HubSpot SEO II Certification study plan

Map the five exam domains onto a personal tracker, weighting Domain 1 and Domain 4 at roughly double the time of Domains 2, 3, and 5.

Sketch a three-tier site architecture (home, hub, spoke) for a fictional 40-page site and label which pages should be indexable.

List the crawl paths a bot would take from the homepage and mark any orphan-risk pages in your sketch.

Define what a canonical URL is and write your own one-sentence rule for choosing one per page template.

Draft an internal linking plan that connects every spoke page to its hub and at least two sibling pages.

Explain in writing how URL structure, breadcrumbs, and navigation menus reinforce topical grouping.

Compare pillar-and-cluster versus flat architecture and justify a choice for a 200-page site.

Identify three common architecture mistakes (deep click depth, duplicate paths, thin category pages) and write a fix for each.

Classify 20 sample URLs as indexable, canonicalized, redirected, or blocked, and state the reasoning for each.

Write out the purpose of robots.txt, meta robots, X-Robots-Tag, and sitemaps, then note where each is applied.

Trace how a 301, 302, and 404 differ from a crawler's point of view and when each is appropriate.

Audit a public site's robots.txt and XML sitemap and note at least three observations.

Diagnose common indexing problems: soft 404s, redirect chains, canonical conflicts, and duplicate content across parameter URLs.

Explain Core Web Vitals metrics and name one realistic page-level fix per metric.

Describe how structured data and schema markup help crawlers interpret page content.

Draft a prioritized technical fix list ranked by likely impact on crawlability.

Build a keyword list of 30 terms split by search intent (informational, navigational, commercial, transactional).

Group those keywords into topic clusters and assign each cluster a target page from your Week 1 architecture.

Write search-intent notes explaining why each cluster maps to its page type.

Identify five keywords you would deliberately skip and justify each exclusion.

Draft a content brief for one cluster page including target keyword, secondary terms, outline, and internal links.

Optimize a sample page's title tag, meta description, H1, and subheadings for a chosen keyword without keyword stuffing.

Rewrite two paragraphs to improve clarity, answer intent earlier, and add a relevant internal link.

Explain how content refresh and consolidation decisions are made for underperforming pages.

Define the metrics that matter for SEO reporting: organic sessions, impressions, clicks, CTR, average position, and conversions.

Explain how to attribute organic conversions and where attribution commonly breaks.

Build a simple monthly SEO report template with a KPI table and a commentary section.

Interpret a sample month-over-month change and write a short diagnosis of likely causes.

Review all five domains and list weak spots from your tracker.

Write a 10-question self-test covering each domain and answer it without notes.

Re-explain the three concepts you found hardest in plain language.

Finalize a one-page cheat sheet of definitions and decision rules.