It doesn’t matter if you do a course first, during or after. Or multiple courses. Or zero. Until you have a domain name that you can rank regardless of the KD% then you are not doing SEO. It doesn’t matter if you study and practice for an hour, an hour a day or a 100 months. Can you build a strategy or program that has enough information to drive an SEO campaign to rank in Google is the ONLY thing that matters.