At the moment, SEO has completely moved away from the usual opinion that the key to successful website promotion is unreadable texts filled with keywords and links. The skill set for those who are engaged in search engine optimization is quite wide. In this article, we will consider both soft and hard SEO skills necessary for success in SEO.
Table of Contents
Hard Skills
Of course, professional competencies are decisive. As a specialist, you must have a particular set of tools and techniques. SEO professionals must be able to work with a trustworthy backlink creator, understand the site structure’s features, and analyze the results. Let’s talk about each professional skill in more detail.
Site Structure
Of course, no one requires SEO professionals to make websites and design them themselves. However, knowledge in this area is beneficial. Therefore, you should study:
• HTML/CSS. You should study the basics of this section to understand the architecture of websites and read the markup. You should definitely learn the tags that form the basis of the page, mark up the text, and highlight other content. You will also need to know the capabilities of the design styles. A deep understanding is unnecessary; you can even use reference books on such code. It is an essential part of SEO abilities.
• CMS. The basics of working with the main content management systems will come in handy. These include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, etc. Their features and interfaces, and how to use them to identify and eliminate errors such as 404 or 301.
Search Engines
Obviously, to promote, you need to study the environment in which you will be doing it and understand the basic mechanisms. Find out how they work and how they are generally arranged. Learn how to make different queries. It will help you understand their functionality at the user level. Read the detailed break down of how to use guest blogging.
Familiarize yourself with open information on their algorithms, indexing, and ranking system in the search results. Understand the principle of forming snippets. Pay special attention to how filters work when removing a site from the list. You need to understand their operating principle to avoid this. The above points are just the beginning of the journey. At the same time, it is impossible to define the endpoint. The deeper your understanding, the more valuable a specialist you are.
Copywriting
Content is of primary importance in promotion. You don’t have to write good texts yourself. It is important to learn to distinguish them from bad ones. Also, an excellent skill is drawing up competent technical tasks for copywriters. Of course, you should also be able to optimize texts and select keywords.
Auxiliary Tools
You will need to create reports, plan actions, and analyze results during your work. It will require knowledge of spreadsheets and office programs. It also includes messengers for communication with the team and other tools your department uses. Their list may vary, and sometimes, a few programs are enough, but be prepared to master new features quickly.
Internet Marketing
Get familiar with the main technologies of online promotion. Studying at least the basics of creating contextual advertising, SMM promotion, targeting, and similar areas is helpful. For example, an SEO expert can use the available budget to place links to the desired site in other sources. Read about new tendencies in the article about moneymaking skills. It’ll give you insights on social media promotion.
Soft SEO Skills
Now, let’s talk about personal qualities that will allow an SEO specialist to become successful. They should not be underestimated because soft SEO skills often decide who will conquer career heights in a world of high competition.
Learning Ability and Developed Thinking
Firstly, it is essential to understand that what works well with a site in one niche will work entirely differently in another. Secondly, search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and ranking factors, so it is crucial to be able to adapt to innovations promptly and change your tactics at work. This SEO knowledge can only be obtained in practice.
In SEO, it is important to be able to analyze data from Google metrics and draw conclusions on how successfully the set KPIs are being achieved and what improvements the site needs so that users spend more time on it and perform the necessary actions.
The optimizer must be able to think critically and examine the problem from different angles in order to compare the promoted site with competitors’ sites and understand what is going as it should and what is not, why this happens, and how to solve the problem. You can read about new strategies on MySignature.
Teamwork of SEO Professionals
No matter how much it may seem that in SEO, you can isolate yourself from everyone and just do your job, you still need to be able to write and speak correctly and clearly. Comments, explanations, and consultations will be required from a specialist not only by the client but also by management and colleagues. The ability to explain at least part of your work in “human” language to those who do not understand technical issues will be handy.
Ability to Make Decisions
While an SEO specialist is racking his brains over the need for this or that improvement, weighing all the pros and cons, search engines may have time to change their algorithms, and then you will have to look for a new solution. Therefore, you need to be ready to make decisions in your work independently, without asking others for their opinions. Of course, this does not prevent you from asking your questions on forums and engaging in polemics with other specialists if you have the time and energy for it.
Literacy
Not all aspects of SEO audit can be entrusted to auxiliary tools. A good knowledge of your native language will come in handy when checking and creating articles and posts on the site and the content of meta tags. Texts should not only be free of grammatical and punctuation errors but also natural and understandable in meaning.
Ability to Plan
By telling the client the expected time frame for achieving promotion results, the specialist has a ready-made plan of work on optimization for 3-6 months or more. A large number of projects in progress at different stages requires the optimizer to be able to plan each working day, week, and month well. An SEO specialist needs to not only complete client tasks but also find time for training and experiments.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed five hard and five soft skills. Each of these points is important. However, such traits are unlikely to appear from birth. Each skill requires development and consolidation. The best way to achieve this is to strive for more remarkable results, learn a lot in practice, and simply love what you do. Without passion for your business, it is difficult to achieve real success.
