Social Updates
By Arvind Patil | 10th June, 2021 | 15 min read
By Arvind Patil | 10th June, 2021 | 15 min read
Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, day-to-day activities have been brought to a screeching halt. You have been advised to stay at home for medical reasons and wait for normalcy to resume.
Having said that, every dark cloud has a silver lining.
With free time in your hands, you can utilize it by undertaking an SEO online training certification. As a marketer, it will improve your grasp of online marketing.
But what is SEO? How will learning SEO benefit you?
Let’s find out before we move on to the list of SEO online training and certifications.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the quality and increasing the quantity of your website traffic through organic search results.
Through SEO, you can optimize your web content to appear on the first page of a search engine. This will eventually make your web page a preferred option for users to click and visit.
You achieve all this organically, without paying Google, unlike paid search ads. By enrolling in an SEO online training certification course, you always adopt competitive measures to increase your website traffic in organic search results.
Any kind of training course and certification improves your knowledge and resume; SEO is no different.
The road to becoming a true SEO expert starts by applying relevant theoretical knowledge to practical applications. Training courses and certifications help you acquire the requisite knowledge.
Moreover, you can improve your online business through SEO by driving relevant organic search traffic.
How do you do so? Let’s take a look at some of the most important factors of SEO that impact organic search traffic…
1. Optimizing for mobile search – According to Uberall, 82% of mobile shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches on their phones.
Also, nearly 70% of them use their smartphone for shopping purposes. Hence, it is important to optimize your website for mobile searches.
2. Optimizing on-page metrics – On-page optimization refers to measures taken within your website, to improve its position in the search rankings. It includes optimizing your page speed, site design, titles & meta descriptions, images, and so on.
3. Improving technical SEO aspects – It is known that Google gives preferential treatment to websites that have covered all aspects of Technical SEO. It involves website optimizations that help search engine crawlers index your site more effectively.
Here’s a checklist that you must cover while implementing technical SEO on your website –
4. Optimizing website speed – According to Google, 53% of website visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. This leads to an increased bounce rate for your website.
Optimized website speed will help to load your site faster. This will lead to a reduced bounce rate and improved chances of better ranking in search engines.
5. Matching user’s search intent – As per the Hummingbird update by Google, your website must satisfy the search intent for specific keywords.
Optimize your website content with relevant keywords that users are likely to use as their search query.
6. Optimizing user experience – Is it easy to navigate on your website? Is your website content engaging enough to compel your visitors to stay? Is your site secure, fast, and mobile-friendly?
A lively user experience makes website visitors happy. Together, SEO and UX make a successful combination.
7. Unleashing the power of content – Through content marketing, your business can focus on creating and distributing high-quality content for attracting and retaining your target audience.
Don’t forget to keep the ultimate goal in mind. Convince your audience to take a profitable action.
8. Engaging in quality link building – Link Building, also known as backlinks, is the practice of creating hyperlinks to a website with the goal of improving search engine visibility.
Through link building, your website can receive referral traffic from other websites, which will help you get indexed quicker. Also, high-quality incoming links mean your site will be recognized as a valuable resource. It will also boost your website’s authority.
9. Optimizing your GMB listing for local SEO – Enhancing local SEO through your GMB listing is an effective way to market your local business online. According to recent stats, 97% of search engine users searched online to find a local business.
It helps you to promote your product, your service, or your brand and reach local customers who are looking for them online.
So, given the obvious importance of SEO for your website’s organic growth, how do you utilize the lockdown to gain handy SEO certifications?
You can take up some online training and stay at home courses that will help you achieve proficiency in SEO. There are plenty of SEO courses online available for you if you want expertise in modern SEO techniques right from your home amidst the pandemic.
This course will help you brush up on the basics of SEO by learning from Greg Gifford, an experienced SEO consultant specializing in Local SEO.
This course is your complete guide for SEO training. It will teach you in-depth about the importance of SEO factors and how it delivers results. Udemy’s value-added search engine optimization course will help you to gain expertise in competitive modern SEO practices.
The popular SEO website Yoast offers SEO training courses that not only teach you vital SEO skills but also help you outrank your competition. It caters to bloggers, online marketers, content creators, or business owners; no matter big or small. However, Yoast provides a free SEO training course too. You can check those courses as well.
Moz offers a detailed free training program for people wishing to learn SEO from scratch. It’s one of the best tutorials to learn SEO online.
Hubspot’s Learn all things SEO course will help you understand the tactics behind ranking #1 on Google for blogging.
This course is designed for beginners with a willingness to learn local SEO. At the end of this course, participants owning local businesses will be well-equipped on ranking higher on Google in their niche and city. However, you can add the experience of enrolling in a Google SEO certification course to strengthen your professional portfolio later.
In this course, you will learn the ins and outs of optimizing a website. The course will be taught by Rebekah May, SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor.
This advanced SEO course from Coursera focuses on technical, mobile, and social strategies for increasing site traffic. It also teaches techniques to optimize mobile-friendly websites, get mobile apps discovered, and leverage social media to drive organic SEO traffic. Coursera’s value-added search engine optimization program also deals with the basics of the YouTube SEO course as well.
In this course, you will gain an understanding of search engine algorithms and how they affect organic search results. The course will be taught by Rebekah May, SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor.
With this course, marketers, small business owners, and web designers can learn the best way to approach Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), one of the most profitable marketing strategies for businesses.
With Springboard, learn about UX design, it’s best techniques and methods such as user research, personas, prototyping, and wireframing.
This certification course by Hubspot will guide you on how to become an effective content marketer.
Udemy has prepared this course to teach you about basic link building to your websites and improve your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking.
The author of this course, Peter Kent, covers how to strengthen your site’s position in search engine results by building strong links.
This course by Coursera aims to make you an SEO expert by gaining mastery in search engine optimization tools and strategies. The course will be taught by Rebekah May, SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor.
The SEMrush SEO Toolkit Course will provide you with the best and need-to-know features of the toolkit to help you drive better results.
This course will give you a firm understanding of how SEO works and how you can use it to boost traffic to your site.
Additionally, you can also gain an in-depth understanding of specific SEO factors by reading online guides. Here are some of them –
Link building by Backlinko is a definitive guide towards link building. It covers the fundamentals of link building, its effect on content marketing and email outreach, and advanced link building.
Beginner‘s Guide to Schema by SEMRUSH
Through this online guide, you can learn more about Schema, a structured data vocabulary that defines entities, actions, and relationships on the Internet.
It will help you understand the meaning behind various subject matters on the web, and in turn, help your website deliver a better user experience.
Conversion Rate Optimization by Moz
This definitive guide on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by Moz will help you understand a defined process for CRO.
It will also provide you with a checklist to print and check off as you go for your website.
Content Marketing by Search Engine Journal
Content marketing can help you attract leads, win more sales, and grow your business. Therefore, understand the ins and outs of content marketing by reading this all-you-need-to-know guide by Search Engine Journal.
Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide by Google
The most trustworthy SEO guide by the internet’s most trustworthy source.
Hope you find these courses and reading guides useful. Now that you know where to start, what are you waiting for?
Completing the mentioned online SEO courses will make you stand out from your competition in an ever-evolving digital age.
Utilise the free time you have now. Learn and enhance your SEO skills.
Remember, every successful journey starts with taking the first step. This will be yours on the path to a successful career as an SEO Expert.
Arvind Patil
Arvind Patil is an SEO and Content Strategist at SRV Media, a digital agency. He enjoys performing SEO analysis while creating content strategies that connect brands with their target audience. When he is not busy analyzing digital marketing trends, he prefers traveling.
