Adapting to your surroundings is the key to survival.
The most famous example, at least in biology, is Darwin’s finches.
Charles Darwin discovered finches on the Galápagos Islands, each species having a distinct beak adapted to its surroundings.
The finches might have disappeared if they hadn’t changed their beaks for their environment.
A similar argument can be applied when it comes to surviving in the world of Search engine optimization and marketing.
To make sure your team of SEO specialists adapt to the constantly changing market, it is important to know the latest trends and modify your strategy accordingly.
One of the best ways to go about it is SEO training for your team.
Key Points from the article –• SEO workshop is an important activity for your team to stay updated with the current trends and implement them. • There are multiple topics you can teach in your workshop ranging from very basic to complex. • With several modes of teaching at your disposal, you don’t have to be limited to teaching through slides or videos only. |
DISCLAIMER: We have used the word workshop and training interchangeably in this article.
SEO Workshops and why your team needs them?
For starters, you get hands-on experience instead of a more traditional approach to learning things theoretically.
This workshop is both for beginners and for those with basic SEO knowledge and through this workshop, you’ll be able to keep your team updated with the latest trends or practices.
And according to us, these are some of the reasons why you need the workshop –
• Keeping up with the latest trends in SEO
• A team works best when everyone is in sync with each other
• Knowledge is nothing if you don’t have the necessary skills to apply it effectively in real world
• Helps team members get a sense of the goals that their business is trying to achieve
A synchronized team where all members collaborate seamlessly has better efficiency compared to an assembly of individuals forming a group.
Now let’s see how we can create an SEO training program.
Creating a strategy for SEO training
First of all, who is the workshop for?
Depending on the variety and strength of your team, it should be suitable for –
• Content Creators
• Copywriters
• Digital Marketing Teams
• Analytics Department
• Web Developers
• Social Media Managers
• Public Relations Professionals
• Small Business Owners
Remember• An SEO workshop is not meant only for SEO specialists. You can include other members of the team to inculcate a better understanding of the whole process. |
Strive to involve every member of the team in the workshop to foster a sense of unity and collaborative work.
Disclaimer: SEO practices keep changing over time. So the topics covered here might not work when you read this.
Introduction to SEO
Start with introductory questions like –
• What is it?
• Why the need for it?
• How does it work?
You have to make sure that your team members have zero doubts after this lesson.
The Basics of SEO Strategy
Your team must understand the basics of SEO clearly. There shouldn’t even be an iota of doubt regarding topics like –
• Keyword Search
• On-page and Off-page
• Quality of Content
• Link building
• Auditing
• Analytics
We think these are some of the topics that a newbie should be aware of before starting any work.
You may personalize this list based on your preference or your company guidelines.
Once your team grasps the basics, you can move on to the more specific topics like –
• Structured Data & Schema Markup
• International SEO
• Advanced Keyword Research
• Advanced Link Building
• Penalty Recovery
These are just a few to name.
Depending on your goals, the nature of your business and your target audience you can include or exclude more topics from the list.
Different Training Methods for SEO Workshops
You may come up with different methods of training for corporate marketing teams. You don’t have to stick to just one process, if combining multiple methods works for your team then go right ahead!
In-person
People learn the best when they are present physically.
We think having an hour or so of your office time dedicated to the workshop is the best way to go about it.
Whether this is going to be a daily occurrence or once in a week activity depends on you. Once you map out topics that you want your in-house team to learn/know, you may assign particular hours to each topic.
What’s an in-house team?• In-house refers to the core team that a company specifically has (in this case SEO) instead of outsourcing the job to an external agency or consultant. |
Your aim should be to teach your team members efficiently.
That means no ‘cramming every single detail in a short period’. The primary goal of a workshop is to educate, not to criticize or blame those unfamiliar with the information.
Video Sessions
In case there’s too much workload on your team, you can create informative videos yourself, or download them from YouTube.
Keeping some sort of exercise at the end of each video to test how much they have learned might be a good way to know how well these videos are performing.
Online Course
This step may require a bit more work.
Create an online course for your team to go through and add a simple fill-in-the-blanks exercise or any other exercise at the end of the chapter which will test what they learned.
Instead of exercises, you may also just simply ask them to write down what they learned from the particular chapter and note the response.
Monitoring Progress of your SEO team
To know if your team members understood whatever was taught in the workshop, you can do the following –
• Questionnaire: Ask your team members to split into pairs and prepare a questionnaire they’ll ask each other. Once they are done with the questionnaire, they’ll exchange it and try to answer as many questions as possible in a given time. It’s important to help your team whenever they are stuck somewhere.
• Create Scenarios: Give a particular scenario to a team member and ask how they are going to tackle it. This will give you a good understanding of the knowledge that a particular team member has regarding a particular topic.
• Performance: Even better than creating scenarios is to put them under test in real life. This will let you know how applicable the acquired knowledge of the team member is.
Conclusion
There are a few things we think you should be careful about –
• Do not overdo the training sessions
• Everyone learns at their own pace, so be patient
• It might be a while before you see any improvements on the marketing front
Once you start seeing palpable results, continue the flow and keep introducing new workshops from time to time. This will always keep you and your team updated.
FAQs
1. What is an SEO Workshop?
It’s just like any other workshop. You get hands-on experience instead of a more traditional approach to learning things theoretically. It is a good way to stay updated on the latest trends and updates for corporate marketing teams.
2. How do I train for SEO?
Start from the basics. Learn what is keyword research, link building, Google Analytics, search engine results page (SERP) and quality content. It’ll branch out to more topics as learn and go deeper.
3. Are there any free online Workshops for SEO?
Udemy is providing a free workshop. Apart from that, you can visit YouTube and learn almost everything there for free.
