Track 05 — The Growth Lab
SEO & Digital Marketing
Marketing is full of confident guessing. This track replaces it with method: how search actually ranks pages, how to find demand that exists, how to spend an ad budget without wasting it, and how to read the numbers well enough to know what is working.
( What you'll learn )
How search actually works
Crawling, indexing, rendering and ranking — the mental model that makes every other SEO decision obvious.
Keyword & intent research
Finding demand that already exists, reading intent correctly, and mapping keywords to pages that can realistically rank.
On-page SEO
Titles, headings, internal linking, content depth and the unglamorous details that move rankings most.
Technical SEO
Site architecture, crawl budget, indexation control, structured data, Core Web Vitals and log-level diagnosis.
Content that ranks
Briefs, structure, editing and refreshing — writing for a reader while satisfying a search engine.
Off-page & digital PR
How links are actually earned, what to ignore, and how to spot a link scheme that will get a client penalised.
Local SEO
Google Business Profile, citations, reviews and map-pack ranking for businesses that serve a place.
Google Ads
Account structure, match types, negatives, bidding, quality score and writing ads people click.
Meta Ads
Audiences, creative testing, the pixel and conversions API, retargeting and reading the results honestly.
Email & automation
List building, segmentation, sequences, deliverability and the flows that quietly produce most of the revenue.
Analytics & reporting
GA4 properly, Search Console, Tag Manager, attribution limits, and dashboards a client can understand.
CRO & capstone
Landing pages, friction, testing — then a complete growth plan built for a real business and presented to the group.
( Curriculum — 13 weeks )
Search foundations
How search engines work, and how to find opportunity instead of guessing at keywords.
- Crawling, indexing, ranking
- Search intent types
- Keyword research workflow
- Competitor gap analysis
- SERP feature analysis
- Site structure planning
- Search Console setup
- Your first keyword and content map
SEO execution
On-page and technical work on real sites, including a full audit you could hand to a client.
- On-page optimisation
- Internal linking strategy
- Content briefs and editing
- Technical crawls with Screaming Frog
- Schema and structured data
- Core Web Vitals
- Link acquisition and digital PR
- Local SEO and Business Profile
Paid & content
Spending money deliberately. Search and social campaigns built, launched and optimised.
- Google Ads account structure
- Keyword match types and negatives
- Ad copy and extensions
- Meta audiences and creative
- Pixel and conversion tracking
- Retargeting funnels
- Budget and bid strategy
- Email sequences and automation
Measure & optimise
Knowing what worked. Analytics, testing, and the capstone growth plan.
- GA4 events and conversions
- Google Tag Manager
- Looker Studio dashboards
- Attribution and its limits
- Landing page CRO
- A/B testing method
- Client reporting
- Capstone growth plan and presentation
( Tools you'll master )
( Projects you'll build )
Full site SEO audit
A real site crawled, diagnosed and written up as a prioritised action plan with expected impact and effort.
Keyword & content plan
Research to publishing calendar: a mapped keyword set, briefs, and a realistic path to ranking.
Live ad campaign
A genuine campaign on a small budget — built, launched, optimised over weeks, and reported honestly including what failed.
Analytics dashboard & capstone
GA4 and Search Console wired into one dashboard, plus a complete growth plan for a chosen business.
( Where this leads )
( Is this you? )
A good fit if
- You are comfortable with spreadsheets and numbers, not just ideas
- You want a marketing career without learning to code
- You are curious about why people click what they click
- You can be patient — SEO results take weeks, not days
Probably not yet if
- You want instant results and dislike measurement
- You are hoping for guaranteed page-one rankings, which nobody can promise
- You would rather not write at all — writing is unavoidable here
- You dislike being wrong in public, which testing requires
Method, not guesswork.
Most marketing advice is somebody's anecdote repeated confidently. This track teaches you to check instead: read the data, run the test, accept the answer. You will spend a real budget on a real campaign and report on it honestly, including the parts that lost money — because that is the skill clients are actually paying for.
No responsible marketer guarantees rankings or ad performance. If a course promises you page one, that is the clearest signal available that it is not worth your money.
( Reading on this track )
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