Learn These Top 20 Skills to Become an SEO Specialist

About 71% of businesses today have a website to increase their online presence, get leads, and generate more revenue. However, building a website alone won’t suffice in the long run. According to Adam Audette, a business growth consultant, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, “Today it’s not about ‘get the traffic’—it’s about ‘get the targeted and relevant traffic’.” Therefore, companies need an SEO specialist to help them reach the target audience with relevant content. This blog explains the day-to-day responsibilities of an SEO specialist and the top skills you’ll need to succeed in this job.

What are the Key Responsibilities of an SEO Specialist?

The key role of an SEO specialist is to optimize content to improve rankings on search engine pages. However, optimizing content is a technical and ongoing process that includes the following responsibilities:

Keyword Research

Undoubtedly, one of the key functions of an SEO specialist is to conduct thorough research for identifying frequently used keywords, phrases, or queries entered on search engines. Furthermore, these keywords are incorporated into landing pages and blogs for better ranking.

On-Page Optimization

This refers to optimizing various elements on the website—title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags. Moreover, the job entails adding internal links, images, and alt-text to web pages to improve search engine rankings.

Off-Page Optimization

In addition to improving content on your website, you also need to make other efforts to increase traffic. For example, building high-quality backlinks to a website from other relevant websites, posting content on social media, writing guest blog posts, forum posting, and local listings.

ALSO READ: What is SEO? How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy

Technical SEO

This refers to technically optimizing your website and servers to enable search engine crawling and indexing your website. To illustrate further, submitting sitemaps to Google, using noindex tags for irrelevant pages, improving page speed, adding structured data, and making websites mobile-friendly are some noteworthy processes of technical SEO.

Content Development

The most important job of an SEO specialist is creating high-quality, unique, and engaging content with the latest statistics and appropriate keyword density. This increases search engine ranking.

Monitoring and Reporting

You must also learn website or Google Analytics to analyze website traffic, keyword rankings, and other metrics. Overall, it constantly monitors and tracks the result of SEO strategies, allowing one to make data-driven decisions.

Keeping Up with Industry Trends

Lastly, being up-to-date on the latest developments, skills, and best practices in SEO ensures that your website is always optimized.

In addition to the above, a majority of SEO specialist job descriptions include the following day-to-day responsibilities:

• Writing original and keyword-oriented content for web pages
• Running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns to increase traffic to the website
• Collaborating with other businesses to identify link-building opportunities
• Developing and implementing content marketing strategies using content management system tools
• Monitoring search terms and rankings of words
• Doing SEO audits and preparing reports
• Suggesting and implementing strategies to improve existing content
• Working with social media marketing teams to ensure the use of keywords in the content

What Skills Does an SEO Specialist Need to Have?

The role of an SEO specialist has evolved over the years. Traditionally, the role demanded expertise in organic optimization to improve content ranking. However, since the competition has increased and the need for digital presence has risen, companies prefer an SEO specialist with a mixed skill set. Therefore, search engine advertising is the most important skill they are currently looking for. It refers to running digital ads on search engine results. Let’s examine the other essential skills you’ll need as an SEO specialist.

1. SEO
2. Google Analytics 
3. Pay-per-click campaigns
4. Knowledge of SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs
5. Digital Marketing
6. Search engine marketing management system
7. Analytical skills
8. Communication skills
9. Creativity
10. Web analytics
11. Organization skills
12. Copywriting or technical writing
13. Knowledge of B2B or B2C businesses
14. Content management system
15. Keyword research
16. Intent analysis
17. Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript 
18. SEO forecasting
19. Understanding server management
20. Log file analysis

ALSO READ: How to Become an SEO Expert: A Comprehensive Guide

Do You Need Specific Education or Training to Become an SEO Specialist

No, anyone can become an SEO specialist, as no specific education or training is required for this field. Of course, it helps to have a bachelor’s degree in digital marketing or any allied field. Therefore, specific education is not essential to becoming an SEO specialist. Moreover, if you have academic qualifications in any field other than digital marketing, you can still become an SEO specialist if you acquire the relevant skills. Here are the common prerequisites for becoming an SEO specialist:

• A minimum of two-three years’ experience in developing and executing SEO campaigns
• Expert knowledge of search engine algorithms, ranking methods, indexing, and crawling 
• Knowledge of SEO industry programs, such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics
• Ability to do keyword research using data mining tools
• Expertise in conducting a competitive analysis of other similar businesses in the market
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to analyze large volumes of data and prepare reports
• Knowledge of WordPress and other content management systems
• Good understanding of customer behavior and B2B and B2C business models

How Can Hiring an SEO Specialist Benefit Any Business

SEO is no longer a traditional marketing gimmick: Professionals are, as a result, leveraging SEO techniques for content creation, content optimization, branding, and advertising. Therefore, hiring an SEO specialist is a must to stay ahead of your competitors and boost your growth. 

Let’s see how the introduction of an SEO specialist can benefit a business:

Increased Organic Traffic

SEO specialists optimize your website and content using relevant keywords and other on-page and off-page optimization techniques. This helps businesses rank higher in search engine results, increasing organic traffic for targeted keywords.

Better User Experience

Google indexing and crawling features list fast-loading websites higher. Moreover, the website should be easy to use on mobile devices too. Hence, an SEO specialist helps improve the overall user experience of your website by optimizing various on-page elements. This reduces bounce rates and generates more traffic to the website.

Higher Conversion Rates

An increase in organic traffic on the website creates more inbound leads for businesses; the same can then be converted into customers. Therefore, SEO specialists target relevant keywords and optimize your website. They bring more qualified leads to your website, increasing conversion rates.

Competitive Advantage

As noted above, SEO specialists optimize your website to make it rank higher and receive more organic traffic. They also conduct SEO analysis of competitors’ websites and plan SEO strategies. To summarize, this gives businesses a competitive edge over other rival businesses in the market.

How Do SEO Tools Help Specialists Perform Their Jobs More Effectively

Task Automation

SEO tools boost the efficiency of SEO strategies as they automate many repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Notable examples are ‘Separate’ and ‘SpyFu’ for keyword research and ‘WebCEO’ for on-page optimization and link analysis.

Provide Data-Driven Insights

SEO specialists get valuable insights and data on various aspects of a website’s search engine optimization with the help of SEO tools. They can use this data to analyze competitors’ websites, build custom SEO dashboards, and track organic conversions.

Comprehensive Reporting

SEMrush, Moz, and Google Analytics SEO tools provide detailed reports and analytics on keyword rankings, traffic, and engagement metrics. Additionally, they help SEO specialists analyze the performance of SEO strategies.

Startups, local businesses, and global brands all need search engine optimization to generate organic traffic to their website and grow. Therefore, there is high demand for SEO professionals in the market. However, you must learn advanced digital marketing, web analytics, and search engine skills to succeed as an SEO specialist. You can sign on for Emeritus’ digital marketing courses to help you learn these advanced skills and boost your career further. 

Write to us at content@emeritus.org