Have you ever asked an SEO professional about how to become an SEO expert?
You always get the similar answer.
Most of the time, SEO will direct you to attend conferences, seminars, or news websites. These are some of the most common ways to start gaining knowledge from theoretical versions of SEO.
But there is no benefit of learning all the theory without any practical knowledge.
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You must practice all the SEO skills on your website. This can be done by implementing everything that you have learned or learning on your blog or website.
If you own a blog or website, then you can quickly test everything that you have learned in the SEO world. This is easy and quick.
The best thing about SEO practicality is that you will never get stuck at any point.
By testing your knowledge, you will also find out what works and what does not work in the SEO world. This will also help you to find the best SEO tools and make your SEO checklist.
In the beginning, you will find it difficult to understand what was going wrong when you practice SEO. Finding gaps in your SEO strategy can be stressful.
The real skill of a SEO professional is not limited to ranking a webpage only.
It is about making the communication secure, developing strategical thinking, understanding the marketing landscape, and building brands.
In this article, we will discuss all the best alternative methods that you should use to test your knowledge in the SEO world.
Reddit:
If you are in the SEO business, then you already know about Reddit. You may have been using Reddit to place your links, But it is more than that.
Reddit is a great place to learn new things in the SEO industry.
Reddit communities are the best places to join and learn about what is happening in your industry.
Some of the popular subreddits that I recommend you to join are;
These communities will help you learn recent Google announcements and the impact of SEO trends.
Google's John Mueller also help Redditors by frequently answering their questions.
When you publish question in these communities, you will attract the attention of SEO's around the globe.
You will also get multiple reactions and answers to your queries or questions.
Remember: Reddit communities are open to everyone. That means even a newbie can share his knowledge when answering your question.
There is one more hing that I found interesting about Reddit, and that is building knowledge by sharing knowledge.
You can start answering the questions of other Redditors. When you share your opinion, you will allow others to come and correct you if you are wrong or appreciate your help if your answer is up to the mark.
Sometimes you have disagreed with what others tell you, but rather than falling into an argumentative session, choose to reason instead.
Always build healthy relationships with SEO professionals in your industry.
Ask questions related to SEO. Analyze the answers. Always look for a mutual solution to the problem.
SEO professionals can save you from making mistakes.
Always open for challenges and expect the responses positively.
SEO Guides and Sense Check method:
The sense check method work always in a significant way.
This time you can use it to write SEO guides.
When writing guides, you need to do a lot of research and follow the concepts like Eagle eye concept.
The study will help you collect all the necessary information that you need for writing a Seo guide.
When writing an SEO guide, you will also understand the areas where you lack information.
You can create SEO guides not only to educate people but also for your SEO team, etc. This will ensure that you all will be on the same page and follow similar strategies.
You can also use SEO guides to ask for feedback from SEO experts or SEO professionals.
Writing a complete guide is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of time, effort, knowledge, and writing skills.
Master the subject and write the guide step-by-step.
Teach a Family Member:
If you are working as an SEO professional, then most of your family members will think that you are working for Google or working with a company of Google.
But in reality, you are working for a broader market of search engines.
Replace their ignorance with the knowledge that you have. It will help you harness your SEO skills.
When you teach a non-specialist about what you are doing or what SEO is?
This will open the doors to find logic in the SEO business.
The ignorant audience will always ask you questions that will force you to do research and increase your knowledge about SEO fundamentals and effectiveness.
For example; if someone asks you what is a Search Engine robot and how it works? This is the time where most of the SEO's will think about what to answer or how to answer.
Even if you know still there is high chance tat you know how to explain these things. This will also test you understanding of SEO.
If you have to search the answer on Google, that means there are gaps in your knowledge. Fill them.
When trying to boost your SEO knowledge, don't restrict yourself to industry leaders only.
Sometimes even an outsider from your industry can give you some tips worth gold.
This will also help you to be ready for stage performance or keynote sessions in SEO conferences.
If you can satisfy a layman's question about SEO, then you can communicate easily with your boss, clients, and stakeholders.
Letting people ask you questions about SEO, will help you learn what kind of issues, most of the people are asking. What are the misconceptions in the field of SEO, and what works?
Keep discussing SEO with as many people as you can.
Learn from Other SEO Professionals:
If you are working in an SEO company, then you can easily communicate with other SEO professionals. This makes things easy for you, as you can learn from their experience and work.
For example; you can ask the developer about the code rendering or PPC expert about how PPC help in conversions.
This about every aspect of SEO and keep discussing whenever you get a chance.
If the decision of other SEO professionals is impacting your work, then ask them why they have made such a decision.
- Ask the boss why he is lowering the SEO budget?
- Ask the developer why he has changed the line in robots.txt.
Learn from the work of other people in your company and build a healthy relationship with them.
Building a relationship with other SEO professionals will broaden the area of your knowledge. You will learn the impact of various SEO factors.
Learn how multiple factors are impacting the organic traffic.
Study a Related Subject:
The best part of being the best SEO professional is that you have to develop a broader approach.
You need to be open to grab knowledge from related subjects.
For example, learning about databases and data retrieval will help you quickly understand how search engines use the content.
Studying human psychology, geography, and sociology will help you to find out what are the multiple factors that will impact search behavior.
You should also look for SEO trends. Learning everything will help you get in-depth knowledge about getting organic traffic.
Learn to create adequate meta descriptions and how to create effective outreach campaigns.
Google search results will offer you an immense amount of beginner level information. You can visit Udemy or similar online learning platform for low cost courses.
Audit other websites:
If you have been working on some website projects from time, then you might find it challenging to manage with a massive number of words.
You may have to struggle to get the best copy written or face a long development time.
This is the time when you need to look beyond your website.
Take the best ranking site in your niche and audit that website. Check how well they have managed their website.
Find out how they have written the best-ranking content. Also, check their on-page optimization strategies.
When you audit websites of industry leaders, you will learn what they are doing differently from you. You may also find some signs of improvement.
Job Interviews:
SEO Job interview questions are the best to find out if the candidate is suitable with the required set of skills and knowledge.
When you participate in a Job Interview session, you will learn the type of questions asked by the hiring team and how they are judging the candidate.
This will also help you to analyze what topics you can talk with confidence and where you lack the knowledge.
Questions will force you to study.SEO questions will be different through various SEO techniques. In every industry, SEO success will be different.
Investigate SEO tools:
Most of the time, SEO professionals are using seo tools for keyword research and backlink analysis.
But there are many other things that you can use SEO tools.
You will get reports that will give you more in-depth information to powerup research. This information will help you develop content better than your competitors.
Tools will also help you to find anchor text, referring IPs, Internal backlinks, Organic keywords, movements, competing domains, competing pages, content gaps, etc.
Attend boring seminars:
If you want to learn more about the digital marketing world, then you must attend conferences and workshops.
Most of the time, people go to the talks or attend seminars related to their interests. This will stop you from seeing the bigger picture.
Try to attend most of the SEO seminars, webinars, and conferences. Sometimes you can pick something that you have not found anywhere else.
Even if you already an established SEO expert, still attending the SEO seminar for beginners will refresh your fundamentals.
Read Books:
Have you ever read a business book?
If not, then you are missing the essence of the business industry.
Reading business books will make you adopt things that can help you in your business.
Go to the Amazon and check the list of best selling business books.
You can also ask people who are reading business books for the suggestion.
Final Words/Conclusion:
The SEO industry always adopts new skills and devalue the outdated ones.
It is necessary to stay up to date with what you should do and what you should avoid.
No matter you are a newbie in the SEO industry or an established expert, learning will open the door of improvement.
This is the time to start strategic thinking and effective communication.
If you don't follow these, then no one can help you in the long run.
If you still have any question, do share via comments.
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