The Learning Marketer: How Continuous Search Education Drives Professional Growth

Being a good marketer isn’t just about creating eye-catching content. With so many competing businesses these days, you have to be more strategic with your marketing. The real bread-and-butter of marketing strategies today is SEO.

With a solid SEO strategy, you can drive traffic to your website more effectively. Most marketers know the necessity of utilizing SEO to boost their content. So, being a successful SEO marketer isn’t just about understanding SEO but about continually educating yourself on search strategies and trends to ensure you stay ahead of the game.

In this article, we’ll delve into the importance of search education as a marketer and how to improve your search skills, enabling you to better navigate the digital landscape with precision and innovation.

Understanding How to Search is Key for Marketers

Many marketers know they need a content strategy but not all truly know the reasoning behind content or how to effectively search for the answers they need to create good content.

Furthermore, things can change even if you do educate yourself initially on quality SEO content strategies. Consumer trends can vary, for example, and Google’s search algorithm can also change.

For example, in 2011, Google made its first update that was relevant to SEO: Panda. The Panda update focused on on-page factors and determining whether a website genuinely offered relevant info pertaining to the search term visitors used. In 2019, the BERT update was considered one of the biggest in years and brought with it a machine learning algorithm that used natural language processing (NLP) to better understand the context of words, which helped with interpreting search queries and the intent behind them.

Updates like these and many more were critically important with regard to SEO because they changed how Google read content and thus changed the way content needs to be created to ensure high ranking. This is why it’s important to continually educate yourself to ensure you have the latest knowledge needed to do the best work.

The ability to search, and search well, is what will make you a superior marketer. By learning how to conduct deeper searches you can:

• Improve your ability to self-edit: The more you search, the more you learn how to edit your searches down into more refined and concise queries. When your searches are more precise, you will more easily find the answers you need to create quality content.

• Create a learning mindset: When you learn to search better it can boost your interest in finding and understanding new information. Instead of relying on what you’ve already learned or been told, you will develop a stronger desire to continually learn and educate yourself, which will improve your knowledge. This can also help you become a more innovative marketer.

• Improve your openness to critical feedback: A search will not always result in the answers you seek, which means you’ll have to search again and try something different. This teaches you how to identify what isn’t working and accept that as a form of feedback that you can use to improve going forward.

  So learning to search improves your search skills but can also teach you a number of other things that can make you more successful in your career as a marketer.

Source: Unsplash

Ways to Improve Your Search Skills

Now that you understand why improving your search skills is important, it’s time to get into the how. These are actional tips you can use to boost your search skills as a marketer.

Add Boolean Operators to Your Searches

Google provides various advanced features to help you narrow your search results. One such feature is the ability to add boolean operators like “AND” and “OR,” which give you more control over your searches. You can also enclose an entire phrase in quotation marks, which tells Google to search for that specific string of text.

Try Variations of Head Terms

If you’re familiar with SEO, then you’re likely familiar with keywords. However, when using a keyword to perform a search, you should never only use one head term. The more variations you try and the more specific you get with your keywords, the more you can refine your results. For example, if you are searching for information about sustainable practices, the keyword “sustainable practices” might not deliver the desired results. If this is the case, you can try variations of the same keyword, such as “sustainable energy practices” or “sustainable homeowner practices.”

Vet Your Sources

Never assume that the top result in a search is the best source of information. Some pages could be using unethical practices to rank higher in SERPS, so just because their page is the top result doesn’t mean it’s the best source of information. They could be using cloaking, keyword stuffing, or private blog networks (PBN) to get higher results. So always make sure you check the source to verify whether it is credible or not before using it.

An easy way to tell if information from a source is credible and trustworthy is by checking the domain authority (DA) of the page. Lots of websites provide DA checkers, like Ahrefs and SEMrush. You can also look at who authored that page and see if they have the credentials and the experience to speak authoritatively on the topic.

Familiarize Yourself with Google’s Tools and Filters

Google Search provides various tools and filters that can help you refine your searches, so make sure you are aware of them and how best to utilize them to get the results you want. Google offers various tabs and categories, for example, that you can use to narrow your search results, such as “news,” “videos,” and “Images.” You can also sort results by post-date. So the next time you’re on Google, try playing around with all the search options available and make note of how using different tools or filters can change the results you get.

Staying Up to Date on the Latest Trends is Also Important

Being a good searcher isn’t just about having the technical skills to perform searches, like those listed above. It’s also about staying up to date on the latest trends in content marketing. Staying aware of trends enables you to perform searches that are more in line with these trends as well as use the information you find to create trendy content that will be most appealing to consumers.

Some of the latest trends today include:

• Video content: Interest in video content is expected to grow, especially with TikTok rapidly becoming one of the most popular social media apps. Videos are simply more engaging and attractive to today’s consumers and can help you reach a wider audience.

• Interactive experiences: Consumers love when they can interact with a brand as these create a more engaging experience. This includes providing live Q&As, quizzes, polls, responding to users in the comments, and even providing VR and augmented reality experiences.

• Repurposed content: Making your content go further is crucial. It’s not always possible to create fresh, original content daily. So it’s beneficial if you can find ways to repurpose content to get the most out of it. This allows you to constantly post without having to constantly be creating.

• International content: Consumers today are more interested in global awareness, and as such, global content is trending. So instead of limiting yourself to just one region, expand your marketing and tailor your content to various countries. This will enable you to attract a much broader audience.

• Voice search: We lead busy lives today, and as such, we want convenience. One way this is manifesting is through the ability to use search commands. Now more than ever, users are utilizing the voice command functions on their phones, so it’s important to enable voice search and provide voice support with your content.

• Personalized content: Consumers today want to feel special. They want to know that you genuinely care about them and their needs. Thus, personalized content is becoming increasingly popular. By developing a marketing strategy using data, you can create content that speaks more directly to your consumer’s wants and needs.

Online Courses Can Help You Boost Your Search Knowledge

If you really want to up your marketing game and improve your knowledge taking an online SEO course can help. This can help you better understand what SEO is and how to create more effective content. It can also help you improve your search skills so you can more easily get the desired results you are looking for when you start doing research on your next project.

There are a number of online marketing courses available today, including:

• ClickMinded: Digital Marketing Course;

• Digital Marketing Institute: MSc Masters in Digital;

• Digiteers: Social Media Marketing Intensive;

• Hubspot Academy: Various courses;

• Google Digital Garage: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing;

• Udemy: Digital Marketing Course.

  These are just a few of the many options available, many of which are very affordable. You can also see if your company might have a program that pays for you to take these courses as it can make you a better employee and marketer, which will help their business.

Source: Pixabay

Wrapping Up: Use What You Learn to Create an Effective SEO Strategy

The most successful marketers are those who never stop learning. The landscape of marketing is always changing and evolving, so it’s important for your skills and knowledge to continually evolve as well. There are many ways to create an effective content strategy, but the best way is to give yourself the gift of learning and always seek to improve your skills.