This article was published on June 11, 2015

Skill up! Learn how to grow your Web traffic with SEO


Skill up! Learn how to grow your Web traffic with SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a full grown industry with hundreds of thousands of people who practice it.

But how do you learn to master SEO? It’s not quite a textbook-ready subject as algorithms continue to adapt.

SEO requires a number of areas of expertise these days – content marketing, technical SEO, authority development through ‘link building’ and social media to name a few. The skill set of an SEO manager must be incredibly diverse to successfully increase site traffic. So how can you get started and stay up to speed with the latest updates?

We asked TNW’s own Lead Growth Martijn Scheijbeler how he started in the industry what it takes to keep up with constantly changing search engines.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

How did you get started?

I got interested in online marketing by reading a lot of blog posts on usability, but found that it was most effective to focus on SEO which is, for most sites, still the biggest traffic source. What made it interesting to me was that it combined  business, technical and marketing perspectives.

What would you have done differently in learning SEO, looking back?

Learn even faster. SEO can be pretty difficult to understand but it’s not rocket science. Start on the technical side of things and try to learn a bit of programming yourself to make sure you can at least talk to developers about the changes you want to be made. If you can make the changes yourself, even better.

How would you advise other people to learn SEO?

Start with learning how Web analytics works, and probably start with using a tool like Google Analytics to get familiar with the basics. It’s really important that you can measure the traffic that you bring in to see what it’s value is.

After that start reading a ton on SEO blogs like Moz, SearchEngineland, etc. Also make sure that you start creating your own ‘vision’ and idea of what SEO means to you and how you should approach it. You’ll find out sooner or later that the structure for a certain type of site is the same, which makes it easier to focus on SEO for a specific industry.

For example, I would probably do terrible working on SEO for SaaS businesses but have a lot of experience working on huge content sites.

girl using laptop

The secret to every new skill is to just get started. We know that doing the research and learning everything without guidance can take up valuable time; indeed, having an expert to help you along the way could speed up the process.

This is where the TNW Academy and our premium SEO course comes in. We have an excellent online course available where you will learn the ins and outs of SEO from expert Tommy Griffith. He will guide you through the basics of optimizing your site and external links to give your business the most search visibility and domain authority.

One of the greatest things about the class is that you can take it at your own pace. This means you can take the course whenever or wherever you like, making it easy to fit SEO training into your busy schedule.

Ready to get started? To give you one last boost, we’re offering a 10 percent discount off your tuition fee. Take full advantage of this opportunity; this offer only lasts until June 14th.

Yes, enroll me to The ClickMinded SEO Course

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with