What is an SEO Specialist? All of Your Questions Answered.
An SEO specialist specializes in the art and science of search engine optimization. Their #1 job is to help a business’s website increase its keyword rankings in search results to get more organic traffic, leads, customers, and sales.
This guide will teach you everything you need to know about becoming a top 1% SEO specialist.
And don’t worry:
This isn’t some random writer who scraped some regurgitated information on the topic.
I’m an SEO specialist with over a decade of experience leading hundreds of successful SEO campaigns.
I’ll show you what it takes to succeed.
Let’s dive in.
Is an SEO Specialist a Good Career?
Yes, becoming an SEO specialist is an amazing career. Here’s why:
Three of the Most Popular Websites on the Internet Are Search Engines
Google owns 90% of the traditional search engine market:
YouTube owns almost 97% of the video search market:
And Amazon is the #1 e-commerce search engine:
The SEO Industry is Growing
SEO haters love to say it’s dead, but the numbers prove high demand.
According to Business Research Company, the SEO industry will grow by 18.3% in 2024 and be valued at $88.91 billion.
In comparison, the advertising industry grows around 11.57% per year.
So, SEO is outpacing the broader sector by a substantial margin.
Businesses Love SEO
SEO is the most popular digital marketing channel for businesses. Look at the demand compared to “digital marketing” or “social media marketing:”
So why does SEO crush all other channels?
Simple, because it can produce direct, attributable revenue. The reason is because of intent.
When someone searches “best SEO tools for agencies,” I know exactly what they want.
So, I only need to deliver the right content that fulfills the searcher’s intent.
Unlike social media, the searcher comes to you when you interrupt someone watching cat videos to sell them something.
SEO Requires Many Different Skills
SEO isn’t just one skill. It’s a culmination of many different skill sets packaged together.
For example, an SEO specialist needs both art and science to succeed.
On the art side, you’ll need to develop creative ideas to overcome the challenges you’ll encounter.
You’ll also need creative techniques to beat your competition.
On the science side, you’ll use data and testing to identify what works in each unique SEO scenario.
Building a compounding SEO skillset means you become more valuable to the marketplace as an individual contributor.
The more valuable you are to the marketplace, the more money you can make.
Speaking of that:
How Much Does an SEO Specialist Make
According to Glassdoor, the average SEO specialist makes $82,094 annually in the US.
SEO managers make around $113,765 per year when you include bonuses:
You’ll need to understand the potential paths as an SEO specialist to earn director-level pay.
Four Career Paths for SEO Specialists
An SEO specialist can have three different roles:
Work at an Agency
SEO or digital marketing agencies are the best place to start because you’ll get exposed to many different campaigns. As a result, you’ll build tons of SEO experience that’ll translate well to the later stages.
It’s possible to reach SEO manager and director roles at an agency.
But your pay will be capped compared to working in-house at a company.
Work at a Company
The “next level” for SEO specialists is to lead an SEO division within a company.
This differs from agency work because your SEO performance is judged based on how well it’s working for one company.
Within an agency, you’re responsible for the success of many different campaigns.
You can make great money working for an agency or as a dedicated SEO specialist for a company. But there is a cap on your earnings.
If you’re not risk averse, there are two other ways to leverage your SEO expertise.
Work as a Freelancer
Want to control your destiny? The next level is to work independently as a freelance SEO consultant or specialist.
This is what I did. Funny enough, I applied for every SEO position in St. Louis in 2013. I got one interview and did not get the job.
So, I decided to go out independently as an SEO freelancer.
This was the best decision I ever made.
Since then, I’ve made several millions of dollars selling SEO services.
I teach everything I’ve learned since then in The SEO Entrepreneur book.
But there’s no denying it:
This path is more challenging and riskier. You’re no longer just showing up to work and doing SEO.
Instead, you must consider marketing, sales, fulfillment, client experience, hiring, training, building case studies, and more.
This is why most SEO freelancers top out at around $10,000 – $20,000/mo.
And the only way to break through a plateau is to create leverage.
In short, you can’t do everything yourself. To reach the next level, you must build an SEO team and leverage technology.
Speaking of that:
Build an SEO Agency
The ultimate way to monetize your skills as an SEO specialist is to build an agency. Imagine if you could replicate everything you know and have other people do the SEO work for you.
That’s what a good agency does through systems.
You don’t have to spend years building these systems because I’ve already done it within Gotch SEO Academy.
But the beauty of building your own agency is that there is no cap on your earnings.
Yes, you’ll hit revenue plateaus, but that’s just a wall you must break through.
But before you venture into any of these, you must have a passion for this craft.
What Does an SEO Specialist Do? 9 Job Responsibilities
Yes, you can make good money by learning SEO. But to get there, you have actually to enjoy doing it.
That’s why it’s time to paint a picture for you.
Here’s what would appear on most SEO specialist job descriptions:
1. Perform Keyword Research
Keywords are an SEO fundamental that has stood the test of time. Some will say that “topics” are more important than keywords, and I somewhat agree.
But to be effective, you need to find target keywords that your website can compete on, and then you need to build dedicated pages around the keywords. You also need to understand how to filter, qualify, and prioritize large sets of keywords.
Remember that your keyword selection shouldn’t just be getting more website traffic.
An effective keyword selection process will consider business goals, relevance to your target audience, intent, the SERPs (search engine results pages), organic search volume (search traffic potential), competition, and resource requirements.
2. Conduct SEO Audits
An SEO audit helps you identify technical and website content opportunities on a website.
You’ll need Screaming Frog SEO Spider to conduct a proper audit.
This tool integrates Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Ahrefs’ APIs.
3. Perform Technical SEO
Once you’ve conducted your audit, you must prioritize and execute technical SEO actions.
These actions include optimizing crawling and indexing, optimizing website architecture, improving internal links, optimizing web page loading speed, fixing keyword cannibalization, pruning and consolidating assets, and fixing broken links (to name only a few).
Sometimes, you must collaborate with web development team members to execute these changes.
4. Optimize User Experience (UX)
Think of technical SEO as what’s under the hood. But UX is what a searcher experiences when they visit one of your pages.
Google’s recent court case revealed that their algorithms use user signals to determine the quality of a page.
This means they’re likely tracking engaged sessions if you’re using Google Chrome. An engaged session is a metric you can find in Google Analytics.
5. Perform On-Page SEO
On-page optimization places your primary keyword in the most important spots, including your URL, title tag, meta description, H1 tag, and first sentence. This is on-page SEO 101.
But to take things to the next level, you should also optimize pages for NLP (Natural Language Processing) or NLU (Natural Language Understanding).
Technobabble aside, this means relevant keywords and topics your competitors use.
You can use a tool like Rankability to extract these relevant topics from your SEO competitors.
For example, I’m writing this blog post right now inside of Rankability.
I recommend viewing the “Keywords” as “Topics.”
In short, you should fill in these topic gaps to build the most relevant page for any keyword you’re targeting.
6. Lead SEO Content Creation
A quality content strategy is a big part of SEO, and your involvement will vary depending on the size of your team.
Sometimes, you’ll conduct keyword research and collaborate with the marketing team to decide what keywords align with business goals.
Then, you’d go into Rankability and create a new Content Optimizer Report for an agreed-upon keyword phrase.
After that, you will create an SEO content brief and outline. You can do this manually or tap into AI to do it for you.
Once that’s ready, copy the content brief link and send it to your writer.
From there, they can use the NLP recommendations to create a highly relevant asset.
Once revisions are completed, the SEO specialist (you) will add the final optimization strategies.
Then, you’ll add the finished article to the CMS to create a dedicated landing page.
Whether you use a “Page” or “Post” will depend on the intent of the keyword.
7. Acquire Backlinks (Off-Page SEO)
Backlinks are one of the most critical Google ranking factors.
You can get everything else perfect, but if your website has a weak backlinks profile, you won’t reach your full SEO potential.
An SEO specialist will often take on the role of a link builder, which involves developing link-building strategies, prospecting link prospects, qualifying link prospects, sending outreach emails, building relationships, negotiating deals, and organizing the link-building campaign.
8. Perform Local SEO
Everything I’ve shown you so far will support local pack rankings in Google.
However, some variables are specific to local pack rankings.
That includes but is not limited to optimizing the Google Business Profile, cleaning up citations, building new citations, and building a review generation process.
9. Understand Web Analytics
80% of your time as an SEO specialist will be allocated toward leading measures.
Leading goals are the work that produces the outcome.
The outcome is defined as a lagging goal.
That’s when tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help. These tools will help you see if SEO efforts have been effective.
You must develop analytical skills to interpret data and trends to pivot your SEO strategy if things aren’t going according to plan.
So now that you understand some of the SEO best practices, it’s time to learn:
How to Become a Successful SEO Specialist
There are endless opinions on this topic, but here’s what I believe is the best path.
1. Build a Side Project
I’m a firm believer that the best SEO professionals are builders. Things change when your money is invested in a project. You care more, do more, and want to see it through.
Overall, this will give you hands-on experience and SEO knowledge that’s transferrable to in-house work.
That’s why I recommend creating an SEO project with localized intent. Watch this video below to see a process that’s working right now:
If you’re unsure where to start, consider joining an SEO training program like Gotch SEO Academy.
I build a website from scratch inside our SEO Agency Accelerator program.
You’ll also have access to the SEO Expert Certification v2.0. This is NOT like most SEO courses.
Instead, you’re learning a system hundreds of agencies use to deliver consistent SEO results for their clients.
3. Practice Secondary Skills
Some secondary marketing skills include:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) via Google Ads and Local Service Ads
- Copywriting
- CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
- Basic WordPress and CMS management skills
- Basic coding skills like HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP
- Prompt engineering (for AI tools like ChatGPT)
These are NOT requirements, but they make you more well-rounded. The more skills you accumulate, the more valuable you become as an SEO professional and digital marketer.
It also allows you to reach new heights outside of SEO. If you’re well-rounded, you could be promoted to digital marketing manager.
This job title is responsible for more than just organic search performance. Instead, you’d also be responsible for the whole digital marketing department and the overall online presence of a brand.
4. Don’t Forget About Soft Skills
While technical skills are critical for SEO success, many professionals limit their potential because they lack soft skills.
Focus on this area to gain an advantage over other professionals.
Practice your communication skills because they are fundamental for SEO managers or directors.
5. Love The Art and Science of SEO
You have to love the game of understanding how search engines work to stick with it.
Successful people tend to have a learner’s mindset and love to compete.
You must also enjoy “hacking” search engine algorithms and studying industry trends.
The better you understand how search engine rankings are formulated, the more you’ll succeed. This will require you to keep up with search algorithm changes.
Google launches hundreds of minor algorithm updates per year. Some are bigger impact updates, like the core updates.
To stay on the cutting edge, you must pay attention and modify your strategy if necessary.
6. Understand the Base-Level Requirements for Getting Hired
We studied 9,365 SEO jobs in the top 100 cities and found that:
- 99% of listings require at least entry-level experience
- 94% of opportunities require a bachelor’s degree (or higher) in a related field like marketing or communications (since there is no degree in SEO)
You can overcome the “experience” issue by creating your own side projects.
Conclusion
Now that you know what an SEO specialist is, it’s time to leap of faith.
Choosing to enter the SEO industry was the best career decision I ever made.
So I’m very biased, but I think it’s something you should consider.
As a recap, I recommend following a natural progression of working in-house at an agency, then working in-house at a company, and finally, leveraging your SEO expertise to land clients on your own to build a business.
The latter is riskier, but it has the most upside.
To start an SEO business, check out The SEO Entrepreneur or read how to start an SEO business.
If you’re trying to land your first job, then check out job boards like SEOjobs.com