If you are looking for a new career, you may want to consider becoming an SEO professional. This profession is extremely in-demand. Companies hire SEO specialists to help with their digital marketing campaigns. Web traffic is vital for a successful digital campaign, and SEO specialists can make this possible. In addition to being a part of an agency, companies may also hire an SEO specialist to create and implement content marketing strategies.
SEO is a complex process that involves several processes that make a website optimized for search engines. While keywords and content make up the largest pieces of the SEO puzzle, other elements can also have an impact on the ranking of a website. These include page loading times, lazy loading comments, HTML tags, and microdata.
The first step in SEO is to evaluate your website and determine what changes you should make. An SEO professional will prioritize changes based on their impact on search engine traffic. They will also optimize pages for keywords and resolve any usability issues. This process takes time and requires patience, as SEO is an ongoing strategy. As such, it may take several months to optimize a website.
SEO professionals also need to keep up with the ever-changing search engines’ algorithms. These algorithms are a collection of technical calculations that search engines use to rank websites. Google and Bing release significant algorithm updates about twice a year. This means that any SEO strategy that worked 2 or three years ago may be hopelessly outdated now. That means that you should always stay on top of changes in the industry to stay ahead of the competition.
Another key to being an SEO professional is to have the internal drive to constantly learn. This requires organization, Excel skills, and research. Even simple tasks such as managing budgets require basic administrative skills, while deeper research requires more advanced organizational skills. Good SEO professionals know how to maintain an open dialogue with their clients and ensure that the relationship is mutually beneficial.
The main goal of an SEO professional is to ensure that your website is the number one result for tracked keywords. When someone searches for a laptop, the company’s website should be near the top of the results. If the brand is at the top of the results, it means that their SEO strategies are working. This is how SEO professionals keep up with changes in the digital marketing world.
SEO professionals should be able to provide statistics to validate their efforts. Meaningful metrics are the best way to show the value of their work. Relevant metrics like high-ranking web pages and blog posts, expanded mobile market, and measurable improvement in page loading times can prove how successful their efforts are. When presenting data, it is important to use charts and graphs rather than long lists of numbers.
Aside from having a strong understanding of SEO tools, SEO specialists also need to collaborate with other members of the digital marketing team. This is not an overnight skill, and it takes time and effort to learn the craft. It also takes practice to build up a portfolio of SEO wins. As a result, experienced SEO specialists earn much more than beginners.