What An SEO Specialist Should Know: From Junior To Senior [+ Infographics]

Where to start learning SEO? Or how to deepen your knowledge of website optimization? It is not always easy to find answers to these questions, especially since the internet is teeming with a mass of information on this topic, in which one can drown.

We also faced this problem, so we decided to publish a complete knowledge map for SEO specialists from Junior to Senior and will help you organize, deepen and evaluate your knowledge.

The graduation of specialist levels is subjective; it depends on both the company and the specialist, and even on how confidently and charismatically the specialist presents information :) (Be careful with this, you can hire an incompetent one).

For me, the level of a specialist is measured in independence. Signor works as autonomously as possible, regardless of the type of task, up to the automation of work. Middle needs help making difficult and important decisions and developing scripts.

In fact, all the missing knowledge can be filled when the task appears if the specialist is experienced enough to google and apply the information.

To sum up, Senior is an experienced Middle with knowledge of related areas.
P.S. I am not writing about things like knowing the basics, tools, strategies, etc. It goes without saying.

In addition to basic things, such as writing meta tags correctly, collecting semantics, creating a site structure, analyzing SEO indicators and competing sites, an SEO specialist at the Middle and Senior levels must:

1. Know the file structure of popular engines: WordPress, Open Cart, CS cart.
2. Be able to find the necessary files for CMS sites.
3. Know basic queries in SQL.
4. Be able to implement elementary edits on the site.
5. Know and use various modules of popular CMS engines.
6. Be able to write and read elementary code on PHP.

First of all, for me, the most important difference in the levels of specialists is not the amount of knowledge but thinking. Knowledge is essential to be applied correctly and in time.

Speaking about a set of knowledge, the main difference is in working with numbers, big data and the ability to automate it all. Junior promotes the site, Middle - promotes, analyzes actions and draws conclusions, and Senior - draws many conclusions and hypotheses, tests them with minimal costs.

When it comes to data volumes and analytics, these are programming languages, scripts, BI, and a thorough work with the main tools that serve as a data source.