Microsoft recently said that SEO is the most important hard skill that business owners and marketers should learn in 2020. While many believe that they understand what SEO is, the ways in which to master it are often cloaked and hard to learn intricately — at least in the way required to truly feature SEO as a ‘hard skill’ on your resume.
And yet, SEO is integral to digital marketing in a way that can’t be ignored. Your ability to have your website rank competitively on a Google search shouldn’t be underestimated. It conveys both visibility and credibility, which establishes trust with a prospect, and is a form of marketing within itself. Rather than getting in front of potential customers’ eyeballs through ads and marketing campaigns, having a high ranking SEO presence gets you in front of the potential customers you want most: the ones who are already looking for what you offer.
The Lack of SEO Training Resources
There are certainly ways to learn SEO on a surface level online. SEMrush, a visibility management platform, offers free courses for anyone interested in beginning their understanding of SEO.
Harry Sanders, the founder of StudioHawk, experienced the lack of adequate online SEO training resources firsthand when he was 13 years old. His dad had hired a team of “SEO experts” to help him rank his boating license business online — but they didn’t deliver on the results. Noticing that his dad was in need of desperate help to recoup the lost money and get more clients in the door, Sanders took to learning SEO by himself. Most of this learning occurred through trial and error, or from ‘scratch,’ which makes Sanders truly self-taught.
This was nine years ago, and while the online educational resources for many digital marketing skills have expanded, they’re not quite where they need to be. So, Sanders, who has now scaled StudioHawk into Australia’s largest dedicated SEO agency, is launching Hawk Academy: a proper education for those seeking real, tangible steps for implementing SEO.
“Proper Education”
The notable feature of Hawk Academy is that it provides a proper education, which is defined by Sanders as a centralized education with a forum where people can discuss what they are learning, backed by an agency of 22 SEO specialists who do SEO day-in and day-out with some of the world’s biggest brands. Sanders’ distaste for phony SEO experts came about when his dad’s business was scammed nine years ago, but he’s noticed a lack of proper education in existing SEO training courses online that are taught by ‘one man bands’ with little real expertise from experience.
Sanders believes that the route for more people to understand SEO is for them to be taught by people who understand it and do it daily. And, for the expert that Sanders is (his agency is at $3.5 million in revenue and working with major global brands like New Balance), he’s certainly generous with his knowledge and access.
Hawk Academy offers several pricing tiers: free, $40, and $300 for various amounts of information. Sanders also offers full scholarships to at-risk youth or those who have been financially affected by COVID-19 or otherwise. This is his central value and priority: expanding access to education. Sanders also knows firsthand what it’s like to have next to nothing. Just five years ago, he was homeless and penniless. He built up StudioHawk from his rock bottom by teaching himself SEO, and providing knockout results for clients, and he wants to help others do the same.
With the proper education, anyone can develop the hard skill of SEO and be on par with Microsoft’s statement about its importance. More and more businesses are moving online because of social distancing guidelines and the ever growing emphasis on the virtual. By knowing SEO and using this skillset to help yourself and clients, you can stand out amongst the noise of other digital marketers — but only if you’ve received a proper education to do so well. Visit hawkacademy.co to begin to learn from Sanders and his team.