Who is an SEO specialist and what does he do?

What is the role of an SEO specialist?

SEO specialists play a key role in a successful strategy for promoting a brand or product on the Internet. Let’s take a look at several aspects of SEO specialists’ work:

• Increase organic traffic: by optimizing the resource, SEO specialists attract many times more traffic to the site and help users find your site.
• Improving the user experience: one of the key factors of promotion in search engines is to improve the behavioral factor, because the main goal of Google (and other search engines) is to provide a person with the most accurate and complete answer to a query.
• Analysis and monitoring: search engine optimization specialists also constantly analyze the results of their work and monitor changes in search engine algorithms and trends.
• Analysis of competitors: part of the SEO specialist’s work involves studying and analyzing changes in competitors. Constant “racing” with competitors has a positive effect on the quality of the site, because it needs to be made more and more interesting, unusual, and fast to remain competitive.

In general, the role of an SEO specialist is to help websites grow in search results, improve user experience, attract more target audience, and many other factors. It is now an integral part of the marketing arsenal of any online project and plays a significant role in its success.

What does an SEO specialist do?

We have analyzed the role of an SEO specialist in marketing, so let’s now talk about their specific tasks, as well as the skills that such a specialist should have. Here are the key tasks of an SEO specialist:

• Analysis and research of keywords: one of the first tasks of an SEO optimizer is to collect and clean the semantic core, i.e. to research keywords and LSI phrases and determine which ones are most relevant to the business or website topic.
• Content optimization: after collecting and analyzing keywords, they need to be used organically on the site, for this purpose, SEO specialists together with copywriters rewrite, change or supplement the content on the site and introduce keywords and phrases there to rank better for them and expand the semantic core of the site.
• Technical optimization: An SEO specialist also deals with the technical optimization of a website to improve its indexing, loading speed, and other factors that greatly affect the ranking of a website. This point contains quite a few incomprehensible factors (for people who have not encountered SEO), such as working with Robots.txt files, XML files, removing technical errors, etc.
• Improving the link profile: another important task is to develop and implement an effective strategy for improving the link profile of the site. This includes searching for high-quality and relevant external links and creating internal linking.
• Monitoring and analytics: as mentioned above, an experienced SEO specialist constantly analyzes the market and his work in order to constantly change and improve the strategy depending on global trends and changes in search engine algorithms.

What skills do you need to have to become an SEO specialist?

To be a professional SEO specialist, both hard and soft skills are important, so let’s take a look at some of them:

• Knowledge of SEO basics: of course, without this knowledge, it is impossible to be a specialist who knows what he/she is doing. This skill includes working with search algorithms, understanding the principles of ranking and other factors that affect the visibility of a website in search results.
• Analytical skills: We have already mentioned analytics several times, as it is a very important aspect of SEO. To achieve the best results, you should constantly change and improve your strategy. Even Google is still testing different variants of interfaces and algorithms to constantly improve its services.
• Technical literacy: In addition to SEO knowledge, it is also important for a specialist to understand the basics of web development and technical settings such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and others.
• Communication skills: it seems that this is not very important, because an SEO specialist interacts with Google algorithms all day long, but this is not entirely true. To be effective, SEOs need to communicate and get along with other team members, including developers, copywriters, marketers, and other SEOs. In addition, they often communicate with webmasters and must find an approach to each of them.
• Creative approach: A successful SEO specialist must be creative and have a creative mindset to find out-of-the-box solutions to improve SEO strategies. Sometimes you can see very unexpected things in SEO settings that you couldn’t even think of before, but they work and give their results.

An SEO specialist performs a lot of tasks aimed at improving website visibility, but you must admit that it is very difficult to do all of the above on your own (although these are not all the skills and responsibilities of an SEO specialist). Therefore, it is easier and more efficient to contact an SEO agency, because each specialist is responsible for his or her own area.

Tools and technologies of an SEO specialist

SEO tools

In order to perform such a large volume of tasks, an SEO specialist needs quite a few different analytics services. Here are the most popular ones:

• Google Analytics: This is the official analytics service from Google that allows you to analyze key points such as the number of visitors, traffic sources, bounce rates, and other factors.
• Google Search Console: this tool allows you to understand how search engines see your website. SEOs usually pay attention to such factors as page indexing, Robots.txt files, performance indicators, and others.
• SEMrush: this service provides a wide range of tools for competitor analysis, keyword research, position monitoring, etc.
• Ahrefs: commonly used for link profile analysis, competitor analysis, keyword quantity and quality, and organic traffic tracking. 

Screaming Frog: This tool allows you to perform a full technical audit of a website, examine the structure and analyze metadata.

Technologies and trends in SEO

• Artificial intelligence: the development of artificial intelligence has not passed by SEO and continues to make a significant contribution to the work of SEO specialists and allows you to optimize the processes of data analysis, content optimization and other aspects.
• Mobile optimization: As the number of users accessing search engines via mobile devices has increased, so has the need for mobile optimization. Adaptive design and mobile page acceleration (AMP) help to improve the user experience on mobile devices and significantly increase positions in search results.
• Local SEO: With the growing amount of information in the world and search engines, local queries such as “cafe nearby” or “gym Zaporizhzhia” are increasingly used, so this factor has become essential for a successful SEO strategy.
• Voice typing: now that everyone has a smartphone with the ability to use Siri or OK Google, people are increasingly looking for information using these services. Usually, such queries have a rather long tail (i.e., they consist of a large number of words. For example: buy an ACER gaming laptop with an intel core i5 processor). Therefore, this trend should also be taken into account in your SEO strategy.

These and many other trends can now be observed in SEO, so the work of an SEO specialist is becoming more and more interesting and diverse. After all, in order to build a successful strategy, you should monitor trends and implement them in your work.

How to become an SEO specialist?

The easiest way to become an SEO specialist is through practical experience, the more mistakes you make in your work at the beginning, the better. But in order not to fall flat on your face and embarrass your employer, we recommend that you first take a training or online course to familiarize yourself with the profession and search engine algorithms. There are a lot of such mini-courses on the Internet now, choose any (but it is better to consult with experienced specialists) and start your way to becoming a professional SEO specialist!

Conclusion

In order to dive into the world of algorithms and become a successful SEO specialist, you should be prepared for a lot of work and information and not be afraid to make mistakes. You don’t need to be superhuman, all the skills described above come with experience. So the most important thing in becoming an SEO specialist is the desire and readiness for new achievements. It’s not the easiest profession, but I assure you, it’s worth it!