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SEO Expert Skills That Companies Look For

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) continues to be a growing field, but the competition is ferocious. As the demand continues to increase, the supply is hardly able to catch up. If you’re considering a career in SEO, the team at 24 Seven Talent would like to share with you some SEO expert skills that can help you succeed in your journey toward becoming a Landy winning SEO.

Acquiring the Basics

Do your homework! SEO has been around since the world wide web began in the early nineties. However, the methods that are used today are very different and constantly evolving. Google releases a continuous stream of algorithm updates without much notification. We’d recommend you keep a close eye on Moz and Search Engine Land for the latest in SEO news. In addition, check out Google’s Webmaster Forum for some great information and updates.To better understand the fundamentals of SEO, begin by reading Moz’s SEO Guide. This guide takes you through most of the basic skills and understanding that a junior SEO should be familiar with. Also, you can study Search Engine Land’s SEO Periodic Table which shares a very stripped-down scorecard of what impacts your SEO.

Analytical Capabilities

As an SEO you will be tasked with many challenges that will require you to investigate and interpret data. You should not only have a solid understanding of your client’s goals and objectives, but you should be able to infer SEO KPIs such as Bounce Rate, Avg. Time on Site, etc. These metrics often indicate whether your SEO strategy is driving quality traffic to the site or you’re capturing traffic that most likely won’t convert.

Content is King

The phrase “Content is King” has been thrown around for the better part of a decade. But, what many SEOs have only recently discovered is that it’s truly a quality over quantity game. Hubspot, Marketo, and Moz are great resources for information as you dive into the topic and begin to understand the fundamentals of great content. While learning about content, be sure to explore its many forms including: Blogs, Articles, Infographics, Social posts, etc. These variations of content have been introduced to the digital space over the years and provide a lot of SEO value.

Backlink Building

Backlinking is a hot topic amongst the SEO community as it is one of the easiest to manipulate. The task of obtaining links to a website from another credible website is incredibly challenging and can often times lead an SEO to the dark side of SEO. There is a fine line between White Hat and Black Hat SEO – You should look that up. When brushing up on the subject, it is important to note that there are many schools of thought around this skill, but Google makes it pretty clear what they expect from the SEO community. Backlinks should be acquired organically through either solicitation or developing great, sharable content. Any way you slice it, if you can master backlinking you will bring a lot of value to the table.

Tools

There are many tools available for SEOs to utilize that help them perform research, identify errors, and develop strategy. We recommend getting familiar with what is available, the pros and cons to each, and discovering the right tool for you. Many SEOs use a variation of these tools on a daily basis since they can each provide different results. Some tools that we recommend starting with include: ScreamingFrog, Moz, Advanced Web Ranking, and SEMRush. These basic skills can help you to break into the SEO industry and lay the foundation required to becoming an SEO master. 24 Seven Talent has many positions in this field available and have seen a steady increase in requests for SEO talent. If SEO interests you, do the homework, acquire these skills, land a junior role, and begin attaining the experience necessary to launch your career in SEO.