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University of California, Davis

Google SEO Capstone Project

University of California, Davis via Coursera

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Overview

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This capstone project is your opportunity to pull everything together into a polished portfolio piece. Throughout the course, you’ll walk through what a real SEO engagement looks like—from kicking off a project and identifying opportunities to making a case for updates, resourcing the work, and managing stakeholder expectations. It’s designed to mirror what it’s actually like stepping into an SEO role, whether that’s in-house, at an agency, or working with your own clients. Your projects will showcase the full range of your SEO skills: from technical know-how and strategic thinking to analysis, communication, and execution. It’s a chance to demonstrate not just what you’ve learned, but how you apply it. SEO continues to grow as a career field, and standing out means knowing how to deliver results across multiple areas of website optimization. Whether you’ve completed the full SEO Specialization or you’re just diving into this course, this project is built to help you take what you’ve learned and turn it into real, practical experience. You’ll choose a site to work on, identify optimization opportunities, and build a custom SEO strategy from the ground up. That includes keyword research, competitive analysis, on-page and metadata improvements, and a plan for presenting your recommendations clearly. You'll also practice how to pitch your ideas and manage client relationships—skills just as important as the technical work itself. By the end, you’ll walk away with a concrete example of your skills—ready to use in interviews, client work, or your next career move.

Syllabus

  • Milestone 1: Starting an SEO Project - Technical Review
    • In this first milestone, you’ll take on a core part of any SEO project: the technical audit. You’ll assess how well a site is performing behind the scenes by looking at crawlability, indexing, site health, and key technical elements. Once you've completed your audit, your job is to prioritize the findings based on impact, estimated level of effort, and the business value of addressing each issue. You'll then turn those insights into clear, actionable recommendations. By the end of this module, you'll have a structured audit summary that not only identifies technical issues, but also helps guide strategic decisions—just like you would in a real-world SEO role.
  • Milestone 2: Competitive and Keyword Analysis
    • In this milestone, you’ll dig into the research that forms the foundation of any strong SEO strategy. Your focus will be on understanding the landscape—what your competitors are doing, where the gaps are, and how to position your site to capture valuable search traffic. You’ll conduct a competitive analysis to see who’s ranking and why, then perform keyword research to identify high-potential opportunities. From there, you’ll map target keywords to core pages, recommending title tags and identifying key areas where your site can stand out. By the end of this module, you’ll have a clear picture of where your site fits in the market—and a keyword strategy built to compete.
  • Milestone 3: Content and Visibility Audit
    • In this milestone, you'll take a closer look at how visible and competitive your site’s content really is. You’ll review key on-page elements for quality and optimization, assess how your site stacks up in terms of authority and backlinks, and spot content gaps or missed opportunities. This stage is about identifying what’s working, what’s missing, and where you can make improvements that actually move the needle. You’ll develop a list of quick-win content ideas tied to your keyword research and propose enhancements that can improve both search rankings and overall visibility. By the end of this module, you’ll have a clear summary of your site’s current visibility and a plan for boosting performance through smart, targeted content updates.
  • Milestone 4: Packaging, Presenting and Pitching Your Findings
    • In this final milestone, you’ll bring together everything you’ve done throughout the course into a cohesive, client-ready SEO project. This is your opportunity to show not just what you’ve learned—but how you think, prioritize, and communicate like a real-world SEO professional. You’ll start by creating a high-level strategy summary that outlines the competitive landscape, key opportunities, your proposed action plan, and the estimated business impact. You’ll then record a short pitch video presenting this executive summary—just as you would to a stakeholder, client, or hiring manager.

Taught by

Rebekah May

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Reviews

4.0 rating, based on 1 Class Central review

4.7 rating at Coursera based on 494 ratings

Start your review of Google SEO Capstone Project

  • Hassan Riaz
    1
    Though it might be tempting to follow your creative instinct and kickstart a new project as soon as the previous idea has come to life, doing so without writing a thorough project review first is highly discouraged.

    This good practice has many benefits. It allows you to:

    Give credibility to the project,
    Know whether your goals have been met,
    Draw insight and gain experience,
    Consider making improvements,
    Keep a record of what was done and how the execution unfolded,
    Enrich your and your company’s knowledge...
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