What's the "most valuable indirectly related skill" to SEO worth learning?
-
Hi, All!
I have a little time on my hands that's not taken up by client work or our own marketing. What would you say is a skill worth learning during that time?
My background is not techie, so while I've picked up a teeny bit of knowledge about code, etc. on the way, I still don't really know how to code, use APIs, etc. So I was thinking something along those lines, but anyone have specific suggestions? And resources for whatever you suggest?
Thanks!
Aviva
-
For years I would put "Expert with Excel" on my Resume because I thought I knew it all. Now I know that I only understood the surface of a gigantic beast of a program!
-
If the 'technical' side of SEO doesn't appeal then another useful set of skills is media production. Before I got into SEO my calling was working in video and radio production - writing, interviewing, filming & editing. I have found these skills invaluable particularly while working with small & micro businesses. If content is king, then the ability to produce high-quality multimedia content on a low budget will always be a welcome asset. I find it opens the door to more interesting SEO strategies.
The best book on film production I've ever read is Shot by Shot by Steven d. Katz. It's more tuned towards film directing, but it's a great way to throw yourself in the deep end if it's something you'd be interested to learn.
Radio, I've found, is not as useful online - unless producing a podcast. Probably the most critical skill to get your head around on radio is interview skills. Look up Nardwuar the Human Serviette - he's a bit.. different.. but probably one of the most professional interviewers in the radio world today. If he's taught me anything it's research, research, research!
Oh and Photoshop! Photoshop never stops being useful. I'd go mad without it. There are hundreds of great guides online.
-
Great suggestion... I use Excel every day... but I also use the Google Document Spreadsheet because it does most of the same things as Excel and is in the cloud and you can share documents with other people..
At my office we share keyword research, ecommerce databases, profit margin calculation, inventory, adwords data... all of that with google docs.
Very valuable.
-
Great suggestion... if you can increase the conversion rate of a site by 50% your client will be IMPRESSED!
-
I agree with EGOL but wanted to share another helpful tip, Microsoft Excel.
MS Excel can be learned via online classes or formally with an instructor. If I recall correctly when I learned many years ago the in person classes were broken up into Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced classes with each being 1-2 days. If you have not taken any Excel classes, I would recommend adding one to your mix of training.
-
Knowledge / deep understanding of code (html, css, programming of any kind) is a good to have set of skills in your SEO bag but I don't think is the main valuable skill a good SEO must poses.
In my opinion the set of skills targeting Conversion Optimization (rules, procedures, UX related, A/b testing) is the most important additional 'skill set' you need to master in order to be able to really provide good SEO advice and run a normal professional SEO campaign. CO (Conversion Optimization) covers a lot of fields but at least knowing the basis will make you a much better SEO.
Hope it helps.
-
I would start learning about code.... and I would start building my own website. Pick a subject that you know well and start to write about it and make a little money from it with adsense.
This way you will have a stake in your work - you will learn better that way. And when you see a little money coming in it will give you incentive.... it could become a profitable hobby and then develop into a nice business over time.
Do something that pays.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Pagination and matching title tags - does it matter when using rel="prev" and "next" attributes?
I'm looking at a site with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place, to deal with pagination. However, the pages in each paginated category have identical page titles - is this an issue? Rand gives an example of how he'd vary page titles here, to prevent problems, though I'm not entirely sure whether this advice applies to sites with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place: https://moz.com/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience Any advice would be welcome - many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Any issue? Redirect 100's of domains into one website's internal pages
Hi all, Imagine if you will I was the owner of many domains, say 100 demographically rich kwd domains & my plan was to redirect these into one website - each into a different relevant subfolder. e.g. www.dewsburytilers..com > www.brandname.com/dewsbury/tilers.html www.hammersmith-tilers.com > www.brandname.com/hammersmith/tilers.html www.tilers-horsforth.com > www.brandname.com/horsforth/tilers.html another hundred or so 301 redirects...the backlinks to these domains were slim but relevant (the majority of the domains do not have any backlinks at all - can anyone see a problem with this practice? If so, what would your recommendations be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fergclaw0 -
My site has a loft of leftover content that's irrelevant to the main business -- what should I do with it?
Hi Moz! I'm working on a site that has thousands of pages of content that are not relevant to the business anymore since it took a different direction. Some of these pages still get a lot of traffic. What should I do with them? 404? Keep them? Redirect? Are these pages hurting rankings for the target terms? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Difference in Number of URLS in "Crawl, Sitemaps" & "Index Status" in Webmaster Tools, NORMAL?
Greetings MOZ Community: Webmaster Tools under "Index Status" shows 850 URLs indexed for our website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). The number of URLs indexed jumped by around 175 around June 10th, shortly after we launched a new version of our website. No new URLs were added to the site upgrade. Under Webmaster Tools under "Crawl, Site maps", it shows 637 pages submitted and 599 indexed. Prior to June 6th there was not a significant difference in the number of pages shown between the "Index Status" and "Crawl. Site Maps". Now there is a differential of 175. The 850 URLs in "Index Status" is equal to the number of URLs in the MOZ domain crawl report I ran yesterday. Since this differential developed, ranking has declined sharply. Perhaps I am hit by the new version of Panda, but Google indexing junk pages (if that is in fact happening) could have something to do with it. Is this differential between the number of URLs shown in "Index Status" and "Crawl, Sitemaps" normal? I am attaching Images of the two screens from Webmaster Tools as well as the MOZ crawl to illustrate what has occurred. My developer seems stumped by this. He has submitted a removal request for the 175 URLs to Google, but they remain in the index. Any suggestions? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
"No Index" Extensions
Hi there, We run an e-commerce website and we are aware of our duplicate page content/title problems. We know about the "rel canonical" tag and the "no index" tag but I am more interested in the latter. We use a CMS called Magento. Now, Magento has an extension that allows you to use the "no follow" and "no index" tag on products. Google has indexed many of our pages and I wanted to know if applying the "no index" tag on duplicate pages will instruct Google to remove the duplicate url's it has already indexed. I know the tag will tell Google not to index a page but what if I apply it to a product already indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iBags0 -
Who is a good provider of many class C hosting IP's ?
this is to host about 80 different websites all in the same niche, all doing very well in ranking for their specific keywords, currently at hostgator seohosting plan, but hostgator has issues I do not want to continue dealing with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | beehappy0 -
Indirect SEO boost from links
I have 2 ecommerce sites, each with a blog. I am increasing my linkbuilding efforts, but I don't want to build too many links directly to my 2 sites over a short period of time. I have decided that I will add a certain number of links to sites/pages that are already linking to my main sites (for example, a blog post on my blog, guest post on another blog, article submission, etc.). How much of a benefit can I expect in terms of rankings? Has anyone tested this out or experimented with something like this? What are the pros and cons? I appreciate thoughtful comments.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
In order to improve SEO with silos'urls, should i move my posts from blog directory to pages'directories ?
Now, my website is like this: myurl.com/blog/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html So I use silos urls. I'd like to improve my ranking a little bit more. Is it better to change my urls like this: myurl.com/category1/blog/mypost.html or maybe myurl.com/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Max840