Coming off a successful debut of their Fundamentals of Search Marketing course, the training arm of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has its Advanced SEO class up and running.
Most encouraging about SEMPO Institute‘s efforts at education has been participation from major search engines in building the courses. SEMPO’s Terry Plank told murdok that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft among others have worked with the Institute on the launch of their newest class.
It’s called Advanced SEO, and offers the next step from the prerequisite Fundamentals course. The fifteen-lesson online course covers a slew of topics, from keyword research and website architecture, to analytics and brand management.
Since participants will have taken the $499 Fundamentals class first, the $1,750 Advanced SEO builds upon the organic search lessons learned there. This allows SEMPO to confidently offer the course to technophiles and non-techies alike.
Catherine Donovan has been working on developing SEMPO Institute as her full-time task since September 2006. We asked her about the main points SEMPO believes will justify the investment one would make with a course.
Donovan highlighted two key points about the curriculum. The material created for it has been peer reviewed. Any issues that need improvement get it before the work becomes part of the course.
Members of SEMPO write the material. The people who are actively working in the industry can address the needs of students better than someone who has just read about search marketing in general.
Their approach seems to be working. Fundamentals students have noted at an 80 percent clip they would recommend that course to others. Plank said the student body have covered a breadth of people, from search marketing novices to professionals who know the field now.
Those students come from a variety of places to SEMPO Institute. The popular Search Engine Strategies conference series has led many to check out Fundamentals; referrals and of course search engine traffic brought people there too.
In May, SEMPO Institute will launch Advanced Search Advertising, covering the paid side of search marketing. SEMPO will continue to update material, and should branch into other courses as areas like social media mature over time.
