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What Any SEO Specialist Should Know: SEO Skills From Junior To Senior
Are you new to the world of SEO and wondering how to begin developing your skills? Or are you a seasoned SEO expert seeking to deepen your knowledge of website optimization? Because the internet is teeming with information on SEO-related topics, it can be difficult to know where to start.
We have also faced this problem, so we decided to publish a complete knowledge map for SEO specialists from Junior to Senior level to help you grow your expertise.
SEO For Beginners
Basiс Knowledge
SEO is a complex field that requires a range of skills, including technical, analytical, and creative abilities. Developing a strong foundation is crucial to ensuring your future success as an SEO specialist and will allow you to devise and implement effective SEO campaigns that drive traffic and improve conversion rates.
In this section, you will find relevant materials that will guide you as you take your first steps on the way to becoming an SEO expert. But first, make sure to take a look at our SEO Glossary to familiarize yourself with key terminology.
This will equip you with the knowledge you need to go through Google’s own SEO starter guide:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
- Help Google Find Your Content
- Tell Google Which Pages Shouldn't Be Crawled
- Help Google (And Users) Understand Your Content
- Manage Your Appearance In Google Search Results
- Organize Your Site Hierarchy
- Optimize Your Content
- Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
- Promote Your Website
- Analyze Your Search Performance And User Behavior
- Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines
Competitor Analysis
When you understand the competition, you can develop strategies to surpass your competitors. Keeping an eye on them while drawing inspiration from what they do well and trying to identify areas for improvement will enable you to improve your own SEO strategy. Learn more about competitor analysis in the articles below.
#serpstat_tips:
You can find and analyze competitors using the Serpstat Competitor Analysis tool.
Keyword Research
Understanding what language your target audience uses to search for information related to your business’ products or services is a must. Including relevant keywords signals to search engines that your product is relevant to your audience and directs them to your website.
- Keyword Research Without Agencies: Manual For Beginners And Online Store Owners;
- How to Conduct Keyword Research in Languages You Don’t Speak?
- How To Adjust The Keyword List By Analyzing Paid Traffic
- How to Collect A Keyword List For a Website
- How To Find New Keywords And Expand Your Keyword List
- How To Distribute Keywords On Your Website
- How To Collect A Keyword List To Cover All Areas Of Your Business
Keyword Clustering
- Keyword Clustering: Algorithms and Approaches of Popular SEO Tools
- 4 Reasons Why You Should Implement Keyword Clusters in Your SEO Strategy
- How To Group Keywords Automatically With The Serpstat Keyword Clustering Tool
- Serpstat API Documentation for Keyword Research
- Serpstat API Batch Analysis Add-on For Google Spreadsheets: Data Analysis In One Click
- Advanced SEO Audit: A Complete Guide To All Stages Of The Analysis
- The Most Common Technical SEO Issues That Damage Your Site
- How To Add A Site To Google Search Console
- Effective Site Audit With Serpstat: Tool Overview
- Technical Audit Of A Page In 2 Clicks: Rate Your SEO Performance
- How To Check Server Response Time And Reduce It
- Why You Should Keep A Simple URL Structure
- How To Optimize Your Website For Mobile Devices
- How To Analyze An Anchor Text List
- How To Optimize Meta-Tags And Images
- How To Create A Correct HTML Sitemap
- How To Implement And Use Hreflang
- How To Add Lang And Hreflang Attributes To The Page Code
- Errors In Hreflang Attributes: What Are They And How To Fix Them
- What Pages Should Be Closed From Indexing In Google
- Complete Visual Guide to Google SERP Features: What Keywords to Use and How to Get Featured
- How To Optimize Internal Links
- Mobile Site And Mobile-First Indexing Best Practices
#serpstat_tips
You can collect any relevant keyword list via the Serpstat Keyword Research tool. The tool will help you find synonyms, similar keywords, search suggestions, top pages by keyword, competitors by keyword and more.
Technical Optimization
Technical optimization is used to enhance a website's technical infrastructure and code to improve its visibility in search engines. The process begins with a technical audit to assess the technical condition of the resource and its performance.
With the help of a technical audit, you can determine weaknesses and problems that hinder the site's promotion in order to begin working on a solution.
Read about critical technical abilities required for technical SEO in the articles below:
Everything About The Robots.Txt File
- Google's Introduction To Robots.Txt
- What Is Robots.Txt And How To Set It Up Correctly
- How To Specify Robots.Txt Directives For Google Robots
Working With Images:
- Duplicate content - Google guide
- How To Identify And Fix Duplicate Content Issues
- What is Markup?
- How to Add Microdata Markup to the Website
- How To Set Up Open Graph Markup
- How To Implement Twitter Card Markup On The Website
- How To Implement Schema.Org Microdata And Why Is It Useful
- Recipe Markup
- Organization Markup
- Types Of Advanced Search Results
- A Complete Visual Guide to Google SERPs: What Keywords to Use And How to Get Featured
- What is Off-page SEO? A Complete Guide
- How To Get Quality Backlinks: The Ultimate Guide
- Serpstat Backlink Analysis Tool: A Comprehensive Guide
- How To Optimize Internal Links
- How To Build An Anchor List To Expand Backlink Profile
- How To Analyze Traffic Of External Links With Google Analytics
- Top 10 Link Building Strategies + Implementation Steps. The Ultimate Guide
- How To Find And Fix Broken Links
- Quick And Easy Backlink Analysis With Serpstat API Is Now Available
Duplicate content:
#serpstat_tips
You can find errors on the site and recommendations on fixing them using the Serpstat Site Audit. The tool will help detect more than 60 types of vulnerabilities on the site.
Types Of Markups And Their Customization
Micro-markup involves the use of tags and attributes which help search engines find content on the site faster and understand it correctly. Read all about it here:
External Optimization
External optimization, also known as off-page optimization, refers to efforts to improve rankings that are not done on the website itself. This includes tactics such as link building, online PR, social media marketing, and guest posting.
Several years ago, Google stated that links are the #1 ranking factor, along with content quality. Little has changed since then, and backlinks are still an integral part of a successful SEO strategy. So how do you go about gaining high-quality backlinks that will increase domain authority and improve your site’s rankings? Here are some helpful beginner-friendly resources:
Social Media:
#serpstat_tips
Serpstat Backlink Analysis tool will help you analyze and improve your website's backlink profile. This report will gather data on referring domains, malicious sites, inbound links, outbound links, link anchors, top pages, backlink donor intersection, and more.
Basic Website Knowledge
For SEO specialists, understanding how websites work as well as the technical aspects of optimizing a website for search engines is essential. By learning the basics, you will be well on your way to creating your first SEO campaign.
- What is a Framework?
- How To Set The Site Encoding Correctly
- Tag Manager Overview
- What Is Google Tag Manager And Why Do You Need It
- Components Of Google Tag Manager
- How To Track Buttons With Google Tag Manager
- How To Track 404 Errors With Google Analytics And Tag Manager
- Google Looker Studio Help
- 3 Quick-Win Google Data Studio Tips For SEO Reporting
- How To Visualize Serpstat Reports Using Google Data Studio Connector
- Google Business Profile Help
- How to Set Up and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
- Local SEO Tips To Make Your Site Rank Higher
- Local Awareness: Local SEO Tool To Increase Local Involvement
- Get Quote Requests Via Messaging
- How Search Algorithms Work
- A Deep Dive into How Search Engines Crawl and Index the Web
- Google Search Algorithm Updates: The List of Changes in 2021 and 2022
- Local Awareness: Local SEO Tool To Increase Local Involvement
- Google Penguin
- Google Hummingbird
- Google Pigeon
- Google Panda
- Google RankBrain
- Manual Actions
Web Analytics
Google offers several tools to help SEO experts collect, analyze and report data on website traffic and user behavior. Let us take a look:
Google Analytics:
Google Tag Manager:
Google Looker Studio:
Local SEO and Google Business:
Algorithms:
Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving and becoming more complex. Since their inception, search engines have gone from basic search functions to sophisticated algorithms. This directly affects SEO experts who need to keep up-to-date with the latest changes to the algorithm to adjust their strategies and stay ahead of the curve.
Skills For Upper Junior Level SEO Experts
So, you have passed the basic level. Now it's is time to deepen your knowledge. Let us start with some tricks for keyword research as an upper junior level SEO specialist:
Keyword List: Top Similarity Clustering
- Successful Keyword Mapping In 5 Easy Steps
- How To Carry Out Keyword Clustering Via Serpstat
- How To Increase The Text Relevance Of Site Pages
- 5 Alternative Methods For Analyzing And Searching New Niches For SEO
- Mass Top Analysis: How To Find Drops, Niches And Best Tricks
#serpstat_tips
After collecting keywords, the turn comes to clustering — distributing keywords into categories, and website pages. Sometimes this process is quite time-consuming and tedious.
You can do clustering automatically using the Serpstat Keyword Clustering tool. In conjunction with this module comes the Text Analysis tool, which will help you increase the text relevance of the pages of your site.
Technical Optimization
The next step is to improve your technical optimization skills. At the junior level, you should be familiar with how to find and remove duplicate content on your website, do more in-depth competitor analysis, and how to implement accelerate mobile pages (AMP). Below you’ll find some of our favorite articles that cover these topics in detail.
- Duplicate Content
- The Definitive Guide To Removing Duplicate Content From Your Site
- Growth Points For SaaS: How To Increase Organic Traffic By Using Competitors
- Configuring Accelerated Mobile Pages On A Website: How To Avoid Mistakes
- How to Create a Website Structure Based on Keywords
- How To Collect A Keyword List To Cover All Areas Of Your Business
- Information Architecture: How To Build Up Silos Using Serpstat and WordPress
- The complete guide to the Google Analytics add-on for Google Sheets
- How to determine the target audience of your site using Google Analytics
- Google Optimize first-time user guide
- How to conduct your first A/B test: automate the process with Google Optimize
- A Complete Guide To Marketing Metrics
- What Is Marketing ROI And How Do You Calculate It
- The 13 Most Effective Ways To Increase Your Conversion Rate
- How To Choose The Right Marketing Strategy For Your Business
- How To Add Products Comparison To The Website
- Business Model Canvas
- Marketing Controls
- Effective SWOT Analysis
- The AIDA model
- See, Think, Do, Care: A New Way To Communicate Your SEO Strategy
- What is FTP?
- What is SSH?
- 6 Best FTP Clients For Mac And Windows Users
- Beginner's Guide: What Is A Domain Name And How Do Domains Work
- Everything You Need To Know About Domain Zones
- What Is Web Hosting?
- What is VPS?
- What is DNS?
- 13 Best WordPress Plugins For SEO
- Website Builders vs. WordPress — Which Is Better For SEO?
- HTML Introduction
- Guide To Google's Search Engine Results Page
- How To Recover From The March 2023 Core Algorithm Update
- How Artificial Intelligence Changes SEO
- SEO Strategies That Use Natural Language Processing
- Search Quality Metrics: What They Mean And How They Work
- 10 Tips To Improve The Quality Of Your Page
- Medical SEO: How To Get Your Medical Website To The Top
Website Structure
Website structure plays an important role in how search engines crawl and index your website, and can have a significant impact on website rankings and visibility.
Ensure that your content is easy to navigate for both users and web crawlers by following the advice in these articles:
Web Analytics
Now that you have some experience with SEO, it is time to deepen your knowledge of web analytics.
Google Analytics:
Google Optimize:
Marketing
Let us proceed to marketing and marketing metrics. Marketing metrics in SEO refer to the specific data points and key performance indicators (KPIs) that are used to measure the success of an SEO campaign.
These metrics help to evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO strategies and tactics. They can also be used to inform decisions about how to adjust and optimize campaigns for better results, so as a junior SEO specialist, they are something you should be familiar with.
How Websites Work
The next step is to gain a better understanding of the technical aspects of a website and how they affect rankings.
Algorithms
These materials will help you deepen your knowledge of algorithms:
YMYL
YMYL, or “your money your life”, is a term used by Google to describe certain types of web pages that could potentially have a significant impact on a person's financial or physical well-being. This includes pages related to financial or medical advice, legal information, news articles, and e-commerce.
Google holds paged that fall under these categories to a higher standard, so to get them to rank well you need to ensure they demonstrate expertise, authority and trustworthiness.
AI and SEO
One of the biggest SEO trends of 2023 is artificial intelligence. Learn how to use AI tools to enhance your SEO strategies, create content, speed up the keyword research process, and more.
Mid-Level SEO Abilities
Web Analytics
As a mid-level SEO specialist, you should know how to use a Google Analytics feature called Enhanced Ecommerce that provides advanced insights for e-commerce sites.
- Google Developers Guide
- Enhanced E-Commerce Developer Guide
- About Enhanced E-Commerce
Technical Optimization
In this section, we will dive deeper into some technical aspects of SEO, including LSI keywords, search result snippet analysis, optimizing websites for local searches, and regular expressions.
By advancing your technical know-how using the articles below, you will be better equipped to improve your website's technical foundation.
What You Need To Know As A Senior SEO Specialist
Here is what you need to know to take your SEO abilities to the next level:
Web Analytics
To reach a senior SEO level, you need familiarize yourself with Measurement Protocol, another feature of Google Analytics. You will also need to upgrade your computer-related abilities and gain some basic programming skills.
Тепер розглянемо основні напрямки у крипто-бізнесі:
- Measurement Protocol Overview
- Offline Transactions With Google Analytics
- How To Refund And Cancel Orders In Google Analytics
- Introduction To Databases - Getting Started With SQL
- Microsoft Access Tutorial: Learn MS Access With Example
- MySQL Tutorial For Beginners [Full Course]
- Power BI on Microsoft Learn
- Tutorials for Qlik Sense
- Qlikview Online Course
- Tableau Training For Beginners
Working With Databases
BI Platforms
Bonus
Instead of just summarizing our knowledge map, we have collected opinions from three SEO experts.
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.
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