I have a question for all of you SEO/SEM Professionals out there: Have you received a collegiate education? If so - what was (were) your degree(s) in? If not - how did you get started? I am just getting into this wildly diverse industry. From the networking I've done so far, my peers come from a very wide array of different educational backgrounds. I want to hear your story!
I came through from a web design background ... I was designing my own websites then began wondering why no-one was visiting them ... hence the discovery of the importance of search engines (back in 1998) and SEO. Read, read, read & practice ... then analyse what you've done and whether it's worked ... and read some more. Or get one-on-one tuition with an SEO professional to cut the learning time down from years to weeks.
AT JVF everyone here is a college graduate, but to become a master at SEO requires 2-4 years of on hand work experience. This work experience is where every SEO master learned their skills, its just not being taught in school at the moment.
I agree. My undergrad education has little to do with SEO. I went through the college of sciences thinking very little about internet marketing. I only started to think about SEO when my job description was redesigned to include some optimization tasks. Slowly, I'm gaining hands on experience and loving it. Even still - I could see how having a background in Ad/PR, Marketing, Accounting, Information Systems, etc. could be beneficial. As the age of technology becomes more refined, I am certain that SEO will become a hot topic in some marketing MBA plans as well.
If ever there is for sure what they can teach is just basic online marketing or basic SEO Because for me SEO is evolving almost every month. What you learn today might be obsolete in coming months. So for me I rather take Marketing related course. But I am too late for that....
I started as a kid working for the family software company building websites, beta testing software, dealing with customers online, and marketing our stuff and websites. Grew from there, read mountains of stuff... Used to have stacks of paper I'd printed out of ebooks, articles, websites, emails/newsletters, manuals, knowledgebases, search engine information, play around with programming and development etc... From there I've followed other guru's, purchased more than a college education's costs worth of professional training packages, videos, books, etc... Practicing and testing for yourself is the best way to learn. Case studies, try things out and compare results for yourself...
I have been studying every article, every course and every resource and a couple years of actual work in the field doesn't hurt much either. I am self educated