6 SEO Skills To Succeed

These six SEO skills aren't necessarily unique to our profession; as a matter of fact, they can be applied to pretty much any job or career, but I've been doing this since 2004, and while others may say there are other, more important skills, I consider these to be essential for a successful search engine optimization career.

• Research - successful SEO professionals have mad research skills. You need to be able to find information about keywords, competitors, website strengths, weaknesses and social media presence. Good researchers not only know how to use search engines, but specialized sites that collect and offer data, statistics and information on a variety of topics. You may even end up writing content on subjects you're not an expert on, and good research skills to find accurate, interesting information to write about is critical.

• Analysis - The ability to analyze and understand the data and information you collect is critical for developing an SEO strategy. What does it mean if you download and compile 2000 links, and you discover anchor text that is primarily non-branded keywords? Trouble! So you need to be able to look at the data, identify patterns and figure out what's good vs. what's not.

• Writing - As an SEO professional, you're going to write reports. Executive summaries, in-depth analysis, findings based on audits and updating clients or a supervisor requires you to have excellent writing skills to communicate clearly. Plus, if you're hired to write web page copy for a client, they'll ask for some writing samples, so be sure to practice and master good grammar and report writing. You won't be sorry.

3 More SEO Skills

• Presenting - As you gain experience and confidence, it's highly likely you'll do presentations for your company or to prospects and clients. Confidence in public speaking will also net you new opportunities to get more SEO work. If you're not sure how to get comfortable and excel at public speaking, consider joining a local Toastmaster's group. Everyone there has the same goal as you - to overcome a fear of public speaking for professional and personal reasons.

• Team work - While you may do quite a lot of your work alone, you'll most likely be part of a marketing team. You will also team up with web developers, branding experts and graphic design professionals if you do a website re-design and re-launch. Get good at working with others, including those who may be difficult to work with. It's a fact of life that you won't get along with everyone, and working in a team environment will help you develop the skills to work with others, even those you may not necessarily want to connect with on LinkedIn or friend on Facebook.

• Organization - if you're going to be an effective, productive SEO professional, you need to keep your work organized. Learning how to manage your tasks as part of a larger project will help you become efficient, keep track of what you need to complete and help you achieve the goal of finishing a project on time.

You can learn individual SEO tasks, functions and skills with our new online training program.

What are some other skills you consider critical to be a good search engine optimizer? Let me know in the comments.

Do you need basic or advanced SEO skills? Get trained with Invenio SEO in a one on one standard or custom workshop - contact us for more details.

Until we meet again, keep it between the ditches!

All the very best to you,

Nancy McDonald

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