The marketing field has changed a lot since the past decade. The strategies that businesses followed earlier may not prove to be that effective today. One of the major changes in the approach that brands follow today is having an online presence. With the advent of smartphones and people spending a lot of time browsing the internet, marketing techniques have gone online, or in simple terms, digital marketing has come into the picture. As the name suggests, marketing that is done through online channels like social media, websites, mobile applications, or search engines is called digital marketing.
Digital marketing is a broad domain and there are many facets of it like Pay-Per-Click marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, affiliate marketing, and more. Brands that want to flourish online have specific teams handling each of these aspects so as to promote their products and increase their reach to the target audience.
This article focuses mainly on SEO, what are the skills required to excel in this area, and how professionals gain these skills through SEO courses online.
An Introduction to SEO
After creating an online presence, businesses aim to reach their target audience and advertise their products. When more and more people land to their website and check out their products, their chances of converting them into customers increase. In other words, they want to increase the traffic to their website. Now, this is achieved when your website appears on the top of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) when a user enters certain keywords related to the product that you offer. So, SEO is basically the process of increasing traffic to a website through organic means, i.e. without using paid services.
Research says that most people click on top 3 to 4 results of the SERPs to get an answer to their queries. The bottom results are very less likely to be clicked. This is the reason SEO is of utmost importance. If the right SEO strategies are followed, businesses reach on the top results of search engines and get better traffic to their website. Some of those strategies include link building, adding appropriate keywords related to the product, creating a mobile-friendly website, writing engaging content about the product, ensuring faster page load time, and more.
Skills Required for an SEO Specialist
Don’t get the wrong perspective that SEO strategies will pay off quite soon. Following SEO strategies give the desired results in a few months and one needs to consistently follow and monitor them to gain the real benefit of SEO in the long run. This is why companies have a dedicated SEO team that may include SEO Specialists or analysts to take the responsibility of increasing the traffic to their website and staying ahead of their competitors.
Here are some of the skills that one can develop to become a successful SEO Specialist.
Good analytical skills
SEO professionals need to have strong analytical skills as they monitor the daily traffic and should be able to analyze the trends. They usually have to work with tools like Google Analytics that give them a clear picture of what strategies are working and which ones are not showing any improvement. SEOs with good analytical skills are able to find patterns easily from the data gathered over time.
Have a knack for technology
Though there are no particular education or qualification requirements to become an SEO, they are required to always update themselves regarding different technologies. They need to be aware of search engine algorithms, how different tools work, web analytics, JavaScript, HTML (tags and markups), link building, page design, etc. SEO keeps on evolving (yesterday text searches were popular, but today voice search is gaining popularity) and so SEO Specialists need to keep pace with the technological changes.
Out of the box thinking
Let’s face it! Google algorithms have become quite efficient in finding out the best possible results for user queries. Simply using hard and fast rules may not give you the desired results. SEO specialists have to think differently apart from established SEO practices followed by everyone. Unique ideas lead to better optimization of the web pages and lure more readers into clicking your website.
Ability to make data-driven decisions
SEO experts deal with target and actual numbers most of the time. There are monthly and quarterly goals to be reached. Looking at the data, they need to make a decision regarding which strategy to follow and prioritize different tasks accordingly. Google Analytics and Google Search Console bring in a lot of data and SEO pros have to ensure the stakeholders that his decisions are backed by that data itself.
Hands-on experience with various SEO tools
There are various SEO tools available in the market offering best-in-class features. An SEO expert should be capable of using all the important features of tools like Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs, Keyword Explorer, Pitchbox, and more. Some of the tools may be good at proving key metrics, some with suggesting properties related to keywords, some for competitor analysis, while others for link building. So, it is crucial to have experience working on them and utilize their features for better results.
Willing to Learn SEO?
Digital marketing is one of the fastest-growing career domains and SEO is one of the promising job roles that one can achieve. If you love challenging jobs and keep on learning something new every day, then SEO is the way to go. It is so popular that you’ll find many resources on the internet to help you get started. However, it is better to enroll in an online SEO training course and learn from subject-matter experts. Reliable training providers not only update you regarding the latest SEO techniques, but also train you on the various SEO tools that companies use to increase their traffic.