There are particular skills needed by an SEO expert that are just as diverse as mom’s duties are. Without either of them, let’s face it, we would be lost. While the job doesn’t negate a degree, what should an SEO expert know? If you’re looking to hire someone for the position, here are 8 of the top skills needed by an SEO expert.
1. Analysis
If you want to learn how to become an SEO specialist start by paying attention to analytics. These numbers are significant to your business. If your SEO person doesn’t understand analytics, you’re in trouble. Those statistics measure how well you know your audience and how successful you’re going to be with your current content or by repeating past efforts. Analytics shows where your audience lives if they are using iOS or Androids, and if they are male or female, plus a lot more information.
2. Critical Thinking
SEO experts should have an analytical mind and know the difference between causation and association. Hire an SEO professional who understands that every SEO plan is different. There are no two websites alike, and each one does something that will affect their rankings among the search engines. The trick is to optimize your site more than your rivals. When things go wrong, the critical thinker will determine what’s not right, what is driving traffic, and what’s needed to fix any issues.
3. Social Skills
It’s my experience that great (business) relationships happen because of the ability to learn from each other. Sometimes, the best consultations happen at a social hour, or the best story ideas occur over drinks. However, with the recent restrictions on socializing, you don’t want to mingle with strangers, and conversations about politics are taboo these days, so great social SEO minds Zoom after 5.
4. Be Flexible and Able to Motivate
The thing I love/hate about my job is that you just can’t turn it off at 5 o’clock on Fridays. You can be up late nights on a Saturday, not even Netflixing. Marketing takes up where SEO leaves off. Because Google is always changing, there are new things to learn. You have to be flexible and motivate your team when they have to make yet another change.
5. A Sense of Humor
Because Google makes so many changes and some of them can be rapid turns of events, we have to deal with the new ideas rather quickly. These changes mean having to keep cool heads because we just made changes. It’s imperative to remember it’s not rocket science but SEO specialist training at its best. It comes with the job. Just laugh at life and carry on.
6. Public Speaking and Writing
What skills needed by an SEO expert are more valuable than the MVP in football? Someone to conduct research for keywords and phrases and implement them into their writing and strategically place them for effective speaking. This person can write their own check. It’s a strategy not everyone knows how to use.
7. Technical Skills
As SEO specialists, we need to know things like page speed, basic HTML tags, lazy loading, and redirects. With that in mind, does SEO require coding? The developer can answer questions relating to coding and other technical anecdotes. With some fundamental programming skills and the proper SEO tools, we can become better coordinators.
8. Research
You can’t complete an SEO campaign successfully without research. It’s critical to the outcome if you’re competing in a specific industry. The art of researching takes time, and it’s one of the top required skills for SEO specialists.