What to do when your SEO education plateaus?
-
Suppose you have been working in SEO for several years and learned all of the fundamentals of search engine optimization and most of the advanced tactics?
How do you continue to grow your knowledge base and maintain the sense of personal growth in your career?
-
Have you looked into digging deeper into the different search verticals? Video, Local etc.
-
While I am far from plateauing in SEO, I find knowledge growth to be the 1 thing that stimulates me more than anything so here is my overall plan (maybe it will help you.)
I went through all the jobs posted online that I would be interested in - SEO, digital marketing, marketing manager, CMO, etc. and pulled out every skill they mention. I saved each one as a unique value so if 3 jobs mentioned "keyword research" I had it in my data 3 times. Then I sorted the table by how often those skills were mentioned. I have focused my education over the last year on the ones that "most" jobs required. When I get tired of studying SEO, I look at things I don't know in PPC or analytics, copywriting, blogging, web design & UX, etc.
I also looked at the "fringe" topics on Inbound (fringe to my knowledge base.) I find those topics that "sort of" relate to what I'm doing and get better. I want to increase my programming knowledge, my database skills and my sales psychology. I don't have to do every job myself but it definitely helps to understand the basics and sometimes the intermediate levels of each.
Some of the skills I have been working on this year from the list: Dashboarding, ROI analysis, PPC, link building, branding, social media strategies, B2B sales, press release writing, Adobe suite, Adsense/Adwords/Analytics, Hootsuite & Twitter tools, WC3, CSS, PHP, eDM, and specifically, I'm studying the FMCG industry because of my limited experience in it and desire to work in that sector one day.
Hope that helps - when I'm bored, I change data sources, as well. I read about 300 blogs in Google Reader, about 50 in Flipboard and I read Inbound.org daily. Between the three, I get a LOT of great stuff to read. I also follow about a billion people on Twitter so I see a lot of new content as it's being released. Just figure out your incoming and change it up a bit if you're bored of it.
~Matt
-
Thanks Irving. I definitely don't know it all, but it is getting harder to find knowledge gaps and learn new things. I like the idea of learning to program but have never been able to actually get very far.
-
Agreed. The programming and technical education alone could occupy many for a long time.
-
I have heard that a good remedy is to invite @tomcritchlow to play a game of chess.
-
I bet i could stump you hehe
i just stay up to date with the latest SEO changes since it's constantly evolving and Google is continually coming out with new products. also learning programming code as it relates to SEO practices is good because it helps you communicate better with the dev team.
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
-
Where to Look for a Standard 9-5 SEO Job
Hello, I'm looking for a standard 20-30 hour a week SEO job. I'd like to make $30/hour. My resume is here. So far I'm making a list of all the SEO companies in Boise, Idaho. Then I'm going to also call up the larger companies in my local area. I'm interested in knowing how to best look for a job, and if there are any national companies where I could do work locally for. Let me know what other information I can provide.
Industry News | | BobGW0 -
Great SEO Agency
Hi again all, I have appreciated all the help from the community as we are rebuilding our site. Currently we are looking for a great SEO consulting firm to help us with a number of key SEO related tasks and strategies. I have looked through the recommended list MOZ provides: http://moz.com/community/recommended, but I wanted to get everyone's take on who they thought was the "best" - on that list or otherwise. We are looking for an agency that can help us optimize the site, create an ongoing strategy, help with link building, help with sitemap creation and management (5 million + pages, primarily dynamic) and possibly help with content. Anyone have recommendations they could share? Thanks David
Industry News | | BestRide0 -
What are other SEO's calling themselves now?
I am piggy backing off of Rand's latest Whiteboard Friday: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-we-cant-just-be-seos-anymore-whiteboard-friday (It is an awesome post if you haven't checked it out yet.) I just want to hear some feedback from other industry professionals. Have you started defining/communicating your business as more than just, I do SEO? If so, what are you calling yourselves now and why? How has that been working out for you?
Industry News | | VentaMarketing1 -
SEO Conferences - Which to start with!???
My SEO / Internet marketing business (I also have contractors that handle web design and development) is going well and growing and I am interested in attending one of the many conferences. (SEO is my passion but I am more of a marketing guy than super technical) I was hoping for a little bit of advice from somebody who has been to some of them where would be good to start. Where should I start? I am in Wichita, KS. which is in the middle of the US (bring on the yellow brick road and Dorothy jokes) and don't plan to leave the country for one. PUBCON, SES, SMX, SEARCHFEST, MOXCON, PUBCON...... Thank you very MUCH for any advice. Super appreciate it! Matthew
Industry News | | Mrupp440 -
Does Sticky Post in WordPress Have Impact on SEO?
Hi, I Have a Blog that I have attached a "sticky" post, obviously the content in the "sticky" post is the content that I want to ensure that everyone sees. I do update, by adding new posts daily or at least everyother day, my question is: Is the "sticky" post hurting, helping, or is it indifferent to SEO? I know the SE enjoy fresh content, and was wondering does that fresh content have to pop-up at the top of the page otr not. Any input would be great. Thanks. Jimmy
Industry News | | jimmy02250 -
Build a site, do SEO work on it and sell it?
Does anybody do this? With success? I keep finding industries right here in my local area (concrete work, home security, painting) that have 4-5 local companies that are competing and NONE of them are doing even the most BASIC items to seo their site or capitalize on ANYTHING online. I could pick 7-8 of these industries and have somebody who works for me spend a couple hours a week on each building links and writing a half way interesting blog post, etc. and once they rank higher than most of the competition sell em for 2-3 grand I bet, especially since I can prove how much traffic they are getting. Thoughts? Thanks for weighing in. Matthew
Industry News | | Mrupp440 -
Where do i find Local SEO Clients?
Hey, So i've been doing SEO for a while now and know a lot of tactics and a lot of ways to get my/others sites hire. I know good software (and have that software with full licenses and know the methods to use it in whitehat ways that will work well), internal content linking, title/description, webmaster tools (both google and bing), sitemaps etc... I have clients and my own sites that i have managed to get high in google, as well as my own local site that is number 1 in Google for my hometown + SEO, but that only gets about 80 searches a month and gets me very little if any phone calls a week. I've also just ordered 250 high quality business cards, that i spent ages designing to look awesome.. If these work well i'll print some more and stick all over the place... I currently have 2 local clients, 1 is a local web agency who every client they have they pay me a specific amount to boost that company in Google and the other is just a family friend who pays me a small amount a month to build links for him. I'd like to have 10-15+ clients all on my payroll with a nice amount of income that i can live off. I just finished full-time school and am just coming into the big wide world and have for paid for my new laptop, desktop, 2 monitors, SEO software licenses and SEOMoz account from niche blogs, software and SEO coaching and such.. I've built a brilliant online portfolio for people and have had a lot of great feedback from online clients. But i can only earn around $10-$110 per online client for SEO and around $8/hour for coaching... I'd like to be able to make that a LOT more. I do web/graphic design as well and have built a nice portfolio for that as well. So back to the main question, how did you and how do i get local clients? Thanks!
Industry News | | pompano210 -
Is using Turkish characters like ş, ğ , ü in the URLs better for SEO?
My web site is Turkish. And my keyword is "yurtdışı üniversite" I want to know, using Turkish characters like ş, ğ , ü in my URLs better for SEO? http://www.studyzone.com.tr/haber-detay/2011/06/21/yurtdışı-üniversite-kayıtları-için-acele-edin! OR http://www.studyzone.com.tr/haber-detay/2011/06/21/yurtdisi-universite-kayitlari-icin-acele-edin!
Industry News | | apesteli0