Are SEO Bootcamps Worth It?

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes a website's pages easier for users to find and more relevant to their search queries, increasing that website’s ranking on search engines.The process involves improving a website's technical configuration, content relevance, and link popularity, and requires a fair amount of strategy and creativity. 

SEO experts are often a part of a larger digital marketing team, working with copywriters, designers, social media marketing experts, and marketing analysts. There are three pillars to SEO: on-page SEO, like the content on the pages, the headers, and the user experience; technical SEO, which refers to the technical parts like crawlability, sitemaps, and site speed; and off-page SEO, which is about gaining credibility from other relevant sites via backlinks. 

SEO can also include things like accessibility (making sure your website is usable by the widest range of people, including the visually impaired), and is also referred to as ‘organic search.’ Where paid search uses funds to purchase ads across the web and social media, organic search involves strategically leveraging your site and its content to increase sales. In fact, organic search is reportedly responsible for 53% of all site traffic. 

To put it simply, the better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to be found and clicked on. Ultimately, the goal of search engine optimization is to help attract website visitors who will become customers, clients or an audience that keeps coming back.

What Can You Do With SEO?

As an SEO expert, you can make or break the online success of any website. You can directly affect the user’s experience and aid in making your website as inclusive as possible. Plus, your skills don’t always have to be used for making money. You could volunteer or work for a nonprofit, helping them generate donations for worthy causes and inspiring people to get involved. You could manage SEO for a major media outlet or local new channel, ensuring citizens are properly informed. And yes, you can use your SEO skill set to increase sales for either your own business or the one you work for. 

As a career field, mastering SEO opens up a lot of doors. You could become an SEO Manager and oversee the planning, execution, and monitoring of a company's SEO strategy. You would coordinate with various team members in fields like digital marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising to ensure all tactics and strategies are cohesive and on brand. Or, you could also become an SEO Analyst and focus on gathering and analyzing data from websites to improve search rankings. Or, you could become an SEO Content Writer and create high-quality, engaging, and keyword-optimized content for a website.

Why Learn SEO in a Bootcamp?

While there are many ways to learn SEO, attending a bootcamp offers substantial benefits. If you’re looking to become an expert in a shorter amount of time, a bootcamp can help you reach competency in a few weeks or less. Some are only a week long, meaning you can learn everything you need to know with just five days of PTO. 

Many working adults who enroll in bootcamps are looking to switch careers, most often from a nontechnical field to a technical one. A former humanities professor may wish to transition into coding, a historian might train in cybersecurity, a psychology major may shift into user experience (UX) design, or an artist or graphic designer may move to user interface (UI) design. Bootcamps make these transitions easier, while also providing students with a chance to form connections with a network of professionals. 

Plus, many bootcamps similarly require participants to put together a portfolio showcasing their best work. These courses often walk students through how to make their portfolio as professional as possible, so you don’t have to try and create one all on your own. Graduates can then share this collection with prospective employers as evidence of acquired skills and experience.

Several other educational options are discussed below so you can properly weigh all your options and make the best decision for you. 

Bootcamps Compared to College

College is both expensive and time consuming. The average bachelor’s degree takes four years to complete and involves taking generic courses (or ones not in your subject of interest) before getting the ones specific to a major. Typically, the first two years of your degree are spent on general education requirements, so you’ll only receive two years of training in your actual field. 

According to the Education Data Initiative, an in-state degree costs $27,146 per year, while out-of-state costs $45,708 per year, on average. This price is on the rise, too, making a four-year college degree financially inaccessible to many. College graduates still enjoy higher earnings than the average U.S. worker, but there’s a growing trend of students feeling a degree no longer holds its value, especially when you consider the high interest rates on student loans. 

Pew Research surveyed the public and found that only one-in-four U.S. adults say it’s extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job in today’s economy. Only 22% say the cost of getting a four-year college degree today is worth it even if someone has to take out loans. So, while a college degree still holds value, there are disadvantages to this pathway that need to be considered. 

Bootcamps Compared to Self-Paced Courses

Bootcamps are typically held live either in-person or virtually. A self-paced course, also known as an on-demand course, is offered online and can be completed at the time and pace of your choosing. Self-paced courses are ideal for those with complicated schedules as they allow you more flexibility with no set class times or assignment due dates. But it’s also important to keep in mind that these courses have disadvantages too. 

Bootcamps allow for in-the-moment discourse with an expert instructor. If you’re struggling with a particular subject, you can ask questions and receive feedback instantly. In an on-demand class, you typically won’t have access to an instructor or, if you do, you will have to submit questions via email or messaging and then wait (sometimes several days) for a reply. 

Additionally, live bootcamps offer a level of accountability that many students say they need to succeed. Schedule class times and assignment due dates help keep you on track and motivate you. Self-paced courses require you to hold yourself accountable, which can work if you’re a focused and self-motivated individual. If you aren’t, a bootcamp may be a better fit. 

Bootcamps Compared to Certifications or Certificates

Another option is to attend a certification or certificate program. Certifications are often required by various employers to prove that you have continuing competency in ever-evolving tools and technology. They are a tried-and-tested method of proving one’s competence in a chosen field and, because of this, some employers will often cover the cost of these certifications and exams, eliminating the need for you to financially invest in this continuing education. But, if you’re attempting to transition into a new field, a certificate may not be the right choice, especially if cost is a concern.

Certificate and certification programs can be lengthy as well. They typically fall somewhere between a bootcamp and a four-year degree, taking up to a year or two to complete. While their curriculum is robust and a certificate of competency will look good to potential employers, they aren’t the best option for folks looking to change careers quickly. A bootcamp can be completed in a much shorter time frame and also typically comes with a certificate of completion that can be added to your resume or LinkedIn to showcase your knowledge. Then, once you’re established in your new field, you can pursue a certificate as a means of continuing education. 

Bootcamps Compared to Free Training Options

There are free training options as well. These are typically found on sites like YouTube and consist of video tutorials, blog posts, and discussion forums. These free resources can often be the open door to a new hobby, subject, or endeavor that you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. But, while free training sources can be beneficial, they are most beneficial when dealing with training for general soft or technical skills, like communication and problem-solving or programs like Excel®. 

Free training resources often lack the depth of knowledge that bootcamps offer. Because free online courses are developed to address general needs, the material may not be as specific as students or learning and development pros might hope. They also lack benefits like live feedback and interaction, accountability with scheduled classes and assignment due dates, and a top-notch curriculum created by industry experts or educational professionals. It’s best to view free resources as a way to get an initial idea of what SEO is all about, not as the primary source of your education. Think of them as a jumping off point, just the start of your journey to becoming an SEO master. 

Learn SEO with Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a variety of classes, both live online and in-person in New York City. Their SEO Bootcamp covers the fundamentals of SEO with hands-on lessons in search engine optimization and competitive keyword analysis Led by an expert instructor, this class offers small class sizes, setup assistance, and a free retake should you wish to revisit any of the material. The course also includes a seven-day free trial of SemRush, the top keyword research tool.

If you’re looking for something more robust, Noble also offers a UX & UI Design Certificate that covers design concepts, industry tools like Figma, and research methodologies for creating successful user experiences. UX (User Experience) focuses on designing apps, websites, and other products that are easy and pleasant for people to use. UI (User Interface) focuses on the appearance of apps, websites, and other products, so they are beautiful and visually effective. UX/UI and SEO are complementary fields; having a better understanding of the user’s experience can help guide your SEO strategy. 

Additionally, their Digital Marketing Certificate will provide you with a holistic understanding of all parts of marketing, including SEO. You’ll develop an actionable, multi-tiered campaign and optimize it through search engine optimization (SEO), social media, paid search, content marketing, and email marketing. You’ll also learn to increase your return on investment by using technology to determine key performance indicators, monitor web analytics, track conversions, and create reports with Google Analytics. Tracking your successes and failures will be hugely important as an SEO professional. 

Google Analytics Bootcamp will teach you how to use Google Analytics and its applications for marketing, including tracking data, interpreting reports, and optimizing performance. Google Analytics is often used by SEO experts to help identify content and pages on a website that is ranking well or getting shared a lot. This course will cover setting up an account and understanding what you should be tracking. You’ll also discover the exciting features of GA4, including its data model and advanced methods for tracking events that matter to you. (This course is part of the Digital Marketing Certificate, but can be taken as a standalone course.) 

While not specifically focused on SEO, Web Development with HTML & CSS is a valuable course for any SEO professional as they’ll often have a hand in website development. This class offers hands-on experience coding websites from scratch, all the way through uploading to make the site live. You’ll learn best practices for structuring and tagging the content of your webpages with HTML, and styling the content with CSS. Using HTML, you’ll learn how to create webpages with text, images, and more. With CSS, you’ll style the content, create centered page layouts, add background images, style navigation, and make the page responsive. Optimizing HTML and CSS is paramount to ensuring not only an attractive design but also excellent SEO performance.