SEO Training
Filed under: Education and Training, SEO on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 by Simon HeseltineSo, you want to know about SEO? Where do you learn? What should you learn? How should you start? Well, there are a few options open to you, so let’s look at each.
Self taught, on the job:
This is always going to be one of the best ways for you to find out what works for your particular niche. No matter what other tactics you use to get your knowledge to the level it needs to be, this is where you’re going to get most of your experience.
Reading & Participation:
- Books are a fairly decent source of information; although in a lot of cases, they can tend to be outdated rather quickly in this industry.
- E-Books have the benefit of being more regularly updated and therefore, more current.
- Reading the right blogs can give you insight into industry trends and direction. Although, not many bloggers give out their closely guarded secrets to one and all.
- Forums are another great repository of information. By participating, you can help shape the discussion and get answers for problems that have perplexed you.
Conferences:
There are many conferences held throughout the world that purport to provide SEO training. Some concentrate on specific topics while others cover general topics with maybe topic specific tracks to follow. The topic of conferences was covered in our Monday post, so I’m not going to go into it again here.
On-site training:
On-site training gives you and your company personal attention with targeted training to your needs and directed towards your niche. So, when you apply the concepts you’ve learned, they’re easier for you to move forward with. Again, we covered this topic more in our Monday post.
What to learn?
It sounds simple, but what you need to know is what you don’t already know. When you’re starting out in SEO, you need to start with the basics:
- Keyword Research
- Site Architecture
- On-page Optimization
- Internal Linking
- External Linking
Once you have those down, you need to then look at other, wider topics to see how they can impact / assist with your SEO campaigns:
Where you are in your own knowledge impacts what you need to learn. We typically run training classes on client sites for people of all knowledge levels - from zero knowledge to experienced. As long as we work with the client beforehand to establish the topics and skill levels of the attendees, the course(s) are tailored to meet those needs. That’s what you need to be looking for your training partner to do as well.
