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10 Steps to Becoming an SEO Expert
To be an expert of something means you have to spend hours and hours working on something and knowing everything about it. Now of course, it is fairly impossible for you to learn everything by just reading this article, but if you use this as a guide and put in all the effort you can give to know how everything works, you will indeed become an expert.
Take a Course and Get Certified
Getting a certificate for a certain skill is incredibly important. Firstly, it enables you to practice the job on your own, and secondly, it gives you credibility as a professional on sites like Linkedin, Upwork, and Fiverr (the sites where you are most likely to find work).
Despite my belief that courses are a great way to start with digital marketing, it’s good to remember that not all courses are equal. That’s why if you notice that a particular SEO coaching style doesn’t fit your needs and is mostly a waste of time, then it’s better to just stop attending it, ask for a refund and start looking for a new one.
Work on Your Skills
A certificate can vouch for what you have learned to do, but it doesn't guarantee what YOU CAN DO once you get hired. Therefore, it is still important to constantly work on your skills.
Here are the top two skills that you should learn if you want to be an SEO expert:
- Ability to create fun and engaging content
- Ability to perform analysis of data
Creativity is important for everyone who wants to work in SEO. If you have a writing background, that will certainly be helpful once you start creating text specifically for search engine optimization purposes. By having a way with words, you will be able to make content that’s both engaging for your audience and also serves Google’s “needs” and gets the site more traffic.
Understand What’s Valuable to Search Engines
It’s true that all search engines work in a different way; however, they all have one end goal in mind – to retrieve the best possible result for the end-user. Many factors go into determining which “the best” result is; however, there are ones that are the most common:
- Relevance
- Positive experience
- Trust
Learn How Search Engines Work
The idea behind search engine algorithms is to show the user the highest amount of quality relevant search results. From there, the user can pick one and click on it, in order to consume the content. Usually, people don’t tend to search through the many pages that Google searches offer; instead, they choose one of the first 10 options they’re presented with. That’s why the ranking of your website is so important – you want it to be the first thing that people see.
That’s precisely what SEO’s job is: to make your website’s content visible to search engines. That’s why when you create content, you have to think about how the user will read it and also about how search engines can more easily find it. To get to know the three main functions that search engines perform, click on this link
Understand SEO strategies and tactics
Now, you already know that first, the search engine crawls and indexes a website, afterwards it uses different factors including authority relevance and trust to determine its rank. By knowing that, SEO experts can create strategies that help make the rank of a website better.
Continuously Do Research
Digital marketing is an industry that’s constantly evolving so new methodologies appear very often. That’s why it’s important for you to always keep up with new research and to follow current trends.
Gather HTML Knowledge
If you enroll in a standard SEO training course, you will probably hear about HTML, but won’t learn much about it. However, I do believe that knowing the basics of HTML is vital for any aspiring SEO expert.
Discover What Tools Work For You
In every job, you need to have some structure and a working methodology that enables you to work well. This applies to SEO as well. That’s why I recommend that you find what works best for you and then build a way of working that enables you to be efficient and drive results for your clients.
Learn to Work with Data
SEO is one of the most analytical and technical parts of digital marketing. That’s why understanding data and being able to work with data is crucial for any SEO expert. You also have to know and learn about the important SEO metrics like CTR, Organic Session, Clicks, and Positioning if you want to be one. In this day and age, data is key.
Try to Always Keep Learning
Build a network, talk to other marketing professionals, read a book on SEO – all these are different ways that you can keep enhancing your knowledge in the field.
That’s something I love about digital marketing and SEO in particular: there’s always something new happening, things are always evolving and trying to become better. It’s a job where you can never be bored as your surroundings are constantly getting updated and thus more exciting.