10 SEO skills you need to become a SEO specialist

Hi I’m Praneeth Kumar.

In this blog you will learn 10 best SEO skills to become an SEO specialist.

All these skills are basic & Essentials and important ones if you want to become a seo expert and specialist or you want to hire an SEO expert who will manage your website and business.

So without further ado let’s get started.

Here is a 30000 foot view of the blog post.

10 skills you need to learn to become an SEO specialist;

seo of blog

Let’s get started with the most important skills you need to become an SEO expert.

1. Keyword research.

Keyword research is the most important skill you need to learn in order to become an SEO specialist.

You need to learn how you can find lots of amazing and profitable keywords for your SEO campaign from various places like SEO

tools, Quora and social media platforms so that you can rank them in Google and get traffic to your website in the long run.

For more information you can read my guide on how to do keyword research using Google and a free keyword research tools list.

2. Using SEO tools.

As an SEO specialist, you also have to learn how to use different tools like Ahrefs, semrush and screaming frog, Google Analytics, and Google search console to perform major SEO tasks like competitor analysis for link building,

SEO audit of your website, search for keywords, and much more tasks that can, directly and indirectly, help you with your SEO efforts.

You can easily learn it by purchasing the tools and using the tools through various tutorials online.

3. Communication skills & networking.

Communication skills and networking can play a huge role in the success of your SEO efforts.

Here is why, 

Backlinks are the most important part of the ranking signal in SEO and the most effective types of backlinks are editorial & contextual links which you get from other trusted and relevant websites posts in the middle of content.

But the fact of the matter is that most authoritative websites only link to other websites which they have the trust and knowledge of.

So, good communication and networking skills can really help you establish good connections and relationships with other bloggers and digital marketers who own the authority website in your industry and those good communications can lead to backlinks to your website since the people trust you.

You can also find Amazing Friends and new business partners when you attend different conferences related to your industry worldwide with the help of good communication and networking skills.

Apart from that, communication skills are also important if you have a team that you have to lead from the front running an SEO campaign for your blog or you run an SEO agency. You need this skill to always keep your clients updated with the changes that you make to their project.

If you are not good at communication skills but want to improve on it I would recommend you to consider reading a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

This book literally changed my whole life and improved my communication skill drastically.

4. Writing content.

Writing effective content is the most important skill you need to learn in order to become an SEO expert.

Here is why, 

Search engine Optimisation is about ranking a particular blog post or a particular website on Google top positions so that you can drive traffic from search engines like Google and convert the traffic into leads and sales for your business.

Google only tries to rank websites that publish content and information.

So, if you want to drive traffic to your website you will have to publish content on your website so that it ranks on Google.

This is where effective writing skills can really help you boost your performance in SEO.

You should be able to educate people and persuade them to buy your products and services from your websites at the same time optimising your blog post for search engine robots.

If you are new to blogging and content writing I would recommend you to read my guide on how to write a blog post for beginners.

And in order to improve your writing skills, I would encourage you to read your favourite blogs, read books and practice writing.

That’s the only way you can get it done.

If you have enough money then you can consider hiring freelance writers on Upwork who can write and publish content for you on your website if you don’t want to actively write content on your website.

5. Prioritization, planning and decision making.

Time management & decision making are crucial soft skills which can help you in every aspect of your life including becoming an effective SEO specialist.

As an SEO specialist, you will have to perform lots of different tasks like, 

  • Performing keyword research.
  • Building backlinks.
  • Doing competitors analysis.
  • Creating content.
  • Updating content.
  • Running audits of your website.
  • Improving the conversion of your website.
  • Checking the analytics and growth of your website.

In order to do all of these activities you should be able to prioritize the most important work and plan your day ahead of time and save time.

Because of the fact that seo is constantly changing the industry , you should always be ready to make new decisions and change your strategy on the go, for which you also need to be good at decision making skills.

I would recommend you to create a to-do list every day in your journal, this will help you keep track of the goals that you have to accomplish and stop you from getting distracted.

6. Flexibility & adaptability.

Flexibility and adaptability is another key skill.

Here is why, 

Just like other digital marketing strategies, the SEO industry is constantly changing with new algorithm updates and changing technology and user behaviour.

Hence, the Strategies and tactics that used to work a couple of years ago may not necessarily work today and become obsolete tomorrow.

For example keyword stuffing and keyword density, publishing low quality and spammy thin content used

to be the most popular tactic for ranking on Google a couple of years ago until major algorithm updates like Panda Penguin and Hummingbird rolled out in Google algorithms which changed the SEO industry upside down.

These practices like keyword stuffing and publishing thin content that should help you rank higher on Google can get you a penalty to your website today.

Let’s take a recent example, Google has launched the featured snippets in 2014,

ever since then Google has constantly increasing the number of features snippets on the search engine results page, because of that many popular industries and websites not get any traffic today because of the featured snippet,

For example if you search anything like what is the weather in New York then, Google clearly shows that everything you need to know about the weather in New York right

on the search engine results page so that the user would not have to click on the website to learn about the weather.

This is just an example of how Google affected many industries that relied on SEO.

The point I am trying to make is that, SEO industry is constantly changing with new algorithm updates and new changing policies.

If you are not on your toes and not flexible enough and if you don’t adapt with new and latest practices and tactics then you will not be relevant in future.

The best way you can do this is by constantly being updated with the latest and best practices about the industry, you can Subscribe to major SEO sites like search engine land and search engine journal to get the news about SEO and updates,

I would also recommend you to subscribe to popular SEO blogs like backlinko to receive the best SEO information and advice on the internet.

And by the way if you like my content you can also subscribe to my blog, you will receive the best SEO information and advice whenever I publish a new blog post in future.

If you are just open minded and aware about the changes happening around in the industry it can be completely fine.

7. Creativity & research.

Creativity and research is also a very important skill you need to have for SEO.

Let me tell you how and Why,

SEO is a really competitive and tough Industry.

In such a case if you want your website to stand out from the competition and attract people to visit your website whether it is with unique content creation or marketing strategies the only way you can do it is by using your creativity.

You should come up with new ways on how you can create content that is better and unique and different from your competitors and others could not easily replicate strategies in their campaigns.

In the process of coming up with creative ideas you also need to have a lot of research skills. I am not just talking about keyword research.

Research means investigation and study of information on a subject.

Publishing the same metoo content that has already been written and published over hundreds of other websites on the Internet does not work today and in future in SEO.

In such a case, if you want your website to stand out and differentiate from the crowd then you should come up with more better and unique content with unique data and statistics and unique point of views that have not been discussed on other websites before.

In order to achieve that goal you will have to perform lots of case studies and experiments related to your industry to collect the data and Statistics that you can show in your website or blog post which can help you differentiate from other blogs in the industry.

A good example for this is a popular blog called backlinko, Brian Dean is the founder of this blog who is a well known seo expert, unlike other SEO blogs on the internet what makes the backlinko blog more special and

unique is that It publishes high quality and unique content in terms of case studies and data from huge researches like this one.

All of the blog posts are custom made using amazing graphics and images which reflects the creativity of the publisher.

And talking about research skills, you can see his blogs which have lots of research posts.

Because of all this amazing content which he publishes,

we can see his numbers and metrics, he gets more than half a million visitors a month from Google and has tons of backlinks and a leading seo blog in the industry.

But it is not easy. It takes a lot of time, energy and resources to do this research and

conducts experiments to collect the data and Statistics that you can include in your blog which can help you differentiate from your competitor and stand out and boost your performance in SEO.

This is where having excellent research skills and creativity can really help you boost your performance in SEO.

I would highly recommend you to read my guide on how to do research for a blog post and write content.

8. Critical & analytical thinking.

Having a strong critical & analytical thinking skill can really help you in many ways in both your life and your career in SEO.

Let me tell you how.

  • Critical thinking helps you question all the fake news present on the Internet and make your own judgement so that you can create your own opinion and conclusions which you can share on your blog post.
  • Critical thinking can help you find out problems and issues with your website so that you can get more traffic over all solving the issues.
  • Critical thinking will also help you examine your performance In work and keep you productive.

Critical thinking will help you understand what happened, why it happened and how it happened like anything during an algorithm update in Google and leave you with how you can solve it in any situation.

At the same time analytical thinking is about the ability to deconstruct information into smaller categories in order to draw conclusions.

Analytical thinking will help you a lot while looking at how your website is performing like traffic Metrics in Google Analytics tools and other SEO tools so that you can decide which technique is performing the best.

To be honest critical thinking is more of a mindset thing, you can easily develop critical thinking in yourself when

you start becoming self aware of your work and question things and make your own judgement and opinions instead of believing all the advice that is there on the internet.

You should consider looking at the facts and data compared to theories when making important decisions.

For more information you can refer to this guide on how to improve critical thinking skills.

9. Coding & technical skills basics.

You might also need some coding skills like basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files skills like what they are and how you can use them and other things.

All this knowledge and skills can really help you with learning more about optimising a website for better speed and customising your website for SEO friendliness and adding more features that will help users on your website.

Whereas you need some technical skills like managing the servers of the website, securing your website from attacks, etc.

Example if you want to connect your website with Google Analytics, you should be pasting a piece of code into the header section of your website theme.

Similarly if you have a wordpress website you can add new features to your website theme by just adding a new piece of code instead of installing a plugin which can be a security threat.

Having the knowledge of coding can really help open a lot of Doors and opportunities in SEO campaigns and you won’t panic if something happens on your website like any plugin conflict and any change in code of your website.

It does not matter whether you become a complete expert in coding or not, all that matters is you have to learn some knowledge and basic skills of HTML and CSS, you can easily do that by watching a few tutorials on YouTube, etc.

This should not take you more than a couple of hours of time to learn a few basics of coding skills and Technical skills.

10. Patience & Persistence.

Last but not least you also need patience and persistence in order to become an SEO expert.

First of all you need a lot of patience because you won’t get success and result with SEO overnight. 

  • A website domain age is a proven ranking factor.
  • Google clearly stated that the new website which is less than 1 year old can see a ranking fluctuation in Google search results.
  • Ahrefs has done a study that reflects that, higher the age of a website, higher rankings in Google, it usually takes at least 5 months to rank a blog for low competition keywords.

In fact I have published lots of high quality blog posts on my website but sadly they did not even rank in top 5 positions of Google even after building high quality backlinks and having more than one year of time after publishing them.

So, the message I am trying to convey to you is that, SEO takes time, it does not happen overnight.

It takes a lot of planning, hard work and patience to be able to drive traffic to your website from search engines over a period of time.

But unlike social media platforms which give you immediate results, the traffic results that you get from search engines are long-lasting and consistent.

Because of that if you want to become an effective SEO expert you need to be patient and be persistent with your results if you want to expect any results.

And when I say being persistent, I mean you should be constantly publishing the blog posts on your website and you should do the same process like keyword Research and building backlinks to your website regularly.

There is no way around, no exceptions for that.

With that said, let’s conclude the blog post.

Ending remarks.

These are all the best SEO skills you need to learn to become an SEO expert.

Do comment down which SEO skills you want to learn.

Share this blog post with your family and friends if you have found it helpful.

Sharing is caring.

I will catch you next time till then keep learning and keep growing.