While some have said that colleges and other academic institutions don’t place enough emphasis on teaching the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), one expert says many of the lessons learned in a liberal arts educations can be applied to both SEO and SEM.
In a column for ClickZ, Erik Dafforn, executive vice president of Cleveland-based Intrapromote, says that many of the things he learned prior to getting into the world of search engine optimization (SEO) are still relevant in his work today – including history, biology and psychology.
Dafforn says that having a background in psychology can be helpful when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) as it can help a business instinctively know what potential customers need and what keywords they might be looking for in a search.
Because so few schools teach search engine optimization (SEO) on any significant level, Dafforn says there’s no reason to put an emphasis on whether it’s better to learn on-the-job or in school.
"For many, a discussion of the relative merits of learning SEO/SEM in college versus on the job is largely moot, because only one of those options existed," he writes.
The current employment situation in the U.S. has many people considering jobs they might not have thought of even a year ago, causing many to learn new tools like search engine optimization (SEO).
CNNMoney recently reported that recent graduates are learning skills like SEO and web design to broaden their knowledge in tools that will likely be necessary in most jobs in the future.
