The knowledge that will help you start your SEO career. Courses, conferences & knowledge sources to set you apart.
There are many SEO courses and training out there and if you are starting your SEO career, you probably have more doubts than certainties about how to do it. During my 4 years leading the HR area for an SEO agency, interviewing SEO managers, and helping many of my colleagues to grow professionally, I have detected some learning patterns.
Here are 4 tips to jumpstart your SEO career.
1) Your attitude is what will define you.
Something that caught my attention is that all the SEO Managers I know belong to different areas of study. Some of them are Programmers, Social Communicators, Lawyers (yes, really), Web Developers, Graphic Designers, Publicists, Psychologists, etc.
Each one approached the world of SEO for different reasons, but among them, the most popular is that they had a website or a project and wanted to generate profits with it.
They began to see that a source of income came from the organic channel, and so they started to get into it, analyzing and testing how it worked to rank sites in Google. Others, on the contrary, came to SEO by chance, but the experimental attitude and the commitment to the results ended up bringing them to this profession.
So the first point that will define that you can do SEO, is to maintain a proactive, experimental, and committed to results attitude. I assure you that every successful SEO professional has this.
2) SEO Training
There are many SEO courses and training that can be good for this profession. But there is also much complementary (and essential) knowledge that can serve as an introductory to topics that you will see as SEO & in a job interview environment can be a great differential.
Here I share some resources, tools & conferences to start your SEO career.
HTML courses:
It is essential to know how HTML, the most basic language of modern programming, works. The good news is that there are many good, accessible and comprehensive courses about it. One example is Code Academy, whereas you take the course, you will do online exercises and accentuate your knowledge.
This knowledge is essential for everything related to Technical SEO or SEO On-Site. While you don’t need to know how to program to optimize a site for SEO, you do need to understand how a website works to make recommendations and implementations according to its architecture & structure.
Google Ads:
The basis of any SEO project is the identification & correct use of keywords. A keyword is a word that users use to search.
Although the Google Ads platform is designed for paid campaigns, it is one of the best tools to select keywords for an SEO strategy. To learn how to use it, Google offers excellent free courses.
In the future, this tool will also give you guidelines to better work the combination of SEO & SEM and make decisions that favor the ROI of the project.
Google Analytics:
An SEO who cannot measure his work is not an SEO.
Google Analytics is the tool that every SEO should use. Knowing how to use the tool & being able to interpret its data will give you the ability to analyze and measure the impact that your work as an SEO is generating.
Just like the Google Ads Keyword Planner tool, there is an analytics course that Google provides for those who want to learn and professionalize its use. While it’s not as simple as the previous one I mentioned, everything you need to know is available on their site for free. You just need to dedicate a little time to it.
It is also important to participate in SEO conferences, either in person or virtually. This will allow you to keep up to date with what others are sharing and what is being talked about in the industry. In addition, it is also valuable to participate in digital conferences (not only SEO), because these conferences provide broader knowledge and often from this knowledge derive more enriching strategies.
SEOday:
This conference is aimed not only at SEOs but at all those who are part of the digital environment around the world.
At SEOday you will be able to listen to talks given by international leading SEO companies such as The New York Times & Google, while international speakers will be presenting their expertise from other markets.
eCommerce day:
The eCommerce Day or eDay is the most important e-commerce conference in Argentina and belongs to a series of conferences at the LATAM level.
Participating in this type of conference not only enriches your knowledge about other dynamics, digital strategies, or platforms but also allows you to interact with leading digital professionals.
3) Constant critical reading
In SEO there are no absolute truths. Many times Google announces a change as important and then it is not reflected in results in an effective way. For that reason, SEO managers read blogs of references, and experimental cases and analyze SEO success stories to be able to formulate a critical view on it.
Because they read a lot of things and not all of them are true or at least they allow themselves to be suspicious until they prove that they are real.
For this reason, I recommend you some blogs that you can not stop following:
MOZ SEO guide:
To start your SEO career, MOZ’s beginner’s guide will be a great help. MOZ is a leader in SEO metrics, tools & services. Their guide gives you access to small free classes divided into modules and you don’t need previous knowledge.
In addition, I recommend these three blogs as sources of knowledge and innovation:
Of course, developing a critical vision requires experience, and this brings us to the last but not least point: practice.
4) Practice, practice, and more practice…
No matter what your field of study is, nothing can be learned from theory alone, and SEO is no exception to this rule.
Practice is a big part of learning and is what will give you experience in the field.
Therefore, the best way to put into practice what you have learned is to have your site or project where you can test what you are learning. Even if it is something small or micro-niche, having been able to apply some of your knowledge will make your start in the SEO industry faster, more successful & fun.
I hope these 4 tips will help you start a successful SEO career!
