Since Higher Education On SEO Lacking, What To Do?

[aemathenge]

Search Engine Optimization is no longer the preserve of webmasters bags of tricks. It has become a mainstream business line item. With this in mind, the need for getting an education about it is increasing.

Higher Education institutions are lagging far behind within the internet marketing revolution which means that there is a dearth of official degrees based on SEO. In this regard, it seems that it is up to agencies, brands and individuals to seek and assimilate a self-taught curriculum. This is the only way to guide not only themselves, but also their respective clients. It is the only way to intelligently interpret reports on internet marketing data as well as hire the requisite talent.

The most viable option today it to take advantage of the numerous free materials available online to get a basic understanding of SEO and then use the skills learnt practically.

The major problem here is that this industry is moving extremely fast. It is very difficult to know not only WHO but also WHAT to listen to.

My question then is which SEO learning avenue would you recommend that is relevant to 2015 and beyond?

Do you know of a University that caters for Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing?

 

[elcidofaguy]

Hi Aemathenge,

That some great points and questions which you raise! A lot of collages/universities have courses for Internet Marketing etc.... But I doubt any of them touch on the SEO subject in detail when it comes to gaming the SERPs (search engine results page) - otherwise known as grey/black hat seo... Further at the uni level its more about phd students looking into developing new search algo's and approaches...

A few years ago - SEO was much easier, however as G has rapidly evolved its algo its becoming much harder to game the serps, especially with newcomers whom can get easily lost with either outdated stuff which does not work any longer or worse yet which can damage your rankings negatively - as a big part of G's algo is about detecting that...

Being blunt when I look at SERP results - its easy to see that most of them have manipulated the rankings... The older domains have got away with it as they now have domain authority and can change course but for new sites its a different game with regards to ranking these days...

If you really want to learn SEO in detail - my best advice is to look at G's algo from an academic point of view with understanding how it ranks websites... In order to do that my best advice is that you need to learn how to implement a SEO audit which covers on page and off page.... As G has around 200 ranking factors - you'll be looking at around 50 - 100 pages plus with it being jammed packed full of analysis and recommendations... If you can learn how to do a SEO audit - you're way ahead of most people! Beyond that its about implementing your own experiments and keeping on top of all of G's algo updates and reactions/analysis of SEO's reporting on its impact...

In addition its worth noting that social media is also a great place to get traffic.... as well as list building... So one shouldn't get too wrapped around the axel with just focusing on ranking on the serps alone these days.... Especially from a business point of view with relying on G only - its far too risky... So my best advice is to diversify!!!

Its a very detailed subject which you've raised... I could probably discuss this with you for days on end lol... But I'll stop there for the time being ;-)

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Sid

 

[aemathenge]

Tell you what.

Give me a starting point. A link perhaps where a neophyte should start in your personal opinion.

I will try to work out a series made purposely for us neophytes here at Webmaster Sun to learn SEO and you and other experts here can guide us.

What do you say? Are you game?

 

[elcidofaguy]

If I can help with pointing out stuff in getting folks started then that's cool by me.... If you have a website - let me know and on my part - I can tell you which things to look out for and what to investigate.... However I can't offer too much time, just pointers as I'm way up to my neck with many other things...

From the basics it would be to investigate keyword rankings on serps as to how this reflects with on-page seo... i.e. heading tags, anchor text, url format, keyword density, image alt tags.... title and meta description... Site performance etc...

For off-page its about looking at your competition, assessing their backlink profile, efforts needs to for your site to rank, your backlink profile (maybe you have a penalty) etc...

You need to think about G's different search parameters and how this fits into your audit... here is a good place to [URLnf="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/200-parameters-in-google-algorithm/15457/"]start[/URLnf].

For advice on beginning an audit - you can find a ton of stuff out there... Try [URLnf="http://moz.com/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit"]this [/URLnf]for starters...

Cheers,

Sid

 

[aemathenge]

aemathenge

That is all we need. Thank you for pointing us in the right direction.

 

[arronmattwills]

Very insightful post on the importance of S E O as higher education. But it is not enough to put it in book, because Search Engine Optimization trends keeps on changing. Today's successful strategy becomes tomorrow's outdated idea. Many coding techniques, so many tips to online business growth.

Ultimately it is moving towards investment and advertisement. Without advertisement there will be no profit for search engine companies, so down the line there will be more importantace to paid leads.
It is better to focus in online bidding trends also.