Despite the burgeoning number of structural equation modeling (SEM) studies and methodological complexities in Applied Linguistics (AL) research, current SEM practices in the field are devoid of variety when it comes to using statistical software programs (see Ghanbar & Rezvani, 2023). To boost the methodological rigor of AL studies regarding using SEM software programs, in this paper we aimed to introduce a less frequently used, yet powerful SEM program, SmartPLS, which, despite its widespread use in other fields like management and marketing research, has less frequently been exploited in AL. To do so, we first explicated basic issues in SEM, and then we showed how SmartPLS with an array of options can handle different methodological complexities in modeling issues in two main types of constructs, that is, reflective and formative. In each type of models, different assessment steps have been explicated with presenting outputs from SmartPLS.