Unlike western medicine, SEO is mostly “self-taught.” Students read books and articles, visit SEO forums and attend conferences, and then apply what they learn to their sites. They observe the results, tweak, and repeat the cycle. Is there a better way to learn the subject?Before I give an answer, I’m going to give you two caveats. The first one is that search engine optimization as a practice is little more than a decade old; as a profession apart from being a webmaster, it is even younger. While there are currently a few certifications in the field, they are not universally recognized in the same way as a diploma from an accredited medical school.

The second one is that I’m hardly an SEO practitioner myself, aside from researching the field and writing appropriate content. I don’t actually do any significant work with HTML, I don’t study keywords, I’ve never tried to conduct a pay-per-click campaign, and most of what I’m going to talk about here is stuff I learned second hand.

But I have been watching the field closely for the past three years, and I’ve seen a certain “maturation” taking place. I hear a lot of real concern expressed about SEO scam artists, and I see a lot of people who are new to the field struggling to learn. Some have been calling for some kind of universally-recognized certification. At the end of 2005, Randfish lamented the lack of training opportunities available in the industry. The story has changed some since then, but you always have to wonder which ones to take seriously.

Let me illustrate this point. Google the phrase “SEO education” without quotes and you’ll get 1,180,000 hits. Try it with “SEO classes” and you’ll see 543,000 hits. Another likely combination, “SEO training,” yields 614,000 hits. And “SEO certification” gives you 238,000 hits, including a first-page placement for an SEO Chat article from 2005 wondering whether such certifications are a necessity, myth, or scam. Aside from the SEO Chat article, how do you know which entries to trust?

Until there are courses and/or certifications recognized by all the search engines, would-be SEOs will have to continue learning the field in a variety of ways, including, most importantly, in the school of experience. But there are more options out there now than there used to be. In this article I hope to bring a few to your attention that you might not have known about before.

Factors to Consider

When you think about your educational options in SEO and SEM, there are a number of factors you should consider. First, of course, is how much you already know. If you’ve been playing around with your own web site and experimenting with a few things to see if you can get it to rank better in the SERPs, you probably know more than you think. That’s especially true if you’ve been hanging around in SEO forums for a while, reading SEO-related articles, and perhaps even picked up a book on the topic (ebook or dead tree version). A beginning course on SEO is likely to be a waste of time, effort, and money for you. A more advanced course, on the other hand, or a conference, might be just what you need.

A second factor to consider is your learning style. Do you like to learn things quietly by yourself, perhaps on a computer? Or do you do better with a one-on-one instructor? Perhaps you enjoy a small classroom, with the opportunities for interaction and everybody getting the chance to voice their ideas. Or maybe you crave excitement and would relish the opportunity to meet a large group of people, all focused on the same kinds of things, with several instructors offering different approaches based on their differing experiences. And you’d be thrilled to come back from a few days of intense learning, energized and eager to apply what you heard.

The third factor you’ll need to consider is your budget. Some ebooks available on SEO are free of charge; others cost quite a bit. Some online courses on SEO are relatively inexpensive; others run $2,000 or more. Conferences are often expensive, but sometimes you can try to arrange some kind of discount (there are some that offer “scholarship” programs). Whichever option you choose, remember that getting an education in SEO is an ongoing process; no one is going to ever be able to teach you everything, because the Internet is always changing, and the search engines are always adjusting their algorithms right along with it.

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