Becoming an SEO specialist can be daunting and difficult, especially when there isn’t many formal education streams that you can take to learn SEO in the first place. Whilst daunting, a career in Search Engine Optimisation can offer many opportunities, especially from a growth perspective, as well as allow you to work with people across many sectors. Search Engine Optimisation usually comes in the form of generating SEO-friendly content, editing content so it’s suitable for search engines or looking into the technicals of the website to streamline it.
What is an SEO Specialist?
An SEO Specialist, as you can imagine by the name, is someone whose expertise lie in the world of search engine optimisation. Search Engine Optimisation, is the action of trying to make websites/pages rank higher on search engine results pages like Google. Through doing so, you can generate organic traffic for your company’s site that can results in leads and/or sales.
What Career Opportunities are there?
There are plenty of career opportunities available as an SEO specialist. Since most of the world is online, every industry usually needs an SEO specialist, whether that’s through an agency they work with or in-house. You could help constrution sites generate contracts organically, or help clothing websites sell more t-shirts. SEO specialists can usually develop into other aspects of marketing, such as working in paid media, digital marketing in general or in content writing depending on the type of SEO you prefer.
If you become an SEO expert through your experience, you could develop your own agency or work as a freelancer for a variety of companies.
How do I Become an SEO Specialist?
Whilst you don’t need a degree to become an SEO specialist, you should have the necessary skills on-hand to be able to understand the basics of how websites are developed, how different marketing strategies work and what tools are available to use.
We’d recommend utilising the following resources to learn about SEO:
- SERP Hits, yes we’re biased, but the website you’re currently on has lots of learning resources to understand what SEO is and best practices, as well as a useful glossary section.
- Search Engine Land, a long-standing news site that’ll give you the latest information on search engine updates.
- Google’s Developers Blog, an important resource where Google published details of recent algorithm updates.
Once you have a good understanding of SEO, we’d recommend you look for junior SEO executive roles either in technical SEO or content. Ensure you outline in your CV your understanding of SEO and to your interviewer the importance of SEO.
If you’re struggling to land entry-level roles in SEO, then you can always look for content-based roles such as writers, content editors etc. where there’s opportunity for growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a degree to work in SEO? – No! A degree isn’t needed to get into SEO and there’s very little degrees that would cover it.
Do I need any qualifications at all? – No! Whilst some courses may be useful, there isn’t a need to have a qualification. We would recommend however passing Google’s Fundamental courses that covers wider areas of the search engine.
Do I need to know coding to be an SEO specialist? – Whilst you don’t need to know how to code an entire website, it’s useful to understand how websites are built and identify areas to improve the coding of sites if you’re looking to get into SEO.