SEO professionals are guys who are good at search engine optimization – their job is to bring a website into a search engine’s result page and have it ranked at the top for specific keywords. Anyone who understands the basics of how Google ranks websites, and who has managed to bring websites into the top rankings is entitled to call himself an SEO expert. Apparently, every Tom, Dick and Harry out there thinks that he is an expert but the truth is far from this.
A true SEO is not only a technical expert, but also a content strategist, a good planner, a marketing genius, and someone with an incredible amount of patience and persistence. If you are an aspiring SEO professional (or internet marketer to be precise), following are five essential elements that you must possess if you want to be known as an expert.
Is Constantly Learning and Staying Updated
What used to be a pretty effective way of getting your site on top an year ago might be obsolete today. This is why it is imperative to stay updated in this field. You lose out on a month’s updates and you actually lose out on a large chunk of knowledge that could have helped you set up a better strategy. You need to visit forums, discuss, connect and keep RSS feeds of good SEO blogs out there. Too lazy to stay updated? It’s better you switch to another less demanding job.
Dares to Experiment and Innovate
Whoever said SEO is not creative? This field is all about coming up with out-of-the-box strategies, you cannot be an expert if you stick to one rut pattern and never dare to experiment a newer one. The more you innovate and come up with ideas that will match the ever shifting algorithmic nature of a search engine, the more competent you become. Keep innovating, keep thinking creatively and keep experimenting – that’s what an SEO needs to do, day in and day out.
Has Excellent Marketing Skills
There is a constant requirement for persuasive marketing skills. Why? Because you have to convince your client that SEO is the best thing that will ever happen to their online business, when you are looking to get some project. You need to make them realize that without SEO, their website will not reach the height that they dreamt of. Not only these skills should be used for persuading a client, but also for arranging online campaigns that will give your client a good boost. Social networking, social media, PPC campaigns, press releases etc are all products of how effectively you market client websites.
Must Have Customer Support Skills
Clients will also be paranoid about their website. You being the SEO expert must make sure that you can handle them well. If they turn out to be not too pleasant, then you must curtly respond to their inquiries, making sure you don’t offend them further (after all you are getting paid for the job). So along with being the techie, the creative and the marketing guy, you also have to be the pleasant customer support guy. Not an easy job I say, when your customer is looking towards you for more and more sales!
Should Be Aware of the Trickeries
Disclaimer: Not that dishonesty and black hat tricks are encouraged (because they back fire more often than not) but you must have sound knowledge to deal with competitors. Practicing good ole SEO is great but some of your competitors might be using a little grey hat, having high rankings and doing everything so cleverly natural that you will be left astounded as to why your white hat strategies aren’t giving the results needed. Not that you need to start replicating their methodologies, still you need to be able to figure them out, at least for the sake of your client’s contentment.
These are just tips of the iceberg. SEO is a whole world of complications, trials and errors, common sense, tricky ideas, analysis, tracking and evaluation, and more. To be truly considered as an expert you must spend 8 – 10 hours a day digging every single aspect of search engines and the optimal optimization strategy. Read, experiment, learn – that’s the drill.
So true, SEO Expert means a person who is able to rank your website on various search engines plus also have marketing skills so that he can promote your site on various social networking sites. After all social media has got special preference from all search engines.
Hi, Roberto. Thank you for this post. Indeed, SEO is not a destination but a journey. Reaching the top spot in the SERPs does not mean you can now stop doing SEO; the more that you need to continue to maintain your position. Being an SEO expert means that you constantly learn and update yourself with the new trends in site optimization. It’s a tedious job and you have to be passionate about it in order to carry on.