Look back at the roadmap, and you’ll see a recommendation to share what you learn with others.
Learn SEO flowchart
This may seem counterintuitive, given that you want to learn more about SEO, but I find that teaching others helps me retain and assimilate knowledge. I think it’s because it forces me to articulate things, which often leads me to conclude that I don’t know as much as I thought I knew.
While you can do this publicly on a blog or YouTube channel, you can also do it semi-privately (in groups and communities) or privately (direct messages, face-to-face).
If you’re thick-skinned enough, doing it publicly often provides an extra line of defense against misinformation because people are usually kind enough to call you out when you get things wrong.
For example, here’s Bill Slawski pointing out an inaccurate claim in one of my articles on Twitter:
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Bill's tweet about Google not ranking pages on the basis of content accuracy
This leads me to an important point…
Don’t try to teach others SEO unless one of these things is true:
You’ve thoroughly researched and understood what you’re teaching.
You’re teaching something based on personal experience and testing (and you’ve made that fact clear).
The last thing you want to do is contribute more misinformation to an industry already rife with it.
Final thoughts
The famous psychologist, K. Anders Ericsson, theorized that learning a new skill takes 10,000 hours of practice. You’ll certainly gain a good understanding of SEO in that time, but the truth is that you never stop learning. I’ve been involved in SEO for 11+ years, and I learn new things all the time.
But remember, learning isn’t only about reading and retaining information. It’s also about putting what you read into practice, testing things for yourself, and finding ways to improve on conventional wisdom over time.