10 Team Training Ideas to Keep Your SEO Team Rockin

Every two weeks here at KoMarketing we hold team trainings. We gather the SEO, content, PPC & social media teams into the conference room and spend 45-60 minutes discussing a topic related to the online marketing industry.

The trainings help give individuals a glimpse into the other departments and keep all of us up to date on what’s happening in the industry. It’s also a nice way to get new people up to speed and let veterans share their knowledge.

If this isn’t something you are doing, I highly recommend it.

The industry moves fast and in a client-facing environment where you don’t always have time to sit down with everyone on a frequent basis, trainings are an awesome way to help individuals learn and move forward in their jobs.

While we tend to vary our trainings to incorporate PPC, social media, and even sales, I thought I’d get you started with 10 team training ideas for the SEO team.

1. Client Challenges & How to Overcome Them

In an agency environment, we are often faced with challenges. This can be anything from expectation setting to results issues to resource issues and everything in between.

The idea behind this training is that even though we are managing different accounts, we are often facing the same challenges. By listening to how others dealt with their individual challenges, each of us can learn how to handle our own situation and figure out the steps that are necessary to take.

2. Keyword Research Tools & Tips

One of the most interesting things to me about keyword research is we all have our own way of doing it. There’s no one right way and with all the various tools available, there’s no one right tool.

A training on keyword research offers everyone the chance to give their perspective and showcase the tools they use. For example, during our discussion, Kristen alerted us to FAQFox. This has since become one of my favorite tools and something I’ve even included in presentations.

3. Conference Recaps

Did someone from your team recently attend a conference? Why not have them present to the team what they learned?

This is something we are working to get better at but make sure everyone benefits from conference attendance. It’s easy to send one or two people, have them write a blog post about the show, and then forget all about it.

While it’s nice the people who attended learned some valuable tactics, make sure they share them with everyone else.

4. Online Marketing Jeopardy

This was one of my favorite trainings we’ve done (thanks to Stacy and Ryan) because it was not only valuable from a learning perspective but it was also fun.

Online marketing jeopardy is exactly what it sounds like and is easy to plan. You can even make your categories specific to SEO (Technical, Keyword Research, Search Engine Updates, the list goes on). Just make sure you have your questions…ahem…answers ready ahead of time.

5. Tools to Make Life Easier

The way we run our day to day varies from person to person. For example, while we all may have to do lists, the tools we use to organize and keep track of those to-do lists can be very different.

Have the team share the tools they use in their day to day to make life easier. We did this and it not only resulted in new tools being shared, it resulted in a great blog post!

6. Google Updates & What They Mean

When a Google update happens, it’s often cause for concern. Even if you’ve never bought or traded for one link, you’re thinking about how your site could be penalized. Why? Because Google has us paranoid! Oh, that’s just me?

Even if an update doesn’t affect your site or your client’s, keeping everyone on top of the latest updates is important. For the new people starting out in the industry, they may not even know anything about Panda or Penguin or Phantom, or whatever other update is out there.

Everyone on your team should be able to tell a client what an update is about and what it means for them.

7. Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt

This is another training we did recently that brought together fun, competition, and learning (and concluded with our team field day).

Pull together some questions on SEO and send your team out to the interwebs to get the answers. The real value comes in reviewing each answer and explaining the what’s and the why’s behind them.

Note: It’s also a good way to get individuals who normally may not work together much, working together.

8. Client Success Stories: What, How & Next Steps

Every day has it’s ups and downs but there is nothing better than seeing results from your hard work.

Holding a team training that allows everyone to showcase a success story (for a client or in-house) helps create a positive environment and can provide ideas for others on how they can help their client.

They key here is ensuring you are going through the process of each. What went into it and why was it a success?

9. Blogging: Best Practices & Promotion Tactics

We have some amazing talent here writing on behalf of our clients and KoMarketing. But blogging doesn’t necessarily come easy to everyone. It’s certainly different than your traditional essay writing or for many journalism majors, news writing (Ryan did a nice post on the differences of journalism vs. blogging).

A training on blogging best practices can help everyone understand headings, writing styles, the importance of sub-headings and so on.

Additionally, giving everyone some tips on how they can promote their posts can also be valuable.

10. News & Article Roundtable

I really love this one because it shows me that everyone is paying attention to what’s happening in the industry and offers insights into what actually interests them.

For the news and article roundtable, have everyone come with an article they think is important/interesting along with some talking points around the article. It’s a great way to get everyone involved and participating.

Bonus: Open Mic Night

Or…open mic day. We’ll actually be hosting open mic day at this week’s training and everyone will have a chance to present on anything they want. It doesn’t even have to be marketing related!

What’s the point?

Getting up and talking in front of people doesn’t come naturally for most. Giving people the chance to spend five minutes talking about something they love in front of people they know, makes that feel more natural and can help improve speaking and presentation skills.

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That’s it! What other awesome team trainings are you doing?