This post was sponsored by Wix. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
SEO courses seem to be everywhere. In that sense, they’ve become a dime a dozen. That’s generally because they’re both a lead magnet and a solution to a real problem.
To the latter, SEO isn’t an exact science, and it’s not like you can major in SEO at a traditional university. Instead, we have a disparate set of publications (like the one you are reading right now) offering collections of various resources and media from which to learn SEO.
Moreover, most practitioners “somehow” fall into SEO from other disciplines. So you’re really starting from scratch. It’s why a lot of SEOs start off following some pretty bad advice from some pretty questionable (yet highly popular) marketers.
It all makes for a pretty messed up learning curve when trying to “uplevel” (sorry for the marketing buzzword) your SEO know-how.
The solution? A set of organized material from knowledgeable sources built on sound pedagogical tactics—AKA a course.
The problem is, even if a course is free, it’s a serious time commitment. So before you fork over your money and/or your time, how do you know if a course is even worthwhile?
To help answer this question, I am going to take you behind the scenes of how I constructed our SEO course (while of course—pun intended—subtly selling you on the idea of taking our course as this is indeed a sponsored article; I just smashed like three “fourth walls” in one sentence).
Let’s get started. Here’s what I was looking for when I constructed the course and what you should look for when taking or recommending an SEO course.
1. Look For Course Instructors That Align with Specific Expertise
If you see a course and it’s just a bunch of random “big names” you’ve seen all over social media, run.
Yes, you do want a course created by experts in the field. However, it’s not as simple as having a “big name” on board.
To start, popularity on social media doesn’t always equate with actual SEO expertise. What you want to do is sniff out if the course instructors are there for the substance they provide or if this is just some sort of influencer marketing play.
When we went about creating our SEO course, one of the things I was adamant about was that the instructors we hired weren’t just experts in “SEO,” but experts in a specific type of SEO (local SEO, tech SEO, etc.). Meaning, it wasn’t just “Are these folks well-respected,” but are they known in the industry for focusing on that subtopic within wider SEO?
I was also looking for good communicators, not just the folks with the largest social followings. Being a good communicator on social media is different from being able to convey information in a more formal setting that relies on video as the medium.
Aside from areas of specialization, there are all sorts of practitioners who are used to doing SEO in different contexts. There are enterprise SEOs, in-house SEOs, consultants, SEOs who work at agencies, etc.
We thought it was important to have course instructors from all these backgrounds to offer a more complete set of approaches to various SEO considerations.
So if you’re looking into an SEO course, ask yourself:
Is there something to the instructors beyond their name recognition?
Do the instructors have strong subtopic alignment with their course sections?
Are the various subsets of SEO represented? (In-house, agency, etc.)
Do the instructors have previous presenting experience or just big social media followings?
1. There Is No ‘Best’ Course
If a course names itself something like “Best SEO Course”—run. There is no such thing as a “best” SEO course. There is a course that is great at dealing with advanced SEO topics, or courses that are geared towards specializing in something like tech SEO or local SEO, and there are courses that offer a wider breadth, etc.
The right course depends on your needs and objectives and where you are in your SEO journey. As such, the “best SEO course” is a fictitious construct.
To pull the curtain back, we were debating what to do with the term “best” for our course. The query “best SEO course” is certainly a lucrative one. Perhaps it would be strategic for our SEO to include the term “best” in the name of the course.
We decided not to do so even if there was an SEO benefit to it.
We had an idea of who we built the course for: We specifically wanted to help people having a hard time piecing together the topic and who are relying on doing so for their business needs and/or careers. (That’s not to say the course doesn’t apply to other demographics, but rather this is the primary pain point and audience we had in mind when designing the course).
This is basically because when we sat down to discuss the course, we all felt that when we were first starting out in SEO, it was a struggle to piece it all together.
This not only shows why there is no “best” SEO course, it also leads me to my next point.
2. Make Sure The People Behind The Course Are Genuine SEO Experts
Instructors are one thing. The people responsible for developing the course overall are another thing entirely. Now, I am not saying that if the people behind the course are not SEOs, they can’t create a wonderful course. What I am saying is that you better hope they gave creative control to the SEOs involved.
That’s not just for SEO accuracy per se (although that is a big part of it), it’s also because SEOs who have themselves struggled to grasp SEO concepts at some point in their career will better understand what to include in an SEO course.
Then, of course, there is the actual accuracy of the content. While the instructors may be a part of the process, they are far from in control of the course and what it ultimately looks like in post-production.
The question is, how can you tell if SEOs were involved in the backend of the course and to what extent?
There is no 100% tell-tale sign. However, I can say that from my experience working with our course, the way the course is structured might provide hints.
What do I mean?
Usually in an SEO course’s “on-page SEO” section, you would discuss concepts related to all things content, from E-E-A-T to strategy.
In our course, I purposefully did not put this course material under “On-Page SEO.” Rather, the deep dive into content, quality, and algorithms were placed under keyword research.
Why?
I felt that, often, the SEO industry thinks about topics like keyword research a bit too linearly and without enough depth and nuance. I wanted to contextualize keyword research by connecting it to a discussion about what creating quality content for the SERP looks like.
This is what I mean by looking at unique course structuring as a sign that there is real SEO expertise going into the material.
If a course follows an overly generic format, this (combined with other signals might) be a sign that folks without genuine SEO experience have too much input. Which is, obviously, not what you want.
3. Look For Signs of Pedagogy
This has nothing to do with SEO itself, but is purely about what it means to create a good course.
Yes, the curriculum needs to be accurate, but it also has to be delivered in a way that is conducive for learning. Our own process involved a lot of back and forth with our educational team to ensure that we structured everything from the assessments to the course scripts in a way that facilitates learning.
To give some context, we borrowed something that I used to do back in my teaching days—backward planning.
At the start of the process, we developed learning goals within the course section. These goals would form the basis for the assessments that we offer at the end of each course section. All of the course sections were built to fulfill those specific learning goals. In this way, the course itself directly aligns with the assessment, which is only fair.
On top of that, we made sure to use the assessments to extend the learning by mixing in scenario-based questions.
There are millions of ways to go about constructing a course that incorporates sound pedagogy. If you’re looking at a course and it all seems very linear, that might be a good indication that the course lacks pedagogical depth. Which is clearly not what you want, no matter how amazing the instructors listed are.
So when looking at an SEO course and deciding to dive in, don’t just look at it from an SEO perspective. Getting the SEO education right is only half the battle. The course also has to effectively communicate that information to you.
Look for signs of pedagogical life when choosing an SEO course.
Learning SEO can be hard. It can be a very informal process that leaves you wondering what gaps you might have and what you still need to learn.
The need for an SEO course can be real. There are a lot of great SEO courses out there. There are also a heap of “grifters” looking to take advantage of people who need a comprehensive way to learn SEO.
When it comes to signing up for an SEO course, if it feels too “markety” or too “salesy,” it probably is.
Look past the “certifications” every course offers (ours included). They’re nice, but no one is hiring you or giving you a raise because you have one.
Look past the big names a course may have procured.
Look past the overpromising (“Our users have improved their organic traffic by 1000000000000000000000000.9% in just 1 day after completing our course”).
Instead, think about what your specific needs are and if the course is suitable and substantial enough to help you fill those needs.
It pays to dig a bit deeper into a course and pull the curtain back a bit before investing money and in the case of a free course, time.
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