5 SEO Skills Every SEO Professional Needs to Know

SEO has become part of the everyday vernacular of the digital marketing landscape, but how does one actually become an SEO professional? Does reading Moz or Search Engine Land a couple of times a week really make you an SEO pro?

If you are looking to expand your SEO skills and add SEO to your professional tool belt, here are 5 skills you should absolutely focus on:

1. HTML/ CSS

Example of HTML Coding

Coding is one of those skills every marketer knows they should learn, but often times neglect, because they end up leaning on their dev team. But if you plan to become a true SEO professional you need to be able to code, understand code and know when your Website is broken.

Why you ask?

If you are an in-house or agency SEO you cannot wait around for your dev or engineering team to fix every little bug on your Website. You need to able to go into the backend and correct coding issues on your own. This not only allows you to become more valuable, but it also saves you, your agency or business time and money. And who doesn’t like that?

Do yourself a favor and enlist the help of an online coding program like CodeAcademy to teach yourself the basics of HTML and CSS. Trust me, you will thank yourself for learning some basic coding!

2. Data Analysis

Example of Data Visualization Display

Data and SEO are now lock, step and barrel. Whether you are managing a small Website, a number of Websites or a very large Website you need to be able to analyze data in an efficient and effective way. If you are pulling data from an SEO tool like ScreamingFrog, Moz or just pulling data from Google Analytics/Search Console – the data sets pile up quickly.

If you learn how to use a BI tool like Tableau, Pentaho or even just become a Wizard at Excel, you will be saving yourself tons of time by being able to sort, code and evaluate large sets of data.

Did I forget to mention you will likely also find some great insights from your data analyses? Great SEO insights = better rankings = more traffic = more money.

3. Google Analytics & Search Console

Example of Google Analytics Dashboard

Since Google owns the majority of the searches on the Web, knowing how Google thinks, reads and measures your Website is essential to developing a strong SEO profile. The two most important Google Apps are Analytics and Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools).

If you don’t have experience with these applications yet, I would suggest becoming Google Analytics certified as well as going through the WebMaster Academy. Both are free and don’t take much time to complete.

Knowing these Google Apps will raise your stock immediately as an SEO professional.

4. Content Marketing

Content Marketing Strategy Infographic

If SEO is King then Content is Queen. If you do not have high-quality content, your chances of ranking in Google SERPs is highly unlikely – even if you have some great SEO tricks up your sleeve. Learn how to write content, optimize, and publish it regularly. There are tons of sites like WordStream and Content Marketing Institute that offer a slew of tips and tricks on how to build a content generating machine.

But what if you don’t have time to write a bunch of 1,000 word articles? My suggestion would be to learn how to find and contract high-quality freelancers to populate your Website with great content.

Once you have high-quality content then you can go in and optimize the on-page, off-page and meta data of your content. Now that is a recipe for success!

5. Promotion

Promotion Strategy Graphic

Some of the most important SEO signals are traffic and back links. Publishing content, even if you do all the right things from an on-page perspective, isn’t enough. You need to get eye balls on your content and convince them to share it on their blogs and social networks.

Building back links has changed over the years, and grey hat techniques are becoming less and less effective. Learn some basic PR and social media skills and let your content share itself. Learn how to reach out to influencers in your space via email, social media or other outreach channels.

The more you get people reading your high-quality content the more likely it is to get linked to, which means the more likely it is to rank highly on the SERP.

While it is hard to pinpoint 5 skills must-have SEO skills, these are what I believe to be most important for an aspiring SEO. Once you invest in learning these kills expect your SEO value to rise like Google’s stock price.

Do you think they are more important SEO skills that every SEO should know? Feel free to post them in the comments below.