How to become an SEO Expert? |
Posted: February 22, 2022 |
How to become an SEO expert without landing a job first? If you are tired of thinking to yourself that you can’t apply for a job that requires 1-3 years of agency or in-house experience, and you can’t get experience without getting a job, and that you can’t get a job without getting experience, and that you can’t get…. Do yourself a favor and stop waiting for your fairy godmother to find you, take your hand, and gently guide you to be the amazing SEO expert you dream of becoming. Just do it yourself! Take it from someone that is living it. That someone that has spent hours asking expert SEOs how they did it, posted an overwhelming number of questions in SEO groups, read about it, applied it, tried it, and is still doing it! You deserve to give yourself a chance, and it starts by teaching yourself SEO. So, grab a cup of coffee, and let’s dive in! (coffee heals all my friend)
How To Become An SEO Expert?All AboutSEO ExpertsWhat Is An SEO Expert?An SEO expert, or an SEO Specialist, optimizes websites to achieve higher search engine rankings to ultimately drive organic traffic. How To Become An SEO Specialist?Search Engine Optimization is very new and not formally taught in schools, which can make it challenging to learn. However, some universities teach SEO, and UC Davis offers a course recommended by Google Digital Garage. These are the most common ways people become SEO specialists:
The reality is that many become SEO specialists by first getting a job as one. So, don’t stop applying if your ultimate goal is to work in-house or at an agency. Simply change your strategy and start teaching yourself SEO and applying it.
What Skills Should An SEO Expert Have? SEO is no longer just about keywords and meta tags. Ahhh the good old days…. (as if I knew!) It’s about understanding users intent, creating good user experience, and providing expert, authoritative, and trustworthy content (also known as E-A-T by Google). This has created a need for SEO specialists to be proficient in several different areas of digital marketing, including writing and web design. As Google increasingly tries to improve the user experience, UX is something you should keep an eye on. Here are critical hard skills that an SEO specialist needs to have:
Here are key soft skills that an SEO specialist needs to have:
Throughout this guide, you’ll learn how to gain these SEO skills by teaching yourself SEO and become an SEO Specialist without the traditional job experience first.
Build Your SEO Skills If you are starting out with little or no knowledge, the first thing you’ll want to do is find the most reliable resources for teaching yourself SEO. Begin by reading the bible of SEO for beginners, The Beginner’s Guide to SEO by MOZ. This is the best resource I’ve found, and it’s FREE! It covers what SEO is, how it works, and everything else you need to know.
Learn How Search Engines WorkThere are three primary functions to understand how search engines work:
This three point summary is my way to make a very long story short (pheew). If you are ready to dive into search details, you can read the chapter How Search Engines Operate by MOZ. This chapter explains how information is organized and presented to users by relevance.
Learn About Google Algorithm And RankingLike any good professional, you need to know the past to understand the present. Know that Google implements over 500 changes to its algorithm annually. Then there are the larger, more historical ones, and that’s when the SEO community sits quietly for months biting their nails until the update is finished. Learn about these major algorithm changes that affected as much as 90% of search when they were rolled out. If you don’t know what Panda, Penguin, or Hummingbird mean for SEO, then now is the time to learn about the significant Google Algorithm changes. Google explains Ranking Results without giving away too much detail on their site. But make sure that you understand that the basics of search provide meaning, relevance, quality, usability, and context to the user. Learn The Objectives Of SEOThe objective of SEO is to optimize a website for search engines so that it ranks higher in search results and drives your targeted audience to your site. The core objective of SEO is to get you seen in search results and direct traffic to your site. More specific goals can include increasing brand awareness, sales, lead acquisition, and more. What objectives you end up working with will depend on each website. Know Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, And Off-Page SEO.Get to know the different components that make up the SEO process; Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO.
Here are example elements of each one:
This can also help you figure out what you want to specialize in, or at least where yp might want to start.
Learn SEO Expert LingoMake sure that you can understand the terminology of SEO including key phrases like keyword research, link building, backlinks, white hat SEO, black hat SEO, and any other terms you read on SEO-related topics. Lookup phrases in the MOZ SEO-glossary to work on your super pro lingo.
Take SEO CoursesA good SEO course will include all these beforementioned elements; How search engines work, all about Google’s algorithm and ranking, SEO Objectives, On-site, Off-site and Technical SEO. There are also tons of free resources from reliable sources online if you’re on a budget. I recommend taking courses that end with an exam and a personalized certification that you can share. Some of the more significant SEO tools offer SEO certifications that look great for your credibility and your CV’s.
Here are some excellent SEO certificates:
Linkedin also offers you to earn badges based on your skills, and this feeds into the Linkedin algorithm, increasing the visibility of your profile. Learn Core SEO SkillsKeyword ResearchEffective keyword research will not guess people’s search terms on various topics. Instead, it will dig into the facts and include search phrases that people actually use. Guessing can be dangerous, and that also goes for guessing a user’s intent based on a search phrase. One query can have multiple meanings, so you have to understand the most common interpretation.
Here are some ideas on how to start your research:
After discovering quality keywords, you can use these words in your web content to improve search rankings. Usually you will dedicate a specific search phrase or keyword to each page. Also known as Keyword Mapping. Having the same keywords on all pages doesn’t make a search engine thinks your site is more relevant for that term and in fact it can have negative effects. Keywords are crucial, so good research can shoot your website to the top in search. PRO TIPLearn how to create a Keyword Universe
On-Page SEO OptimizationBack in the day, in the early 2000s, lived the golden age of keyword stuffing. Those were simpler times for SEO. Flash forward, and today On-page SEO is much more complex and sophisticated. Still, you will want to include keywords on your page, but that’s just the beginning if you want to improve your website’s search rankings. Most common practice is to utilize metadata and include title tags. You can learn all about it in this On-site optimization guide. PRO TIPIf you plan on optimizing On-Page Content, create an extensive checklist to make your life easier. Things change fast so just remember to update it regularly.
Content MarketingContent is essential for your SEO efforts. Your content is what will make users stay and interact with your website, and the better the content others will want to link to it giving your content a vote of approval that will help it rank better. Even if your site is perfectly optimized for search engines, it will be almost impossible for you to rank without great content.
The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing from Moz is a great place to start.
Content AuditYes, this is one of my favorites! A content audit is the process of analyzing your website’s content and assessing its strengths and weaknesses based on your chosen KPIs. An audit will allow you to prioritize your future marketing activities. Start making your own outline for a content audit. It’s a great way to understand the details that go into an audit and what makes successful content. After analyzing a website’s content, your audit should also include a plan for improvements. Now, your audits will probably be S H **, to begin with, but they won’t get any better until you start! The Content Audit guide by SEJ and short and long Content Audits by Single Grain can help get you moving. PRO TIPUse an SEO tool to find your top pages and apply your pages' strategy to less successful ones.
Generate BacklinksBacklinks are hyperlinks in the content on other websites linking to your website. They act as votes of approval and help your website rank in search results. These votes mean that people identify your content as a quality resource that’s credible and useful. Link building is HUGE for your SEO efforts. That’s why if you want to be a good SEO specialist, you need to know how to build quality backlinks. These Backlink Strategies from Backlinko are worth a read. PRO TIPBuild backlinks to specific pages, not just your homepage.
Coding BasicsYou don’t have to be a coding expert to become an SEO Expert, but you need to have some basic development skills and the ability to look at a site’s source and identify key features. You should be able to read and understand HTML code, know how a website is structured, and understand the role of JavaScript in the web development process. It would help if you further learned how to work with popular CMS like WordPress to edit page titles, descriptions and adjust other SEO settings. Understanding basic coding will also come in handy when you start working with developers to make more technical changes. Knowing how to code will only increase your value as an SEO Expert. PRO TIPLearn HTML with W3 Schools or Code Academy
Technical OptimizationTechnical SEO is important for all websites. It is to make sure a website meets the technical requirements of search engines and has a better chance of ranking. Essential elements of Technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture. Get more details with the Technical SEO Guide. It is especially important for big websites with thousands of pages like ecommerce and news sites. Mobile OptimizationGoogle introduced Mobile-First results in 2019 to respond to changing user behavior. This change means that mobile optimization is not a good-to-know but a necessity for SEO. Make sure the websites you work with respond to the size of mobile screens and are fast enough to create a seamless user experience. Learn the basics in the MOZ Mobile SEO guide SEO AuditLearn how to do site audits, and you’ll thank me later. SEO auditing helps break down a site’s SEO in an organized way. You’ll learn loads when going through all the steps of an audit, and this is usually the first thing needed to understand where a website stands in terms of SEO. An audit will help you understand duplicate content, broken links, site structure, and lots more. If you want to learn more about SEO audits, I recommend checking out this extensive technical SEO audit guide. Competitor ResearchCompetitor research is another critical analysis of SEO. This analysis consists of evaluating how a site does in search ranking compared to competitors. The goal is to identify gaps and weaknesses to create a more competitive site. A good competitor analysis should at least include a Keyword Gap analysis and a Backlink analysis. Your keyword gap analysis will identify low-hanging fruit that are quick wins and keywords that you are entirely missing out on. The backlink analysis will uncover where competitors are generating quality backlinks that might result in opportunities for your site. Read these guides for details:
Continue Reading about SEO Hacks, News Resources, SEO Tools and more at https://dorajonsdottir.com/seo-expert/
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