What you will study
Throughout this Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course, you’ll benefit from expert insight into how to achieve your search marketing goals. Practical exercises will help you apply your new knowledge, and sharing your thoughts and opinions with co-learners will help you further reflect and deepen your understanding.
Delivered over four easy-to-digest sections, you will cover:
1. Mapping the user journey
- The role of search throughout the user journey
- ROI in search marketing
- Short-term and long-term objectives and tactics
- Key opportunities and challenges of organic search
- Key opportunities and challenges of paid search
- Organic and paid search working together
2. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Search engine algorithms and ranking factors
- Keyword research and user intent
- SEO planning and tools
- On-page optimisation
- User behaviour
- Social signals
- Technical SEO factors
3. Paid search marketing (PPC)
- Paid search in the user journey
- Keyword research for paid search
- Paid search ROI
- PPC campaign structure and settings
- Targeting PPC campaigns
- Creating effective PPC ads
- Measuring PPC success
4. Measuring search marketing
- Taking an iterative approach to search marketing
- Calculating ROI for search engine optimisation
- Calculating ROI for pay per click
- Using web analytics (Google Analytics) for measuring and improving search marketing
- Using Search Console for measuring and improving SEO
- Attribution modelling for gaining a more in-depth understanding of the impact of search marketing
Please note: the content in this course also features in courses created by The Open University, which are available on FutureLearn.
You will learn
By the end of this CPD course, you’ll have the skills to:
- apply keyword research using industry tools for both SEO and PPC
- produce optimised content in line with SEO best practice
- create and implement link building and social signal campaigns
- develop optimised content for user experience related to SEO
- produce and build PPC campaigns
- interpret and analyse SEO and PPC reports and analytics.
Vocational relevance
Online search forms more than 70% of user journeys, so it’s an essential part of your digital marketing armoury. This course will help you build critical skills to use search marketing effectively in the user journey, improve organic search rankings, use PPC to improve search traffic and explore analytics to measure the return on investment of your campaigns.
This course has been created by the OU in collaboration with industry experts and leaders in digital marketing. It’s hosted by Daniel Rowles, CEO of Target Internet, who has worked in digital marketing and digital transformation for over 20 years, helping a wide range of high-profile brands to use digital effectively. Daniel is also the voice behind the Digital Marketing Podcast and a renowned author in the field.
Learner support
There is no tuition on this course, and all study is self-directed. Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to enhance and reflect on your understanding by sharing your thoughts and opinions with co-learners.