SEO Specialist: a guide to the job
The SEO Specialist is one of the most important emerging figures in the world of digital marketing.
SEO Specialists: who are they?
The SEO Specialist is one of the most important emerging figures in the world of digital marketing.
In recent years, the awareness of companies regarding the importance of an online presence has increased exponentially: being online is the basis, but the important thing is how to be there.
Simply having a website does not lead to the achievement of objectives if nobody visits it: it is like having a shop but no customers.
The most important way to get visitors to your website is to improve its position in search engine results: a user searching for the phrase "car sales", for example, will almost certainly click on the first results shown to him.
The SEO Specialist has exactly this task: to ensure that a website appears among the first organic results when a user makes a search, in order to significantly increase the chance of it being clicked on.
Or even better: not only to ensure that it is clicked on, but also and above all that it is clicked on by people who are actually interested in the topic, by intercepting the users' search intent.
Taking the example of 'selling cars', let's say the user had only typed in 'cars': what would be the search intent? Buying a car, finding out the latest news about cars or getting information about what cars are?
A good SEO Specialist must be able to position the website for search intentions consistent with the business activity, avoiding at all costs to appear in ambiguous searches and thus reach the wrong target audience.
Tasks of the SEO Specialist
We have seen that the main task of an SEO Specialist is to improve the position of a website in organic search results.
To do this and optimize the site, he or she has to deal with both the technical side and the content side: on the technical side, his goal is to build an architecture that is read and interpreted correctly by search engines; on the content side, he will produce content that is consistent with both the business activity and the current trends.
For this last aspect, therefore, the investigation phase will be important: discovering the trends, information, questions and news that are currently of public interest on the subject.
The SEO Specialist, therefore, will work on both On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.
On-Page SEO
For On-Page SEO, the SEO Specialist will first carry out an analysis of the pages of the website.
There are many online tools that allow you to do this, either for a fee or for free: among them is the SEO Audit by SeoChecker.
The SEO Specialist then identifies and corrects the technical weaknesses of the pages, possibly with the help of a Web Developer.
Off-Page SEO
As far as Off-Page SEO is concerned, on the other hand, going to work on content the SEO Specialist will have to:
- identify weaknesses and opportunities;
- design, monitor and possibly correct the progress of an SEO content strategy;
- analyze trending keywords for the topics concerned;
- create periodic reports;
- keep abreast of both trends and changes in SEO algorithms.
SEO Specialist workplace
The SEO Specialist is a figure who can work either as a freelance consultant or as an employee.
For instance, he/she can work in a web marketing agency, but also in the marketing department of a company, or simply in a business.
It is also possible to specialise: SEO covers various digital areas, such as Local SEO, E-Commerce, International SEO, Link Building or Vocal Search.