SEO, short for search engine optimisation, is a skill set most businesses require. The simple reason is that most companies now heavily rely on online marketing to get their business more sales.

Organic SEO, for those who do not know, is simply the process of moving a business up Google’s ranks for one or many keywords.
SEO specialists, therefore, spend their time on a wide range of tasks, from building backlinks to writing content marketing and improving a business’s on-page SEO.

In this article, we will cover:

– What exactly is an SEO specialist?
– What are the tasks that an SEO specialist completes?
– What does on-page and off-page SEO even mean?
– How can you become an SEO expert?

First things first, what is an SEO specialist?

 

An organic SEO specialist specialises in search engine optimisation, which is all about improving where a business ranks on Google. Of course, some companies might be focused on optimising the website for a different search engine—for example, Yandex or Microsoft Bing.
However, for our clients, we have only ever been asked to improve the SEO for their companies on Google.

Here are some of the critical tasks that an SEO expert will complete:

Keyword analysis

This is often completed using various SEO tools. If you were to ask us which keyword tool we highly recommend, we would say Moz Pro.

 

Content marketing

Ever since the Google Helpful Content update, plus Google E-EAT, it’s more important than ever to write high-quality, very useful content marketing. Often, this work needs to exceed over one thousand words, yet it must be well written.

 

Link building and link management

You might be familiar with link building, yet you might now know what link management means. Basically, a business just needs high-quality, white-hat backlinks. Therefore, sometimes an SEO expert will need to spot low-quality spam links, and sometimes an SEO consultant will need to step in and disavow the links if they are low-quality.

Continuously updating on sector news is essential to maintaining the site’s long-term competitiveness.

 

Google Analytics and Google Search Console

An SEO specialist will spend much time using both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Here at this agency, we use Google Search Console to analyse inbound links and see where a business ranks for keywords.

We then use Google Analytics to see how many organic visitors a website receives. Both tools are essential for SEO businesses like ours and any company that is improving its organic search engine optimisation. Sure, you can purchase third-party SEO tools, yet here at this agency, we do like to use Google Analytics and Google Search Console because they are tools provided by Google, so you know they are super reliable.

What does technical SEO mean?

Technical SEO is a term that’s used to describe the following:
– Insuring that a page/ blog post can get crawled and indexed
– Improving the page load speeds
– Adding structured data such as schema mark-up
– Using SEO tools, such as Screaming Frog, to look for broken links

Which SEO tools do you use for Analysis and monitoring?

We use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Moz Pro daily.

 

Link building

For most businesses, for the vast majority, getting those companies on page one of Google typically involves a lot of link-building. For the super competitive business sectors, such as solicitors in a large city, to get on page one of Google, you usually need a lot of backlinks. It would be best if you had a lot of quality no-follow and do-follow backlinks.

 

Keyword Research

So, before you improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation, you must know which keywords you are improving the SEO for.
So, thankfully, several excellent SEO tools make this process pretty much straightforward. The tool we recommend using is Moz Pro. Yet, many agencies use Google Keyword Planner, and other popular tools include Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs, another viral tool.

 

SEO On Page

It’s really important that the SEO consultant also improves the on-page SEO. This work can involve adding internal links, writing high-quality white-hat content marketing, and adding meta titles and descriptions.

 

 

How do you improve the off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO can be improved by building links, business citations, or merely receiving business mentions on a respected website, such as the BBC.

 

How do you become an SEO specialist?

We think that you could read a thousand blog posts about SEO and profess to be an expert on the subject.

However, we think it’s far better through trial and error. Now, obviously, you can’t take that approach with your client websites, as you can’t experiment with using different SEO methods when it’s your clients’ websites you’re working with.

So, instead, we recommend purchasing a bunch of domains and testing your SEO methods on your own websites.

So, why not start your own SEO blog or business and try different SEO methods there?

You will often find that this is the only way to really hone your skills. You can read a thousand blog posts, telling you everything from how to add schema markup to a website to how to build backlinks, yet in reality, it’s only when you start making gradual changes to the website that you start to get a sense of what methods work and which ones can mean that you move back down Google’s ranks.

We highly recommend studying the market leaders in your industry because, let’s face it, if they are ranking in the number one spot on Google, they must be doing something right.

So, please look at those companies’ content marketing, backlink profiles, and social media accounts they are active on. Obviously, don’t copy the competition, but do get a sense of what they are doing and how they have risen to the top of Google so you can start to build up a good understanding of what methods work for you.

 

Where can I learn SEO?

As we mentioned earlier, we think the best way is through trial and error, so by creating, say, your own blog or website, and trying SEO methods out. As we mentioned earlier, you can’t take SEO clients on unless you have a really good grasp of white hat methods and know what you are doing.

Some businesses use low-quality methods, which results in an algorithmic penalty. So, for example, if a business has copied and pasted text from another business, this will be flagged as a duplication issue, and the business can get an algorithmic penalty or a manual action penalty.

This is not something to take lightly; it can mean the business is entirely removed from Google’s results.

Even when the SEO mistakes have been rectified, this doesn’t mean that the business will be able to recover in terms of where it once ranked.

A website that has received a Google penalty can mean that it doesn’t appear in Google’s search engine results, plus, it can be, in our opinion, extremely difficult to get that business to ever rank on the Google page again.

If you want to learn about SEO, there’s no better place than the horse’s mouth.

What we mean by that is that Google is constantly publishing guidance, so we highly recommend reading about Google E-EAT advice and also reading about Google’s Helpful Content update.

You should only ever use white hat methods; we know it can take a long time to see results from your SEO.
You might put a massive amount of effort into writing a piece of content marketing or building a bunch of backlinks. You might be massively disheartened when the website hasn’t moved up.

However, good things come to those who wait, and what we mean by that is that we have been improving our clients’ SEO for over 10 years. What we find is that it’s only during a core Google algorithm update, which only happens a few times a year, that the website really shifts in terms of where it ranks.

So, you could be trying to improve your business’s SEO until you are highly fed up with not seeing the results you expected. Yet, during a Google core update, if the work completed is of good quality, then your website should move up.

To answer the question of which SEO resources we learn from, we know from Moz and Search Engine Land.
Rusty Brick also owns an excellent website called Search Engine Roundtable. We highly recommend reading those websites.

If you want to learn SEO, Moz is one of the best websites to learn from.
Moz has a section where you can learn SEO. It’s also split into different sections, such as link building and writing content marketing. So, if you are studying SEO after work, you may want to read a different section each evening or whenever you want.

 

You learn something new every day.

So, there are some jobs where you can literally reach the pinnacle of your career and not learn anymore. For example, an airline pilot with 30+ years of experience.

However, with seo, it’s an entirely different kettle of fish in that we learn something new regularly. That’s because Google’s algorithm is constantly being improved, so this keeps SEO agencies having to brush up on their knowledge.