Top 8 Seo Skills To Boost Your Resume

SEO advantage is the top of almost every company’s (with a website) marketing strategy. Not everyone is knowledgeable about it. It pays to have a strong SEO team.

This is why employers favor job candidates with strong SEO Skills, especially for positions in the digital or technical space. They believe you are smart and valuable if you have one or more SEO skills.

The best part is that you don’t have to be an SEO expert to possess some top basic skills in SEO. All you need is a good knowledge of the fundamentals of SEO.

Fortunately, this article shows you the top eight SEO skills to boost your resume and make you stand out from other job candidates.

IMPORTANCE OF SEO SKILLS

SEO is important in business and can be in the form of content, keywords, off-page SEO, local SEO, and search engine marketing. Many smart business owners want a strong SEO team because of the major benefits of SEO.

1. Visibility and Rankings

The major importance of SEO is visibility; this makes it easier for customers and clients to find you when you have something they want. Research shows that nearly 75% of users start their search on the Google platform. The higher you rank on the search engine result page, the greater your chances of being discovered by people who need what you offer. You can comfortably say that SEO is the key to increasing page rankings. Therefore, the more efficient a website is with SEO, the more it will be seen and the higher its organic visits.

About 62% of consumers turn to search engines first when they want to learn about a new product or service, and 41% use them when they are ready to buy. You don’t have to transform into a local SEO expert to know one or two things about local SEO.

2. Boosts Page Authority

To showcase page authority means the website is trustworthy and reliable. Page authority is important because it shows that people can trust the business, and its content is reliable and of value. This doesn’t work with just content, but with link profiles, getting external links from credible sources to the business site.

3. Giving Visitors an Amazing Experience

The site usability increases if a page is well-optimized content-wise, off and on the page. A responsive site leaves customers with positive experiences. A responsive site gives users a stress-less experience from mobile phones or desktops. The faster a page loads, the more time people will be willing to spend on it, but if it takes time for a page to load, people easily leave the website. In essence, a page’s load time is directly proportional to its conversions.

4. Increased Web Traffic

An increase in web traffic is a major goal of search engine optimization. Traffic can only be increased when there is an increase in visibility and ranking. According to a Backlinko report, the number 1 result in Google organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%, and the number 1 organic result is 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in number 10 of the google search result.

Your title tags also have a great role in driving traffic to your site. Title tags with questions have a 14.1% higher CTR than pages that don’t have. Moving up one spot in the search results can increase your CTR by 30.8%. If you are moving from number 3 to number 2, moving from number 10 to number 8 doesn’t make a huge impact.

Therefore, employers want more people to see them in the search engine result and high traffic. SEO skills and practices are needed to help a business rank higher in the search engine result.

5. Brand Building

SEO helps in brand building; it involves what the business says and what people say about it. In simpler terms, it is all about the relevancy of the content and what people say about it.

TOP 8 SEO SKILLS TO BOOST YOUR RESUME

1. Critical Thinking

Aside from SEO reasons, employers prefer to consider job candidates with critical thinking skills. In fact, it is a very crucial skill every job candidate must have.

Employers are looking for employees who can think and creatively solve a problem. This requires thinking outside the box; searching for solutions where it is least expected. This is an SEO skill because for a company to rank on google’s search results as number 1, it needs an understanding of why it is not happening. Then, the solution to the why is also needed.

Some companies believe they are giving their best, and yet they don’t even rank among the first 10. As a critical thinker, you can understand the situation, detect the problem, and creatively solve it.

Observation and inquisitiveness are part of the top characteristics of critical thinkers. You should have them. A critical thinker should be able to look at data and understand the three whats-questions accompanying that data:

What happened?
Why did it happen?
What should we do about it?

Also, understand that no two websites are alike, nor do they perform the same function. An SEO expert must be able to find potential and prospective issues on the company’s website. This is done through in-depth research and figuring out why things are not working well for your company.

It is very important to enhance your critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is a full package of reasoning, analysis, decision making, evaluation, and problem-solving. It narrows down to your ability to out–optimize your competitor, which is why employers value creative thinking. All that is needed is to follow the laid down principles, and you will get it right. Therefore, you need to get critical and creative with the principles.

Whatever you do, you need to bring a creative and critical mind to the table to understand and solve problems the company or establishment faces effectively.

2. Project Management

SEO has its target at optimizing websites such that the company ranks top on google’s search results. Truth be told, nobody exceeds that first page of google search results else a diligent searcher. As much as you want to rank at the top, it doesn’t mean SEO only has to deal with building links, using the right keywords, and increasing page speed. SEO spans more than that; it involves the planning, managing, and execution of projects effectively.

Once the problem has been discovered, and a solution is on the way, you need to set up and manage a team, plan your work, and set and meet deadlines. If this is not done, achieving purpose will be far-fetched. You will just be stuck having problems and solutions in your mouth. If you decide to work independently to achieve the target, you still need a systematic approach to your plans, deadlines, and progress.

It’s not wrong if we call project management in this context the management and coordination of resources to achieve a set goal. These resources include SEO knowledge, information, content, capital, and many more.

Employers need someone with solid project management skills as it relates to SEO. Encompassed in project management are some other inner skills which are needed for project management to be achieved effortlessly and effectively. They include Communication, Team Management, Time Management, Task Management, Technology, and Risk Management.

All these inner skills combined are what make project management workable and attainable. On the other hand, if project management is attainable, you are one step closer to achieving your company’s goal of being ranked at the top of search engine results.

3. Research Skills

Good and strong research skills are very vital when enhancing your resume. Employers want someone who loves and can handle research. Being research-minded doesn’t end at just scrolling repeatedly through the web. It involves digging deep to access certain information, going to lengths for any information.

Good research is always thorough, and it takes a lot of time. In-depth research is not done in a hurry. To find what you’re looking for, you need to look closely.

Strong research skills involve paying attention to the tiniest information. You can access relevant and reliable sources.

It also involves a strong ability to stay up to date on the latest industry trends, especially in sales, marketing, and SEO.

Google has a continuously changing algorithm; you should keep up with the flow. Being research-minded requires you to constantly read books and articles and visit the social media space to see the latest trends.

4. Analysis

Strong analytical skills are another vital SEO skill employers are looking for—your ability to analyze metrics and data while interpreting them in an easy-to-understand manner. SEO lies heavily on the back of analysis. To measure success, analysis is needed. With analysis, every action taken will be accounted for and measured. It doesn’t just involve recording data but also analyzing and interpreting the data recorded.

It is one thing to read and another to take action based on what was read. With analysis, you don’t just read results; you interpret results and take actions based on what you just read. Therefore, this implies that taking actions based on analytics is part of the data analysis. All companies want to measure and track their successes and failures.

As a digital marketer or IT personnel, analysis is one of the main SEO skills you will need to stand out. It shows your employers or the recruiters that you can feel in certain SEO-related positions if need be.

A basic understanding of business KPIs will go a long way (Key Performance Index). As a technology-knowledgeable individual, you ought to be able to create dashboards in a data studio, use Google sheets, google slides, or Excel effectively, and also use various APIs to bring more data, such as search console. Google NLP, knowledge of adobe, and Google analytics can save the day. They help pull and segment data, thereby creating insights for you to use.

5. Speaking and Writing Skills

Employers want someone who can think critically and creatively, handle tons of research, analyze and put things down. Writing skill, in this context, does not involve full-scale content writing, just persuasive writing.

Copywriting skills are needed to encourage clients and consumers to take action about what the company has. The ability to craft persuasive words is an added plus to your resume, especially if you are after a digital marketer role.

Persuasive talking is also needed. You will need this ability to convince clients and teammates to do the right thing and take the right action is also needed. This can be done in meetings, case studies, and points of view.

Blog writing can also play a role asides from copywriting. Being able to manage a blog effectively and also build links is golden. These blogs can be entertaining or informational depending on the angle the company wants to portray to its audience. You must possess the necessary skill for writing content for blogs, web pages, headlines, title tags, meta titles, and others.

You can take up some content creation/marketing projects with these skills. The more valuable you are, the higher your pay will be. This is because employers will see you as an asset.

Remember also that search engine optimization has much to do with content, which is necessary when running a campaign. The ability to weave keywords into content without appearing as a forced or dishonest write-up is needed. It is possible that bad writing may hinder you and your company from ranking at the top.

Aside from keywords, the kind of content matters. What’s the need to attract people to your website when you have nothing to offer.? It is one thing to attract people, and it is another to keep them. If your content is bad, customers and clients are discouraged from taking action. In essence, what you post matters.

6. Technical and Coding Skills

This may seem a little complex, but basic knowledge of HTML, microdata tagging, server redirects, and page speed doesn’t hurt. You don’t have to be an IT expert to have this skill.

The company may have people in the tech industry to run this effortlessly, but there’s a certain feel that comes with you knowing about it. Things will improve when you give the programming or developer personnel insights rather than just demands and commands. Additionally, you can also be a great asset to add to the tech team.

The capacity and ability to write codes are unnecessary, but understanding is just needed. Have an understanding of codes, the implications, and the general contents of coding. You should understand the basics of website design and meta tags.

7. Social/People Skills

Communication is another vital SEO skill to have. It is one of the top skills employers are looking for in job candidates. In fact, statistics show that over 69% of job recruiters feel more confident hiring jab candidates with excellent communication skills.

Critical thinking and communication are the two most important skills in almost any position you are going for. You may not have to communicate directly to the customers, but you will have to communicate with your colleagues and superiors.

The ability to pass information in a very easy-to-understand way is very vital. There is a tendency that clients will get upset, especially when they don’t understand the process of things which can further lead to frustration, worry, and unfair expectations.

You must first understand the process of things and properly communicate this to the clients. This also involves managing the client’s expectations, whether realistic or unrealistic. This also goes for the company.

The trick here is not just communicating to the relevant people but also passing across your point so that people are reassured about your potency. This erases any stream of doubt from their minds.

To enhance your communication skills, it is very important to know the 15 commandments of effective communication. This will guide you in developing the right communication skills.

8. Ability to Use Popular SEO Tools

Your ability as an employee to use popular SEO tools speaks volumes for you as an employee. It shows that you are knowledgeable about the latest SEO trends. The SEO industry is a complex one that involves lots of variables. Accurately managing huge data like links, keywords, backlinks, contents, and many others are needed.

The best part about this is that you don’t have to be an SEO expert to know how to use these tools.

Dealing with all this data manually can be an uphill task that will wear you out. Technology needs to come into play to do it with so much ease and accuracy. Every SEO process has a technology that can assist with it. These technologies are broken down into several categories, such as:

Research: These tools will help with in-depth study and analysis of competitors, keywords, backlinks, and content. This is used to discover loopholes and gaps in the work; some of these tools are the Google Keyword Planners.
Monitoring: These tools are used for observing and monitoring SEO performances. They are used in the monitoring of insights into the work already done. Google Insights can be used.
Optimization: Optimization tools help you understand how you’re doing and then give you suggestions on how to improve what you’re doing. Some of these tools are content optimization tools and speed analytics tools.

How to Improve your SEO Skills?

The SEO industry is not a stagnant one. It evolves. To stay abreast of trends in the industry, you need to look for opportunities to improve such skills regularly. There are free SEO classes offered on the internet. If you don’t want to take a full SEO class, you can take specific classes that enhance these skills.

1. Reddit

Reddit has different communities, such as digital marketing and SEO. The popular SEO communities are r/TechSEO and r/bigseo. In these communities, you can ask questions about SEO or anything related to google trends as it affects searches.

When you ask questions in these communities, answers are gotten from worldwide, creating space for you to learn from various sources. It also gives you access to certain professionals in SEO and other areas that may interest you.

It is expedient to be careful as anyone can comment. You can get both right and wrong answers to questions. Reddit helps in relearning and unlearning. This is asides from the questions you can ask on the platform.

Sometimes, arguments may break out over ideologies, but these arguments will strengthen your knowledge of what you think you know or make you learn better and understand appropriately. In general, the Reddit platform is for improving your SEO skills by learning new things, keeping up with current trends on the Google platform, or relearning and unlearning new ideas and insights.

2. Learning from Senior Colleagues

Working in isolation is not an option to gather and get SEO skills. Ask your colleagues or seniors in the field to continuously give you a job overview regarding SEO. Discussions about SEO are an opportunity to gain more insights into how SEO continues to operate. It can also help you learn how to ask intelligent and smarter questions, especially regarding the technical and programming skills of SEO.

You also learn about better ways of doing things, achieving the top ranks, managing strategies and projects, and thinking critically to solve a problem creatively.

3. Online Courses

Online courses are available to help you improve on these top SEO skills. These skills can be accessed on Udemy, Coursera, Hubspot Academy, Google Primer, and other online learning platforms. Google Primer is one of the best platforms to learn business and digital marketing skills.

4. Self-Study

You can improve yourself through self-study, reading books about SEO, and investigating and learning about SEO trends. Another way to keep learning is to keep doing. If you want to keep improving in what you know, keep working.

Skills like communication and critical thinking are best learned through practice. You stop practicing; you stop learning. Consistent practice does something that is easily comprehensive. You can decipher what’s working and what is not working. With this, you can easily work on what is not working and create a solution for it through investigation and study.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. What are the Three Major Areas of SEO?

The three major areas of SEO are technical SEO, content SEO, and promotion SEO.

2. What are the Main Types of SEO?

There are four main types of SEO, and they include:

Off-page SEO- this is about what happens outside the website
On-page SEO- this is also called on-site SEO and can be referred to as optimizing the website’s contents
Technical SEO
Local SEO

3. What is the Best Format for an SEO Resume?

The best choice for an SEO resume is the reverse-chronological format. This resume shows your most recent experience, education, and skills first. Employers want to see your most recent experience because it shows your current level and abilities.

4. What are Some Examples of Basic SEO Tools?

Some of the most popular SEO tools include:

CONCLUSION

Embedded in SEO is a multitude of skills and approaches. However, the top 8 have been outlined in this article. It is important to gain some SEO skills irrespective of your job description. These SEO skills are a must-have for those looking at working in the marketing, entertainment, and arts industry.

It is one thing to keep dwelling on the SEO skill you learned years ago. Yes, the principles may remain the same, but the way of achieving the target or goal could have evolved. You must keep skills fresh and new by continuously embracing new learning methods and seeking opportunities to learn and grow.

Some other skills you need to imbibe that are on the search by employers are link building, adaptability, prioritization, content marketing, and empathy. It is essential that for every job opportunity you apply for, you have the basic SEO skill not just to be taken but also be sustained.

With these SEO skills, your resume will look smart, and you stand a better chance of getting selected.