Thanks to my colleague, an Inbound marketing master who revealed me about SEO two years ago. Without his story about building backlinks, meta tags and keywords, trust that I would have been scrambling to give the decision on my career path.

Time goes so quickly that no-one can catch up. It’s already 14 months since I started to research and self-study concurrently SEO and SEM. It took 7 months for me to create content for Vietnam Travel Blog  as well as to apply my studies into implementing and fixing SEO issues for City Pass Guide (CPG). Fortunately, what I have applied has resulted in increasing organic traffics 3 times in 6 months and actively having greater interactions on Facebook and now Google+.

Honestly, I have not got neither IT background nor official Marketing qualifications when I first started learning SEO and SEM. In fact, you have to spend a lot of time reading, learning and researching on your own if you would like to take this job as your money fishing-rod.

1. Google University

There were few obstacles for an English graduate  in terms of technical practice. But I gave it a shot by enrolling in the official Google Certification Program provided by Google Inc. For newbie, you should take around 4 months to study every part of the program in half-time basis (3hours/3days/week) or 3 months for full-time student (3hours/6days/week).  You can definitely play around with your time-table to fit your routine.

Google said:

“To gain qualification, exam takers must pass both the Advertising Fundamentals exam and one advanced-level exam.”

This is the must-study school that any SEM have to graduate from if they want to earn better money compared to other SEM gurus. But in fact, your personal value does not depend on the qualifications that you get but the profits that you do for your clients. That’s why never look down on any SEM having no qualifications but real experiences.

The English course is in an easy-writing style but it requires an intermediate level and research skill to understand the context thoroughly. If you are confident with your English skills, just go for it. Remember that all resources and updates are written in English. If you want to stay a head from a crowd, you’d better master your English skills before digesting any documents.

I full-filled the whole program in 3 months (but have yet received any certifications). Then, following up with my supervisor, Charly Leporc, who spent most of the time coaching me on applying SEO theory into practices.

Bob Jones said: “You won’t end up with an official degree in SEO, the hands-on experience you get is priceless, especially when you’re able to deliver results for your company.”

SEO is too new to have a true standard for evaluating student at the end of the course like other 101 courses which have been improved, updated and qualified over years by any SEO Association. In fact, we are the very first generation to build up, experience and sum up the knowledge over decades. Thus, it is impossible to identify which school is the best at the moment. Below are 3 colleges for SEO who want to start from the basic and receive the most up-to-date researches of  SEO experts in the world.

2. Distilled U College

Farky Refig has created a quick review about Distilled U, an online learning platform where SEO professionals at any level can enroll in.

They divided the course into 3 levels SEO 101, Further SEO and Advanced Videos where most of the SEOmoz experts lecturing and presenting their experiences and instructions to newbie.

3. Inbound Marketing University

Inbound Marketing University (IMU) is HubSpot’s free marketing training and certification program. IMU offers an online curriculum of 18 Internet marketing webinars taught by a faculty of top marketing experts.

Students that complete courses and pass the Inbound Marketing Certification Exam with a 75% or above become Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals.

I’d love watching their presentations. I prefer listening and taking notes to reading lots of paragraphs. However, if your time is limited Jay advised to take these 3:

• David Meerman Scott on ‘Viral Marketing’ (session 5) – excellent presenter and full of great example stories.  Use of personas and how to create a world wide rave.
• Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz on ‘Advanced SEO’ (session 6) – great analytical and qualitative explanations of SEO ranking with separation of opinion versus analysis.
• Avinash Kaushik of Google on ‘Advanced Analytics (session 14) – turns normal business intelligence into valuable metrics that focus on tracking changes versus the baseline numbers (also has a great technical blog).

I found myself responsible to lead newbies on the right track where I have experienced, so that SEO and Inbound Marketing can be developed in Vietnam.

Please feel free to raise any question or discussion so that I can improve myself as well as help Vietnamese SEOs, SEMs and Inbound Marketers come close to the world.