Whether you are just getting started in the SEO industry or you have been working in this industry for a long time, reading this blog post will help you focus in the right direction and sharpen your skills. You will learn how you can channelize your energy and work even smartly to bring the best results.
If you are considering your SEO work as a 9 to 5 job, you can continue struggling with what you are doing right now. However, if you are striving to sharpen your skills to become an SEO specialist, you need to cultivate some habits which each SEO specialist possesses.
1. Read more, Learn more
The SEO industry is huge. Articles, guides, white papers, case studies, and much more content is available on the web. Of course, everything is not legitimate to be followed blindly. Therefore, follow only reliable sources of trustworthy SEO companies, Google, reliable SEO newswires, etc. You must invest time in reading as much as you can. This can be SEO or the niche of the projects you are working on. Reading will help you gain more and more knowledge, which further helps in a better SEO plan development and getting better results.
2. Stay aware of changes in the industry
The world of SEO is changing rapidly. Unlike earlier, when Google used to release a quality algorithm once in one to three years; now, within a year, multiple algorithms get launched by Google.
Likewise, whichever product or service you, as an SEO professional, are selling may also face various changes. You need to be up-to-date with all the latest information. Here again, remember knowledge is the power.
3. Understand what you are selling
Many SEO companies have a team of SEO executives, who apply the same SEO plan to marketing all products and services. This is similar to giving the same routine of exercise to be followed by a thin man and a bodybuilder. You must have guessed it already, it is highly ineffective.
Therefore, you need to understand the product or service to be marketed by your SEO marketing strategy. You may need to take demo sessions or read a lot of material initially, but you have to keep this in mind, it is most important to be completely familiar with what you are selling.
4. Research is the key
Here research is a whole word and you need to understand as an SEO expert that research is the key to success. You need to research on various things to keep your SEO strategy updated. Some of the major areas of research are listed below:
Keep researching and make changes in your SEO marketing strategy to be effective. Cultivate a habit of researching regularly.
5. Focus on the target audience
One of the biggest mistakes made by naive SEO executives is focusing on keyword rankings than the customer experience. Remember, you are creating and marketing content or performing any other activities to bring potential leads for a business. Developing content, which is stuffed with keywords and makes no sense, is useless for sure, or running an SEO plan, which solely focuses on ranking on the top is also useless.
Why?
Let me explain.
Let’s assume your focus on keyword strategy worked and you have started ranking on the first rank for all keywords you target. As you are at the top position, your website will also face high traffic. However, there will be hardly any quality leads. This is because you are not focused on the customer experience.
Therefore, all your SEO marketing activities must focus on the audience. For example, SEO content writing needs to concentrate on educating the audience and encourage them to take the next step, which is lead generation or converting any other goal you focus on.
Remember, the right SEO strategy can help you not only in lead generation, but also lead conversion.
6. Do not hesitate from experimenting*
As mentioned earlier, the SEO industry is dynamic. It changes every now and then. Therefore, it is necessary to experiment with different strategies. However, you need to be cautious here. You cannot experiment on the sites of clients. You can use your personal or company website for experimenting. Furthermore, to make sure whether you receive any benefits or not, but you do not get penalized from Google, you need to assure that you never try any black hat SEO activities.
7. Monitor results and tweak the SEO plan
Only working and not measuring is like running to come first in the race, but with blindfolds. You don’t even know that you are on the race track or not if you do not watch KPIs. You need to regularly examine results in tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush, Moz, etc.
According to the changes in the results, you should also need to change the SEO plan.
8. Share your knowledge
The SEO industry is not just a profit-making business branch, it is a community. All SEO specialists help each other. To become an SEO specialist, you must cultivate the habit of sharing your knowledge. You can perform various activities such as:
Sharing is caring. By sharing your knowledge, you not only help aspiring or stuck SEO people, but you also contribute to self-branding.
These are eight major habits each SEO professional must adopt and cultivate to become an SEO specialist.
Having any questions?