Why I Still Need SEO Refreshers

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I worked at an SEO agency for four years, then within the SEO team at a leading retailer for two further years. Since then, I’ve been creating website after website that requires – you guessed it – SEO as the foundation of its traffic. I have some experience in this field and, to an awful lot of people, they would view me as an expert. Let me make it clear from today: the gaps in my knowledge are absolutely massive.

As an SEO executive within the agency, my role – although quite flexible – was confined to a particular set of tasks, actions and objectives. Although I had a lot more freedom when I moved on, I was even more limited by what I was involved in at the retailer. That meant that it was up to me to do a lot of learning on my own time with my own sites. However, when I’m pretty much only ever using it for WordPress content sites, there’s a lot of areas that I’m completely unfamiliar with.

I’m massively lacking when it comes to my SEO knowledge and I’m not afraid to be upfront about that. There are times when I may feel like I need to rely on an SEO expert like Lojix to give me direction and help me whenever I’m stuck with a search-related issue. I recently came across this amazing list of webmaster tools and what it did more than anything was realise how many more areas I’m completely out of my depth with.

The reason I still make sure that I try to secure brightonSEO tickets, follow experimental SEOs on Twitter and try engage with SEO content is because I know that I’ve got so much to learn, and it’s going to continue to become a more important part of my life as I continue to add to my website portfolio. In terms of content (although I may not show it on this site) I’m pretty sure I know what Google likes, but there’s a lot more complication when it comes to ecommerce (and it’s important I learn, because I run a couple of different ecommerce sites).

I may not keep up with all of the day-to-day news with the SEO industry but SEO refreshers are still a part of my life, because they ensure that I’m able to keep up when I know more people are getting educated and familiar, so will want to find any means to get ahead. Learning is absolutely essential in this field because things develop so much as time goes on, and if you continue with old tactics, you can really get left behind absolutely lost as to why you aren’t able to climb up the search engine page results.

I use so many SEO tools on a regular basis, but I only actually know how to use most of them for a couple of functions, rather than with the full suite of what they’re capable of. Over time I’ll eventually get there, and I’ll get to the point where I’ll be able to accept at least a couple of people believing that I know what I’m doing when it comes to SEO.