At its heart, SEO (search engine optimisation) is simple. The basics of SEO haven’t really changed since Google first started dominating the way people search the internet: make each page relevant to the topic it’s about; keep to just one topic per page; get some proof that it’s a worthy page by getting links pointing back to it.

Of course, like everything that’s outwardly simple, there are a lot of small details that need to be right.

Which is where SEO training comes in.

There are a number of different ways you can get SEO training:

Learn online

This can be done via articles such as this one, videos on YouTube, forums that deal with internet marketing and quite a few other sources.

Whilst this can be cheap – depending on how much you value your time – you need a certain amount of knowledge in order to be able to filter out information that’s no longer relevant or is just plain wrong.

For instance, a lot of the finer details of techniques such as link building change over time as Google does its best to reduce or remove the influence of the spammier techniques.

Which means that, yes, links are still important but some links are better than others and how the link actually links is getting more important.

Buy a course or a book

Amazon is awash with books on SEO. It gave me 8,325 in the books section alone when I checked just now.

You can check through the reviews of these to get an idea about the usefulness of the book. If you do that, pay more attention to the reviews from people who are marked as verified purchasers.

The look inside feature will also help you decide whether or not you get on with the style of the book.

And remember to check the copyright date. Books take a while to get through the publishing process, so the more recent this is, the better.

Courses are more difficult to check unless they’re on a site like Udemy which allows feedback and tells you the number of subscribers to the course.

The best online courses are membership based as these have the revenue to keep abreast of current techniques.

Personal SEO training

This is probably the best way to learn SEO.

The biggest advantage is that you actually have to set the time aside to learn.

Unlike a book or an online course where you can put it aside and – at least in theory – come back to it later.

That discipline can make all the difference to your learning experience. As much as anything because you’ve actually been physically (and hopefully mentally) present during the training.

You can then use what you’ve learned in your training to implement SEO on your website.

The implementation isn’t difficult. If anything, most of it is repetitive and relatively mechanical.

Even if you decide to hire an SEO expert to carry out the work involved, it’s worth doing some training yourself so that you can check whether what’s being done on your behalf is using the right techniques.

That’s something I was taught at university and have never forgotten. It means that you know the right things to ask and can check that what’s being done to promote your site will be likely to work positively for you.

The SEO training will be totally tailored for your company and will take account of your business, where your target clients and customers look online and how you want to grow your business or get more profitable leads and clients.

It will include the following items:

• An analysis of your current website – if this isn’t correct, the rest of your SEO will be am uphill struggle at best. Most things are basic and easy to fix but this is an essential part of the SEO process. If you’re not in a particularly competitve industry, this may be all that you need to do!
• How to find the best keyword phrases to target. Google works best with words and you need to use the ones that your potential clients are using, not industry buzzwords.
• How best to get more visitors and prospects to your website and encourage them to contact you.

If you’d like help with your SEO, contact me and we can arrange something. My phone number is 07967 478272.