As the world gets back to business after the pandemic, companies need to build more momentum than ever before. Online activity is proving to be stronger than ever.
If you haven’t been following my advice about focusing on SEO over the past couple of years during the pandemic, now is the time to focus. For many businesses, this means laying the foundation for a new SEO program.
Many companies are investing in their staff, either by reskilling employees or hiring new people. These people will need SEO training.
And it’s not just the marketing folks. SEO should be a strategic initiative across your organization if you want to be truly successful. That’s because more than just the marketing team has a stake in your website. And they all have competing priorities.
So as we adjust to how the pandemic has changed business, we need to look to the future. And part of that future is getting your staff ready to execute a highly successful SEO program so you can be found online.
Two Major Benefits of Online SEO Training
One of the things that came out of the pandemic was a surge in virtual learning. Online learning offers many benefits, including reduced costs. And online SEO training can be excellent as a quick primer or continuing education.
But today, there is a distinction between regular old online training with a set of static videos, and a new approach to SEO training that reimagines the classroom online. If you really want to get a serious SEO education, nothing beats interactive online training.
Here are two major reasons why.
1. A Comprehensive, Real-Time SEO Curriculum
When we designed our new online SEO training, we wanted it to be a university-level, intensive curriculum. That is because some online courses lack the depth and breadth needed to fully understand the monumental topic of SEO.
When we used to run our classroom SEO training here in Simi Valley (pre-pandemic), it was 4.5 days of learning and included everything a person would need to know to seriously boost their SEO program.
We took that same rigorous training and adapted it to an interactive online environment.
Here’s a peek into all the topics we cover:
- The Importance of SEO
- SEO concepts
- Meet the search engines
- Website anatomy
- Search now and in the future
- Content for SEO
- Mobile SEO
- Local search
- Linking strategies
- Siloing concepts
- Technical SEO
- Best practices
As a real-time training format, we have the ability to tweak the curriculum and the content how we see fit to speak to current events. Regular online courses, once recorded, do not have the flexibility of changing content to reflect the newest trends.
While the fundamentals of SEO largely stay the same, a pre-recorded course can’t handle, for example, the latest algorithm changes. Or how SEO strategies have changed as a result of the pandemic. We can.
2. Access to Experts, Different Learning Formats and Community
While virtual learning is on the rise and definitely has its place, the reality is that completion rates for online courses rarely rise above 15 percent.
This could be due in part to distraction and competing priorities. As this article points out about online learning: “Twentieth century instructional methods just don’t work as well for busy, distracted 21st-century learners.”
You also have to consider the different generations of learners, all of which prefer different styles of learning. Plus, learning solo can be unmotivating for some.
The good news is that virtual SEO training is evolving. No longer will a set of static videos meet the needs of virtual learners.
For many, learning is inherently social. One of the pioneers of online learning, Andrew Ng, has said that (link above) traditional learning methods are often the most successful:
“Students sit with their best friends, they work on problems together, they critique each others’ solutions — lots of pedagogical studies show that these more interactive modes of student engagement result in better student learning.”
This is the type of community we are working towards with our online SEO training.
I’ve seen time and time again how the social component works in a classroom setting. So we want to be able to facilitate the type of support that comes from in-person classes.
We do that through things like an online forum where students can connect and live question-and-answer sessions with the instructors.
Start Planning Now
Learning a complex subject like SEO does not happen in a few hours of passively watching an online course. You need a format where there are no distractions, and where you can learn and collaborate with colleagues to solve your real-world SEO problems.
As we move out of uncertain times into more of the unknown, a solid SEO strategy is critical to business survival. Consider how you will get your team positioned for productivity and growth.
If you’re ready for your teams to learn SEO together, what are the next steps? There are not many top-notch interactive SEO courses that teach students how SEO really works. Go for quality, look at reputation, review testimonials and consider how the investment will set your business up for success.
This is a new SEO world and you do not bring a knife to a gunfight. Train your troops or settle for poor results.
When you’re ready to start or improve your SEO program, our online SEO training membership experience will teach you how to earn better results — more website traffic, online visibility, qualified leads, sales, customers AND revenue. Sign up here and start training today!
