search right now.

Who the Cohort Is For

The cohort works best for people who already have a basic understanding of what SEO is and want to go deeper in a structured way. Complete beginners can participate but should do some pre-reading first. Experienced practitioners who want to fill specific gaps — particularly in structured data, entity SEO, or AI search — are well-served by the program.

Business owners, in-house marketers, agency professionals, and freelancers all typically get something different out of the same cohort, which is part of why the live format matters. Pre-recorded content cannot adapt to the room. A freelancer managing local clients has different questions than an in-house marketer at a regional healthcare system, and a live cohort can address both in the same session in a way a recorded course simply cannot.

Week One: Foundations and Technical SEO

We start with how search engines actually work — crawling, indexing, rendering — and then move into technical SEO fundamentals. This is not a review of basic concepts for its own sake; it is a calibration so everyone is working from the same model before we build on it. Topics include crawl architecture, robots.txt and sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, and common technical issues that silently cap site performance.

In practice, the technical audit portion of week one surfaces problems participants did not know they had. Rendering issues that prevent JavaScript content from being indexed. Duplicate content created by faceted navigation. Crawl budget waste from URL parameters. These are not exotic edge cases — they show up regularly, and finding them requires knowing what to look for.

Week Two: On-Page and Content Strategy

On-page SEO in 2026 is more than keyword placement. We cover topical authority architecture — how to plan content that establishes a site as a credible, connected source on a subject area rather than just a collection of pages targeting keywords. Internal linking strategy is covered here as well, because it is underestimated in most training.

Keyword research gets its own dedicated session within week two. Not just how to use a tool to find volume numbers, but how to map keyword intent to content types, how to identify topical gaps in an existing site, and how to prioritize what to build or improve first. The keyword research methodology I use with Salterra clients in Phoenix is the same one I walk through in the cohort — applied to participants’ actual sites so the output is immediately usable.

Week Three: Structured Data and JSON-LD

This is the week I invest the most energy in because it is my specialty and because it is where most practitioners have the biggest gaps. We cover the schema.org type system, how to write and validate JSON-LD, which schemas matter most in which contexts, and how structured data connects to entity recognition and AI search. Learning JSON-LD properly means understanding the graph model behind it, not just copying templates.

Participants write schema by hand during this week — not by configuring a plugin, but by actually constructing the JSON. That hands-on approach is deliberate. If you understand how to write it manually, you can debug any plugin output and catch errors that automated tools miss. By the end of week three, most participants have implemented or corrected schema on a real site and run it through Google’s Rich Results Test.

Week Four: Local SEO

Local search is a distinct discipline with its own signals and its own tools. We cover Google Business Profile optimization, local citation architecture, map pack ranking factors, review strategy, and local content structure. I draw on what I see working in the Phoenix and Tempe markets as concrete examples, but the principles apply anywhere.

The Phoenix metro is a useful case study because of its size and competitiveness. Categories like legal services, home services, and healthcare in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area are genuinely competitive local markets, which means the tactics that work there tend to generalize. Participants with clients in smaller markets often find the local SEO week gives them a meaningful edge over competitors who are not applying these signals consistently.

Week Five: AI Overview Optimization and Entity SEO

This is the section that most older courses are missing entirely. We cover how AI Overviews work, what content and structural signals influence citation selection, how to build entity authority for a site or a person, and how to audit your current content for AI readiness. The AI Overview optimization approach we use is based on studying what currently gets cited, not on speculation.

Entity SEO — establishing that a person, business, or organization is a distinct, recognized entity in Google’s knowledge graph — is woven through weeks three and five because it connects structured data and content authority in ways that a single week cannot fully cover. By week five, participants have enough foundation in schema and content strategy to understand how the entity layer ties everything together.

Week Six: Measurement, Reporting, and Next Steps

GA4, Google Search Console, rank tracking, and how to connect data to decisions. A lot of SEO courses skip measurement because it is unglamorous, but if you cannot demonstrate that what you are doing is working, you will not keep doing it — especially if you are managing SEO for a client or employer. We end with a review of each participant’s site and a prioritized set of next actions.

The analytics session is built around real reporting scenarios: what to show a client after 90 days, how to explain a traffic drop that was not your fault, how to set expectations when a site is in a competitive category. These are the conversations SEO practitioners actually have, and knowing how to frame them with data matters as much as knowing how to do the work.

Format and Access

Live sessions, small groups, direct instructor access throughout. I am the instructor, not a teaching assistant working from my notes. Questions about your specific site are welcome during sessions and I make myself available between sessions for cohort participants. You can also visit the external site at seouniversity.net for enrollment information and upcoming cohort dates.

Cohort size is intentionally limited. The workshop format only works when there is enough time to address specific participant questions, and that requires keeping the group small enough that individual sites and situations can be discussed. This is a different model than a certification program with hundreds of students moving through the same recorded content. The trade-off is that enrollment is limited each cycle.

For more on my background and teaching approach, the SEO instructor page covers how I got here and what philosophy I bring to instruction.