10 essential SEO skills you need to know

What are the best skills in SEO?

If you believe this tweet, it is patient. Although patience is a great answer, I wouldn’t say that there is a “best” SEO skill.

Why? Because SEO requires different hard skills (what you can learn or teach you) and soft skills (how you work and interact with others) to succeed.

As I always find, asking multiple SEO experts questions will result in a variety of opinions. So I asked several SEO experts what they consider the most important skills in SEO.

Here’s what they told me.

1. Diagnosis and troubleshooting

Dave Davies, SEO Manager, Weightings & Bias

“For the best skills, I would go for the product SEO solution: it depends. In this case, however, it is true.

If the person who does content is directed, writing skills combined with strong research skills (both SEO and keyword-based) will definitely be on the list. If the person who does it is a technical SEO specialist, then the most important skills are based on technical knowledge – but even the branch comes out.

If they are working as entrepreneurs, they must have a broad understanding of various technologies and a strong ability to analyze details and work with developers. If it’s an in-house SEO or a platform-specific contractor, they’ll likely need a better understanding of a particular collection, and perhaps the ability to deliver.

One skill every SEO needs is the ability to analyze and troubleshoot problems. If they can’t do that, their career will be short. Fortunately, if you’re reading this, you’re doing your research.

2. Mind is awesome

Dan Taylor, Technical SEO Manager, SALT.agency

“For me, one of the most important skills that SEO professionals should develop is critical thinking. The SEO ecosystem is full of noise and claims, with varying levels of data and anecdotal evidence to support them. Most of the time, many of these content and recommendations are taken by word of mouth and put into context without a second thought, hoping that implementation will produce the same result.

A common example of SEO occurs when working with a client (and other stakeholders) on a website redesign. Oftentimes, the proposed features and some technical implementations will be removed from third-party websites without considering what “other” content is going into at the website level. Just because eBay, BBC, Amazon, etc. to do X, does not mean X will work for Bob’s Hardware or Bob’s Finance Co.

With critical thinking, SEOs should read online studies, see their input and results, and then carefully find other studies that contradict those results – and then form their own opinions and influence their strategy through applying them to current customer situations.
John McAlpin, Head of SEO Strategy, Cardinal Digital Marketing

“An experienced SEO expert might say that the most important skills are soft skills. I’d say that’s pretty cool. In my opinion, the most important SEO skill is critical thinking. Not everything in SEO is black and white. There is always a happy process. It requires good detective skills to find the answer.

3. Troubleshooting

Elmer Boutin, President of Operations, WrightIMC

“Problem solving and the ability to see the big picture. We often get so caught up in the small SEO tasks that we miss the big picture of what’s happening between websites, search engines, potential visitors to visit, and the business that the website represents. Taking a step back and looking at things from cover to cover can help us solve problems rather than worrying about things like meta description length or deciding the best time to publish a blog post.
Corey Morris, Chief Strategy Officer, Voltage

“The best skill in SEO is problem solving. It rarely goes to plan. Innovating, finding new ways, and exploring all resources for technology, on pages, IT, UX, and external factors are essential for success. Using a list and check box will not help you.

4. Test

Himani Kankaria, Founder, Missive Digital

“The best skill in SEO is experimentation. What works for one business or company is not what will work for another. You can’t judge this without testing.

Also, many of these services have different concepts of the buying and browsing audience, technology for website UX, content, how we build navigation, etc. Therefore, you need to keep checking what works for your website, your client, or your employee because SEO is always changing and you can’t learn or learn new things without it. is an old thing without trying. Sometimes we learn from someone else’s experience, so testing is a super duper skill in SEO.

5. Business transactions

Trond Lyngbø, Founder, Search Planet

“As a specialist SEO consultant and corporate SEO consultant for e-commerce and omnichannel retailers, I appreciate SEO strategies that are not SEO strategies for Google, but SEO for business results, production and economic growth. A solid understanding of business, business processes, operational automation, and operational integration is gold in this area.
Connie Chen, SEO Expert, Traffic Marketing

“Business awareness (ROI) in soft skills, because you will be able to translate the work you do into a special effect for the people you interact with. You will also need to know how to translate technical ideas into ideas that make sense to the stakeholders. »

6. Agreement

Maria White, SEO Manager, Kurt Geiger

“SEO is a spectrum. As such, it is difficult to control all skills (technology, data, content, PR, reporting, management and others). These skills are changing as Google and search evolve. Each Google algorithm shapes the way we do SEO. Since the only constant is change, the best skill for success is change. Change is the norm when working in a company: new customers, large customers, different budgets, speed and more. If in this area, we constantly add changes to the algorithm that involves changing the way we work, then it is here that only those who have the ability to change will not survive, but do very well.
Holly Miller Anderson, SEO Senior Product Manager, Under Armor

“The best skill in SEO is flexibility. SEO is a learning skill, from process to content. But change is a choice.

7. Communication

Casey Markee, Owner, Wyse Media

“SEO requires the ability to communicate ideas and goals effectively, often in different ways, to many different people. Your ability to do this, professionally and effortlessly, is a huge part of your daily success.

8. Ability to learn

Chris Silver Smith, President, Silver Media

“The best skill in SEO is the ability to learn. A constant in SEO is change – you have to learn new things and adapt to changes constantly in new ways.

9. Persistence

Ludwig Makhyan, founder, MAZELESS

“Persistence is the greatest skill, where you don’t get discouraged by failure and continue to learn, improve, work with other teams and prepare for progress.” the size of the company you represent.”
ten. Cross collaboration

10. Cross-collaboration

Jon Clark, Managing Partner, Broadcasting

“Collaboration is an incredibly valuable skill. SEO is one of the few skills/activities that sit at the crossroads of almost every department in an organization: design, development, content, UX, PR, marketing, engineering, quality assurance, analytics, etc.

Author Bio

My name is Lucy Wilson, and I have a keen interest in the field of writing. I have written a couple of articles on various gemstones, fashion and would love to express my opinion on more such stones. Hope it has maximized your knowledge of gemstone jewelry and satisfied your quest to buy an aquamarine jewelry from an authentic place. We believe in quality and offer the same in our information and products.