College Students Need to Learn Search Engine Optimization

BY JANE HURST

Whether you plan to go into marketing as a career or are simply trying to market yourself, as a college student you really do need to learn as much about SEO (search engine optimization) as you possibly can.

 

Why do you need to learn about SEO? Understanding SEO has a multitude of benefits, even if you don’t plan on becoming a marketing professional or starting your own business after you graduate. Read on to learn more.

 

Benefits of Knowing SEO

 

• Know the Search Engines – Do you know what it takes for a website to appear high on search engines? Obviously, you know that website owners want their sites to rank high on search engines (especially Google). Learning about SEO will show you why this is so essential and explain how it is done. The more you know, the easier it is to drive traffic to your website.
• Website Design Improvement – Learning about SEO also helps you create a better website, both in terms of UX (“user experience”), traffic and search engine ranking. Whether your website is for business or personal use, it’s in the best interest of you and your visitors to have a well-designed, organized and optimized site. Understanding SEO is an important first step to creating this.
• Have Optimized Content – The better and more optimized your content is, the more traffic you will attract to a website. When you have a good handle on how SEO works, you will be better positioned to create more compelling and better-optimized content that ranks higher on search engines and, consequently, gets more traffic (and customers). Take advantage of the guidelines offered by search engines and SEO professionals to help you produce the highest quality and most optimized content possible for your SEO content strategy.
• Understand Keywords – The more you know about keywords, the more you will be to use them to drive more traffic to your website. Keywords are among the most important fundamentals of any internet search, and there are certain keywords used more than others. By learning SEO, you will learn how to find the right keywords to target for your site.

How to Learn About SEO

The good news is that it’s not difficult to find SEO educational resources. You can find plenty of help online from Moz.com, Ahrefs.com, SEMRush.com and other well-known SEO marketing companies. You can also take a marketing course while you are in school, even if you are not a business major. But, there is a lot more to learning about and understanding SEO than just getting information online or in a classroom setting. You need to really be involved in the online community.

Now is the time to start actively participating in SEO-related forums, subscribe to online SEO-related newsletters and network with SEO professionals on campus and in the online community. The more you engage now, the easier it will be for you to understand just how SEO works, and how to use it to your advantage when you get out into the real world. So get online and dig into SEO so you can get the hands-on SEO education that you can never get from reading books on the subject or sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture.

Byline:

Jane Hurst has been working in education for over 5 years as a teacher. She loves sharing her knowledge with students, is fascinated about edtech and loves reading, a lot. Follow Jane on Twitter.