With SEO education readily available and debated endlessly, we can often feel like we understand more than the basics of SEO.  Sometimes, we may feel like our education has plateaued and we aren't learning as fast. You think:  "Yes, we understand how to run an on-page audit. We know what to look for in a backlink profile. We've done competitor and keyword analysis with Screaming Frog and Xenu, Soovle, UberSuggest and the Adwords Tool.  We have started ping into the "new" stuff:  content, video and mobile SEO. We have the right tools, we know how to rank for local and our clients are success stories. 

What happens when you've read "everything" on SEO?  You read Inbound.org daily, your feed reader is full of bloggy goodness and you have kept up on social media.  You read the Moz Q&A and answer questions regularly.  You "get" SEO and you're good at it.  Now what?  

Backing Up, Moving Forward

Last year I considered the move to an in-house or agency SEO position.  After 10 years of self-employment, I felt the urge to talk to like-minded colleagues, learn from talented others and generally do something different.  In the end, the right opportunity didn't come along, but I learned some things along the way that have helped me blast through my own business education plateaus.  

I knew if my education plan worked, I would be happier, more employable, and have expertise in the skills I need going forward.  I spent the last year pushing my personal envelope and learning more than I thought possible. After reading Rae Alton's "Degree Schmegree: Why Self Education is Elemental to SEO Success"  I realized my own study plan may be helpful to others.  

That gets us here!  I'm going to pe into how I have spent my last year and hopefully help, encourage and set you on a path to increasing your own knowledge base, no matter what "level" your current knowledge.

The Idea: Compiling A Digital Marketing Skills List

The plan is simple:  create a list of skills you can use to be a better SEO and digital marketer.  Then, figure out which skills are currently most important to you, and finally, learn those skills to whatever level of mastery you need to feel knowledgeable. 

My breakthrough idea actually came as a result of the job searches I had done early in the year.  Job searches nearly always list out a job description, required skills, and lists of "the role will involve..."  

I read through as many ads as possible and created an Excel list of the descriptions, listed by job title and required  skills.  These are some of the job titles and required skills I found:

The skills I listed came directly from the job descriptions.  One ad related to a "Search Performance Manager" position required:

• Managing clients digital marketing strategies - focused on SEM, but working closely with SEO, and performance display teams
• Optimising campaigns to give clients maximum ROI on media invested - Omniture experience is desired

From that, we would extract SEM, SEO, ROI, Omniture and put that on the list.

Another job may list: 

• Detailed understanding of SEM practices and SEO principles.
• Ability to analyse data and identify trends in Excel and/or SPSS.
• Proficiency with web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Coremetrics.
• Sound understanding of JavaScript, CSS and HTML according to W3 guidelines.

Now we have seen SEM, SEO and Omniture twice, Excel once and some coding languages.  After looking through another couple ads, your list may look like this:

You may be starting to notice the patterns.  SEO, SEM, Google Analytics, eDM, and a few others are repeated frequently.  Some skills (Adobe CS, WebTrends) are less frequent, maybe even just once.  

So the next step was to get all the data into an Excel chart for each of the job openings. I looked at jobs I would be interested in currently - so my list may differ from yours.  I am most interested in SEO, SEO strategy, digital marketing (including PPC) strategy, social media and websites. I am less interested in technical IT jobs (web developer, .NET, IT System Admin) so I stayed away from those jobs. I also avoided "sales" jobs.

My job list read like:  SEO Specialist, SEO & Link Builder, SEO Consultant/Manager, Search Performance and Digital Marketer, SEO Expert.   Find the jobs you are interested in and pull out all the relevant skills.  

Important Note: Try to be consistent on your chart regardless of what the ad actually says.  If the ad says " Google Analytics" and you've already put that in as "Analytics" three times, make it "Analytics" this 4th time.  Keep your terms as consistent as possible! 

After searching through the jobs I would currently apply for, I also searched through the "next level" jobs - what jobs would I be happy to move into in 2-5 years?  These had titles like Digital Marketing Manager, Search Manager, Digital Director, Head of Digital Marketing, etc.   I pulled all the skills from these jobs as well.  Scan as many ads as possible, the more the better.   

Sorting the Skills List Data with Excel

=COUNTIF(B2:H100,"SEO")

Put this formula in a cell just off to the right of your skills list. If you saved a max of 7 skills per job, put this in cell J1 or K1 - whatever works for you.  Let's break down the formula above so you can tweak it if necessary.  Next to the cell with the formula, type only the bit in quotation marks (in this case: SEO).

Start from the inside of the formula and work out.  "SEO" - this is the term we are trying to find.  You will need to adjust this for each skill in your list.  

Next, find the range B2:H100.  I put "job description" in Column A, skills starting from B2.  I only kept up to 7 skills per ad so B, C, D, E, F, G, H.

So B2:H100 is my "range."  These are the cells I want the formula to search.  I want it to search every cell from B2 to H100.  

=COUNTIF(

This is the function we are using - it means "starting with 0, count 1 for every time my term "SEO" appears in any cell from B2 to H100.

Copy the same formula to another cell and change "SEO" to "SEM" 

=COUNTIF(B2:H100,"SEM")

Repeat the same formula with Google Adwords, Analytics, SEM, and all the other terms in your job ads.  If you searched ads that were much different than mine, you'll have an entirely different list but that's fine. Eventually you will have a list that looks like this (but much longer).

Highlight all of these count cells and the description of each cell.  Press Ctrl+C  to copy the list.  Then press "Paste Values" (under the Paste dropdown arrow, see photo).

Now press Ctrl+C copy the whole list again and go to "Sheet 2" at the bottom of your Excel document.  Use Ctrl+V to paste in the whole Count list from the first page with the descriptions.  

With the formulas removed, we can now sort this list.  Data >  Sort.  Sort by your number column (Column A) and use the order largest to smallest.   

These are the most frequently discussed terms in all the job ads you pulled apart.  These are the topics you should be an expert in, in order of importance. 

Yes, some jobs will require an Analytics genius and others just want passing knowledge of Analytics - but the number of times mentioned means your skills fit a large number of jobs you find relevant to your interests.  Growing your skill set in the highest ranked areas will make the most difference. 

TL;DR

1. Extract skills from job openings and put them in Excel.
2. Use the =COUNTIF function to sort the skills by how many times they appear in ads. 
3. Focus your education on the skills with the highest number of mentions in areas you currently lack experience.
4. Blah, blah, blah.
5. Money! Jobs! All the things!  

What did I learn and what's next?

I spent the majority of my year in all areas of SEO: on page, link building, mobile &  video SEO, as well as social media marketing, Excel for statistics and scraping, competitor analysis, PPC and focusing on ROI and Analytics.  I read Inbound, blasted my way through hundreds of blog posts, and read every Q&A I could.  I watched videos, participated in SEO hangouts and immersed myself entirely.  

This year? I am going to focus slightly outside SEO:  sales psychology, programming (basics - but enough to know), and demographics.  I also want to study more in areas I started but don't feel like I'm where I want to be: landing pages, branding and email marketing.  I will stay updated with SEO but grow in other areas, too.

Where will the next 12 months take you?