NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Frenchs Forest, New South Wales, Australia, 05/14/2007 - An increasing number of SEO training courses have been appearing over the past year, in a response to the growing demand for the specialist skills required to support the rapidly expanding market of search engine marketing.

SEO - search engine optimisation - is one of the core elements of search engine marketing, whereby online companies target their potential customers using either optimisation or by purchasing sponsored adverts that appear in response to a search for a particular term or phrase. SEO involves the techniques required to develop the content and structure of a website to enable it to rank well for chosen search terms on the main search engines, such as Google™ and Yahoo!®.

The use of SEO has been practiced and developed by specialists for over 10 years, yet the rapid growth of search engine marketing as a core Internet marketing strategy in recent years - particularly in the UK and Australia - has meant that there is now a significant skills shortage in the industry. As a result, some specialist companies are now offering training courses as an additional service to clients who want to develop their knowledge or skills in-house.

One company that's been running SEO training courses for over 5 years is the Web Search Workshop, which has offices in the UK and Australia. Managing Director Clive Hawkins explains that they recognised the need for this training at an early stage: "Even before the massive interest in using SEO and PPC (pay-per-click advertising) as a search marketing strategy, we had clients who wanted to understand the processes involved with optimising a website so that they could understand the work being done and develop the techniques themselves as well."

"We still run our core search engine optimisation and marketing course, which is very popular, but we also now offer courses that specialise in just PPC campaign management or link development. We have also just launched a new correspondence course for companies that may want to learn and develop these search engine marketing skills at their own pace."

"In addition, due to our experience of using search on a daily basis, we also offer a popular training course that helps companies and organisations train their staff to make the most of search engines when they need to find and evaluate business information effectively, which can be a valuable resource in the office."

Hawkins continues: "Although SEO training courses can't replace the in-depth experience which comes from having optimised many websites over long time periods, they can give people that first step on the ladder, or help them to expand the knowledge that they may already have. It’s the starting point that is now clearly required if the SEO market can continue to service the rapidly expanding demand for this work, and so that we can continue to employ staff who are building on their SEO experiences to support this market into the future."

The Web Search Workshop (websearchworkshop.com.au) is a trading name of Web Marketing Workshop Pty Ltd and provides search engine marketing services to business websites, including search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising management. The company opened a new office in Sydney, Australia in January 2007, having been trading successfully in the UK since 2000.

Agency / Source: The Web Marketing Workshop Ltd

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