Internet Marketing SEO training classes?

Training

[contentmaster]

Hi!
Whats your opinion of giving tutions/training classes to fresh designers and developers on internet marketing with focus on SEO.
Kind of starting a training school.
How would you go about it i.e infrastructure, course content and course material etc.
Or since this is a dynamic industry with regular changes so training is not a good idea?

[jpjones]

My opinion -
Given the nature of the industry, I think you could teach the basics, ( the essentials ), to show the students the potential of Internet Marketing & SEO, but then it would be up to them to keep abreast of changes through research, just like any other course.

They could then leave the course with a "best practice" approach to marketing/SEO, and develop further from there.

The other option would be to get them all the sign up here, tell them to research topics, and them give them an exam on WebmasterWorld :)

My £0.02
JP

[fathom]

The demand is there contentmaster. Some things to consider though.

1. design companies are not an easy sell, and fresh designers I don't really know but I suspect their first step would be getting employment. (I find it hard to believe most would step right into an entrepreneurship business for themselves right out of school with no commercial experience.

2. I do believe there is a niche opportunity to offer companies with an internal webmaster the added value of knowledge and skill development in lieu of your direct access to their web content.

A while back my contracts stated as a prerequisite - disclosure to FTP login information for services rendered (with disclaimer for confidentiality, etc. etc.). One client required a non-disclosure agreement of this - and after carefully weighing the options, declined.

I did provide a provision of training for the contract where the webmaster was solely responsible and accountable for updating the site. To my amazement - this was extremely successful, such that all contracts now go out with this provision.

Less work for me, and the client retains greater control over their web properties.

Training infrastructure was initially problematic (long distance) but a WebEx solution took care of this, and now running four clients with similar setups.

Food for thought anyway ;)

[msgraph]

I would keep the training classes focused primarily on Internet Marketing as a whole with SEO as a class or two. With Google running the show now it is all basically: make your pages crawlable, strategically place some text around, and grab as many links as you can. You don't need much time to explain that. However, you also need to explain SEO of the past and how it all worked back then as well.

Like mentioned, go for the basics of it all and work from there. You want people to know that SEO isn't one and all. They need to know how to sell the user right when they land on the site. How to create clean navigation and how to achieve great usability. All of this and more applies to marketing the site.

If during those classes people show interest in going further in SEO/SEM then you can create a 2nd set of advanced classes.