Basically, most SEO Specialists and other search engine optimization professionals may begin their careers in a totally different field. That’s before working fully on their technical skills. Whilst, leveraging their transferable skills and educational backgrounds to make a move into a job in SEO.
Meaning, there’s no college or university degree related directly to SEO — and certainly, no four-year marketing program either. Particularly, that is going to give you the specific technical skills you’d need to thrive in the SEO field. Thus, any independent individual can get started anywhere, anytime! For there’re many Bootcamps & Courses too.
But, it’s rare to see a job description for an SEO Specialist that doesn’t list a Bachelor’s degree. Or rather, an equivalent degree in some sort of content-related field — like business, marketing, or even mass communications. So, who are these guys, and what are their key roles?
Who Are SEO Specialists?
In general, SEO Specialists are professionally elevated web-based content creators, writers, marketers, consultants, etc. Technically, the term is singular in the sense that you can’t lift out one role without associating it with the other. Most of them would work directly as part of a larger marketing or digital marketing team.
Markedly, with the support of a trusted partner like safaridigital agency, the primary duty of SEO Specialists (aka Search Engine Optimization or SEO Webmasters) is to test, analyze, and make changes to any website — that of our clients or even ours. In particular, so that it’s well-optimized for search engines. More so, while making sure that the website subsequently ranks higher in the search results — on major SERPs like Google.
As an example, our SEO experts perform page optimization across all our website content data. Especially on blog articles, on very clear schedule lines — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. More so, in order to ensure search results are relevant to our lead users’ SERPs query.
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In addition, they also make sure that they create a positive user experience. Whilst, growing website traffic, lead volume, and brand awareness. In other words, SEO Specialists are no different from any other digital marketing or rather, any traditional marketing professionals.
For one thing, they’re ultimately trying to create more sales for the company they’re working for. By conducting keyword research and leveraging SEO tools, such as Google Analytics. The main goal is to increase the visibility of a website on SERPs like Google or Bing.
In turn, this has major benefits for any web-based company like jmexclusives so to say. Not forgetting, some might also work closely with other members of a marketing team too. In order to develop new initiatives or better manage social media accounts to boost user engagement and traffic.
The Key Job Responsibilities For SEO Specialists
It’s important to realize, although it’s some sort of a freelance field, most SEO experts working in the field pursue some kind of additional certification. More so, in order to show their target employers that they have the needed skills.
In that case, such skills are needed by their lead customers for various reasons. For instance, to execute their digital marketing strategy. As well as boost their search engine traffic and make sure their website is near the top of search engine results pages.
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For your information, to get ahead, you’ll need to consider the Key Courses by BrainStation if you are a beginner. will also allow you to create actual work that demonstrates your abilities, and it will be created under the instruction of an SEO industry pro who knows what employers are looking for.
Always remember, SEO Specialist job responsibilities vary based on various elements. For instance, whether someone is working for a digital marketing agency, in the digital marketing department of a company, or freelance for a client. But, the job description for the vast majority of SEO Specialist postings will include all or most of the key features.
Consider the following responsibilities:
- Develop optimization strategies that increase the company’s website search engine result rankings. And when conducting paid search campaigns, the SEO Specialist will execute tests, and collect and analyze data and results. As well as identify trends and insights in order to achieve maximum ROI.
- Manage the expenses of SEO campaigns, stay on budget, estimate monthly costs, and reconcile differences. As well as closely collaborate with the web development team too. More so, in order to ensure SEO best practices are properly followed throughout the website content.
- Work with editorial and marketing teams to drive SEO in content creation and content marketing. They also take responsibility for page optimization for search engine marketing. While also, researching and implementing search engine optimization recommendations.
- Perform ongoing keyword research, discovery, and optimization for new SEO keywords to use throughout the company website and marketing materials. In addition, they create and execute link-building strategies. Whereby, they can change website architecture, content, linking, and other factors to improve SEO positions for target keywords.
- Determine measurable goals that demonstrate improvement in marketing efforts. In addition to monitoring daily performance metrics with SEO tools. Such as Google Analytics in order to understand SEO strategy performance.
- Last but not least, they collaborate with others within the marketing department to manage SEO strategy. Not forgetting, they also write compelling and high-quality website content too. Including blog posts and page descriptions to improve website search results.
NB: Even if you do have a relevant degree, you can upskill it with a certification course — or even other online career courses — and it will probably be necessary for your future consulting work. More so, in order to prove that you are on top of the ever-changing world of SEO.
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It’s good to know that; in order to be a successful SEO Specialist, things don’t just fall in place at once. Neither does it happen overnight! In that case, there are certain Characteristics of a Successful SEO Specialist that you should know.
The Key Skills To Look For In An SEO Expert
First of all, it’s good to know that; according to Jill Whalen, — CEO of High Rankings — anyone can set up an ‘SEO agency’ overnight and call themselves an SEO Specialist. But, that doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. For one thing, there are hundreds of little things that go into the bigger picture of doing SEO.
On the other hand, it takes many years of experiencing what works and what doesn’t to truly do a good job. That said, every website needs different SEO tactics to succeed. An SEO expert with many years of experience will be able to look at any website and give tangible insights.
They know exactly what needs to be done — more so, in order for it to gain more search engine traffic. Whilst, someone new at SEO will try the same things on every site, which will only have a limited effect, if any. Some of the key remedies a qualified SEO expert might prescribe include something fairly simple.
Such as rewriting your HTML title tags to fix structural issues — that prevent search engine bots from crawling and indexing your content. As well as obtaining quality links from relevant, external website sources. Below are other top qualities to look for in an SEO expert who will bring in results.
1. A Savvy Mind For Marketing
Realistically, the technical aspects of SEO are obviously a huge part of the job. Thus, understanding the issues that could be causing Google to bury your website in the search results is crucial. But, once you’ve overcome that, jobs in the SEO industry tend to have a lot in common with other digital marketing or even traditional marketing jobs.
Ultimately, your SEO Specialists need to create and position content — so that it outlines the benefit to the consumer while nudging them closer to a sale. The tricky part is creating content that will be compelling both to the people at the other end of the search engine while also pleasing a Google algorithm. That comes with experience.
But the SEO expertise required to really connect as an SEO Specialist and digital marketing professional more broadly goes deeper than that. To really succeed in an SEO role, you must always consider content marketing at a deeper level. As well as consumer psychology and, the target audience to whom you’re marketing.
Other key tools to consider include the social media landscape, web design, and development, viral marketing strategies, and overall business goals. More so, in order to help drive brand awareness and conversions.
2. Adept Ability To Think Big-Picture
Just as we’ve established, an SEO audit basically touches everything. And since company websites are so important, SEO can’t be disconnected from the rest of these considerations. It helps to have specific goals around SEO campaigns.
As an SEO Specialist, it is your goal to focus on search engine rankings, driving traffic, increasing brand awareness, or even lead conversions. And by conversions, I mean turning someone who visits your website into a customer.
Executing an SEO strategy will set an SEO Specialist up for success. But, not without the ability to define those goals and then be able to always keep the larger goals of the organization in mind. Lead SEO Specialists should always remember that Google changes its algorithms for how it ranks search engine results constantly.
For this reason, it could either be frustrating or exciting for you, depending on your perspective — but a good SEO Specialist takes this challenge on with enthusiasm. Equally important, you’ll need to be agile to thrive in the SEO space. Many professionals would benefit from continuous learning — but an SEO Specialist needs it to survive.
Furthermore, if you’re responsible for the website of a single company, you can’t afford to be complacent — as an SEO expert. Therefore, it is your job to constantly review its content to see if it aligns with ever-changing SEO best practices.
3. Have A Way With Words
Sometimes, we forget that writing well is the very basis of SEO. An SEO Specialist will need to know how to write clearly and concisely while creating content focused on user intent. Furthermore, even wordsmiths might enjoy seeing how small tweaks in word choices and structure are used.
In particular, based on the keyword research and density match, thus resulting in a boost to your SEO strategy. However, communicating with people and search engines at the same time while creating content that will be deemed as compelling to both is no easy task. So, writing skills will take you a long way.
Hyper-focused content that targets your niche better than your competitors do will cater to a specific audience, and allow them to connect better with your brand. Determining which niche that is, and how to direct related searches toward your properties, is half the battle.
To create additional brand awareness, another effective use of words is to participate in online communities. This’s where topics relevant to your industry are discussed — whether that’s the appropriate threads on Reddit, GrowthHackers, StumbleUpon, or other social media channels. Just lead the way and they’ll follow!
4. The Three SEO Levels Understanding
As I mentioned, most SEO Specialists would work directly as part of a larger marketing or digital marketing team force. Eventually, they would work with social media marketing teams, Search Engine Marketers, and email marketing teams quite easily.
Broadly, SEO touches pretty much every part of a company website — which also means it affects pretty much every part of a company. As a result, an SEO Specialist could expect to work with development, design, sales, IT, and customer-service teams, among others.
Having said that, there are three tiers to Search Engine Optimization that always come in handy. And, as such, any good SEO Specialist should be keeping all three of them in mind at all times. Particularly, whenever they are developing a web-based content marketing strategy.
Consider the following:
- SERPs Technicality: It refers to the non-content elements of your website. This section includes strategies to improve the backend structure and foundation of a website. Part of this job will involve performing a thorough website analysis, which can uncover opportunities for technical SEO to improve website speed, indexing, mobile friendliness, crawlability, and website architecture. Technical SEO will also crucially improve the readability of a website, which in turn improves user experience and shows search engines that the website is a good one.
- On-Page SEO: A form of content optimization that relates to the content on your website and how well it’s optimized. More so, to help search engines understand the topic of your content and see the website as a valuable resource. On-page SEO includes the use of such elements as keywords, meta tags, internal links, and HTML title tags. And, in ways that help increase search engine traffic and make sure it’s near the top of Google results.
- Off-Page SEO: It’s a form of content optimization that is all about creating a stronger relationship between your website and other websites through a variety of link-building tactics. Off-page optimization also includes the key strategies to build overall website reputation awareness. As well as to show search engines that a website is a trusted source. And, therefore, it should be positioned near the top of search engine rankings.
In other words, SEO experts need to know how all tiers of Search Engine Optimization contribute to how prominently websites are ranked — among the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) like Google search results.
5. Communication Skills & Collaborative Spirit
By the same token, an SEO Specialist will work with a wide variety of departments in a business. Including sales, customer service, web development, analytics, IT, marketing, and more. But, it’s not always easy to explain why making changes to a website is resourceful.
For example, how it will boost SEO and ultimately result in more traffic and conversions, just to mention a few reasons. In this case, that’s where your communication skills as an SEO Specialist come into play. And, on that note, you’ll need to know how to explain in a persuasive and accessible way.
Considerably, like why certain changes are necessary and how they will benefit the website and the company’s bottom line. However, things don’t just run in the mud there. Part of your job is being able to do that with teams of many different backgrounds — with different website perspectives.
Not only that but you could be involved in the specific content that is being developed for the site. Whereby, you have to make sure your writing skills are excellent for SEO jobs too. All in all, a qualified, experienced SEO expert reviews your site fully.
They also ask about your business goals and target visitors in order to identify strategies to improve your Search Engine Rankings and page views. Always remember, you’ll be more focused on growing organic visibility (non-paid) search engine results.
6. Curiosity & Passion For Execution
Certainly, knowledge is very important, but curiosity is essential, too. Finding an SEO who can recite the IP addresses for all of Google’s crawlers is great. But, the one who’s deeply curious and constantly investigating how that crawler works is even better.
During my extensive career as an SEO, I’ve often met SEOs whose knowledge was fantastic, but at some point in their career, it ceased to grow. Definitely, I’d rather have a fresh mind that’s hungry and growing than a grizzled vet whose thirst for new knowledge died back in 2010.
SEO experts who love to get things done efficiently usually make for ideal consultants. In addition, great SEOs find ways to work around challenges and roadblocks. Of course, this means that your organization must enable progress and not impede it.
Otherwise, you’ll break their spirit and desire to impact the company positively. An SEO expert needs to be able to clearly communicate why a change must be executed to a website in terms that everyone understands. Understandably, there’s no way an SEO can do everything themselves.
But, they need to interact with many different areas of a business including IT, marketing, customer service, analytics, and sales. As an example, their curiosity and thirst should lead to some answers to What Happened to HighRankings.com? and use their understanding to prove a point.
7. SEO Success Track Record Prove
It’s very easy to talk about a good game in SEO. For one thing, there are tons of blog posts and articles that describe various SEO tactics one can use. But, it’s another thing to have happy clients. Anyone looking to hire an SEO consultant or company should definitely check at least three fairly current references.
And, eventually, have a sit down to discuss how the SEO company helped them succeed. Today’s SEO Specialists need to understand all of marketing at a deep level. Like the psychology of the human race, the specific culture to whom they’re marketing, the social media landscape, web analytics, web design, content development, etc.
As well as viral marketing, content, product, business models, and more. When we disconnect SEO from these other critical practices, we make short-term decisions that can ultimately hurt more than they help. Your SEO Specialists of choice should be able to clearly showcase how they’ll match out your competitors.
Does the SEO focus on conversions (converting a visitor to your site into a customer), or are they more concerned with search engine rankings? Ideally, the focus of any SEO strategy should be to accomplish a goal. Like increasing conversions, and not just being nurtured to achieve a certain rank.
Is An SEO Specialist Career Worth It?
Of course, even by far! If you’re the type with a never-ending thirst for information — and an appreciation for all things digital — a career in SEO would be a good fit for you. Moreover, an SEO expert knows and constantly studies revisions to the Google algorithm, and adjusts accordingly.
This is a key part of driving search engine traffic and staying effective as an SEO expert. But, as an SEO Specialist, you’ll need to stay on your toes as you never know what changes could be around the corner. If that’s exciting to you, then a job in SEO would be a great fit.
Forthwith, businesses have only recently come to their senses in investing more in search engine optimization and search engine marketing. According to one recent report, companies spending more than $25,000 a year on marketing reported that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and SEO provided the best Return on Investment (ROI).
Whilst, two-thirds listed SEM and SEO as an extremely high priority or very high priority going forward – more so than Email Marketing or even Social Media Marketing (SMM), so to add. As result, companies are already directing more money toward their Digital Marketing Strategy than ever before.
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Above all, SEO takes a bigger part of that pie and continues to provide further value — thus it should lead to more jobs for people with SEO Specialists’ skill sets. Once you have an SEO skill set in place and you’ve mastered SEO tools, you will be an attractive candidate for a number of other jobs in different industries and businesses.
Just take a look through a non-SEO Specialist job description and you’ll still be likely to find SEO expertise a fixture of jobs in various fields. Including communications, content management, marketing, social media, and journalism. So, an SEO Specialist’s job doesn’t just involve writing compelling content.
Perse, they also need to know how to exercise their eye for aesthetics and web design. There aren’t many jobs that would allow you to flex so many creative muscles as you would as an SEO Specialist — that’s a very appealing prospect.
Takeaway,
In nutshell, whether your business is small or large — or somewhere in between — if you rely on Web traffic for sales or marketing, you need to have a few things on your bucket list. For instance, you should either master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or hire an SEO specialist.
Keep in mind, as of today, there are so many SEO experts that you can consult with. And, as such, you can consider those from jmexclusives, SEO Moz, High Rankings, or even Raven Internet Marketing Tools just to mention a few. Besides consulting their Content Pro Webmasters, they’ll also offer you tips to help you find the right SEO professional.
Clearly, good SEO Specialists never consider SEO in a vacuum. An SEO expert must factor in the entirety of a client or company website. And then, take into account not just the structure but also the user experience, and overall look and feel.
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Theoretically, a given Company Website might look great, yes — with plenty of multimedia sizzle. But, if the website isn’t consistently attracting targeted visitors and converting them into customers, it’s not doing its job — which can have a negative impact on revenue.
For this reason, it may be time to Hire A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert like ourselves. Whether it’s as an internal/external source, an individual consultant, or an SEO consulting firm for that matter. Overall, there are many remedies an SEO expert might prescribe and they are fairly simple.
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That’s it! Whatever the reason for you to read this guideline, I am sure it’s resourceful to you, your SEOs, or even your outsourced SEO Specialists. What do you think about the overall benefits and roles of these experts? Please, feel free to share your opinions thoughts, suggestions, or even questions in our comments sections.
But also, if you’ll need more help in relation to any field of content design, development, SEO audit, or web marketing, you can Contact Us and let us know how we can sort you. Likewise, feel free to Donate in order to support what we do.
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