If you’ve been writing content for a while, and you haven’t invested in professional SEO training, it’s time.
If you’re just getting your feet wet, this free SEO course presented by Moz is a good place to start. However, there are aspects to SEO you can only learn in a structured class environment. A structured SEO training program will give you hands-on experience to implement and drive home what you learn. You’ll also receive personalized feedback from your instructor – something you can’t get from free online courses.
Here are the best reasons to pursue professional, paid SEO training:
1. You can’t write valuable content without knowing SEO
Although SEO and content writing are different aspects of content marketing, they are inextricably combined. Content needs to be both well-written and visible to be effective. SEO makes content visible in the search engines; content only converts when you can get it in front of people.
According to Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, links and high-quality content are the top two factors Google uses to rank websites for search. Do you know what Google considers high-quality content? If not, a professional SEO training course will teach you.
Professional training will take the guesswork out of your optimization efforts; you’ll see an increase in traffic with far less work.
2. You might get recruited by a professional agency
As an SEO-trained content writer, you might find yourself being pursued by a digital marketing agency. Marketing agencies are always on the lookout for talent.
Say someone from a marketing agency reads your blog and has a deep appreciation for your style. A content writer trained in SEO will stand out more than the rest. If a marketing agency notices you’re using professional marketing strategies, they may try to recruit you.
If you want to know what specific skills will make you valuable to an agency, just look at the services some of the top content marketing agencies provide. For instance, AudienceBloom has been producing high-quality content for Fortune 500 companies for nearly a decade. If you can learn the skills that get the results agencies like this provide, you’ve got a better chance at being recruited.
Make it your goal to obtain the skills that make your content writing valuable starting with SEO.
3. You’ll be more valuable to clients
Do you take on side gigs writing content for clients who don’t have time to write for themselves? Are you being paid fairly according to your skills? Chances are, you’re being underpaid. Most side gigs don’t pay much. However, you can get paid more for your side gigs when you have more to offer your clients, like SEO training.
When you bring SEO training to the table, your client no longer needs to hire an additional contractor to optimize your content for SEO. They’re getting an all-in-one package. It costs them less, which is an incentive for you to charge more.
The more skills you develop as a content writer, the more valuable you are to clients who need your services.
4. You’ll stop believing in SEO myths
It seems like ten new myths are created each time Google performs an algorithm update, and it takes time for those myths to fizzle out or be disproven. The problem is, some bloggers jump the gun and publish articles as if the myths are absolute, failing to do their own research. When these articles are published to reputable websites, it’s easy to think the myths have been verified even when they haven’t.
There are too many SEO myths to count. For instance, you might be afraid to publish your content as a guest post on other sites, fearing Google’s “duplicate content” penalty. The truth is, Google doesn’t punish duplicate content in the way most people think. Taken directly from Google’s website, they say, “Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”
Learning SEO from professionals will tell you why it’s actually a good idea to syndicate your content across other blogs: you’ll get backlinks and more exposure. You’ll also learn about the tag that tells search engines the content on your website is the official version.
Learn SEO the easy way
You have a blog to run. You don’t have time to investigate every SEO claim online, or wade through contrasting opinions each time Google updates their algorithm. Invest in professional SEO training to increase your value to the world.