How to Become An SEO Specialist in 2023

ByNaven Pillai Last Updated:
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Looking to become an SEO Specialist in Malaysia but not sure how to get started?

The demand for SEO professionals has increased over the years globally. But in Malaysia, most businesses are not aware of SEO and the benefits it offers to their growth.

In Malaysia, the demand for SEO professionals is slowly growing and we can expect the SEO industry in Malaysia to boom in the next few years.

Colleges are not offering degrees for SEO. But, there are a lot of training centers in Malaysia offering SEO courses.

I’m not a fan of SEO courses because I believe that SEO requires hands-on experience and continuous experimentation. However, you can definitely take SEO courses that teach you the basics.

What is an SEO Specialist?

I came across so many funny descriptions about SEO Specialists. People used to think that an SEO specialist is someone who either works at Google or is connected to someone working at Google. So, they can easily help website owners to rank on the search result pages easily.

This is not true!

You need to get one thing clear. Google is working on providing the best user experience by constantly improving its search engine algorithms. Google will rank websites for users’ search queries by taking into consideration almost 200 ranking factors.

Being an SEO specialist is not only about understanding how search engines work but also about knowing the best way to grow organic search traffic consistently.

The term “specialist” is often regulated by exams and certifications in a specific field. But, it does not apply to SEO specialists. There are so many individuals who claim themselves to be SEO specialists but fail to perform and deliver the right results.

Some self-proclaimed SEO specialists are extremely good at selling but lacklustre at delivering results.

SEO expertise requires time, commitment, and experience. You can’t simply declare yourself an SEO expert.

Even I don’t claim myself to be an SEO expert because I believe there are so many things to learn though I have more than 8 years of experience in the SEO industry.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to become an SEO expert in Malaysia by learning and doing the right things.

So, let’s get started.

21 Steps to Become an SEO Specialist

Follow these simple steps to create the right path to becoming an SEO specialist.

  1. Understand the fundamentals of SEO
  2. Understand how search engines work
  3. Get started with WordPress
  4. Learn Google Analytics and Google Search Console
  5. Develop your own sites
  6. Stay updated with the latest trends in the SEO industry
  7. Read and understand Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines
  8. Choose the right SEO tools
  9. Analyze and understand the SERPs
  10. Learn content marketing
  11. Learn about white-hat link-building strategies
  12. Don’t rely on a generic SEO checklist
  13. Join SEO expert social media groups
  14. Follow Top SEO Blogs and Experts
  15. Attend SEO events & conferences
  16. Grow your personal network
  17. Take advantage of free SEO resources
  18. Improve your SEO skills with continuous learning
  19. Perform continuous SEO experiments
  20. Develop a flexible SEO system to follow
  21. Be patient for results

Understand how search engines work

As an SEO specialist, you need to have a basic knowledge of how search engines actually work. It will give you a rough idea of how you can carry out search engine optimization.

Moz has mentioned that search engines are answer machines that discover, understand, and organize contents on the internet to provide the best results to the query searchers are asking for.

How do search engines function?

Search engines have three main functions:

  1. Crawling: uses search engine spiders to crawl for content in each URL they find on the Internet
  2. Indexing: Saves and organizes the list of contents found during the crawling phase. Once the contents are indexed, it will be shown as results on search engines when someone searches for relevant queries.
  3. Ranking: Displays the contents that have close relevancy for searched queries. The results showed on search result pages ordered by the most relevant to the least relevant

But not all search engines are the same. They have different ranking signals to rank websites on search engines. According to Statcounter, Google has the highest market share in search engines with a whopping 91.75%  as of June 2020.

Most SEO experts tend to focus on Google and ignore other search engines. But, other search engines can drive organic traffic too. Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo should be considered when you optimize a website for search engines.

You can learn more about search engine functions from the following resources:

Understand the fundamentals of SEO

To become an SEO specialist, you need to start with the fundamentals. It is important to understand how users are performing searches and optimize your website contents to appear in front of them.

There are four main components you need to be aware of:

  • Technical SEO
  • On-Page SEO
  • Off-Page SEO
  • Other SEO related tasks

Technical SEO

Having a good website structure is essential for higher rankings on search engines.

You might publish the best content in the industry. If your site structure is poor, it will be a huge waste of investment in content creation as your website will never reach its full potential on search engines.

You need to make sure your contents are organized properly to provide a clear indication for the visitors when they land on your website. The following questions will help you in creating the perfect site structure for your website.

  • What are the topics you’re looking to rank for?
  • What are the topics you’re writing about the most?
  • What topics are driving potential leads to your website?

A good site structure will not only provide the best user experience for your visitors but also allow search engines to understand what your website is about.

You need to focus on these two important technical SEO elements compared to others which are:

  1. Structured Data
  2. Site Speed

I will only cover these two elements in this section. If you’re looking for the complete guide to technical SEO you can learn more in this post.

Structured Data

Structured data or commonly known as schema markup, is a code that allows search engine bots to crawl, analyze, organize and display your contents on search engine result pages.

Structured data helps to convert the unstructured detail about your content to something easier to understand. When your website is crawled and read in the form of XML or JSON object, the search engines are able to classify your content type and display them in an interactive form to the search engine users.

Understanding and applying structured data to your website is not something that you can ignore. Check your structured data errors using this tool by Google.

You can learn more about Structure data with the following resources:

Site Speed

You have a well-designed website with the best content but the site speed is slow. You got a big problem there.

No matter how good your content is or your website structure is, your search rankings will get affected if you have a slow site.

It is good to have sites with a load speed of 3 seconds or lower. Rather than focusing on your homepage, you need to check on other individual pages as well.

In most cases, slow loading speed is caused by image sizes, outdated plugins, and paid search pixels.

You can use the following website speed audit tools to identify the culprits and fix them:

Sometimes as an SEO specialist you might not have the expertise to fix every technical SEO issue. You can work along with a web developer to fix those issues. But, having knowledge about the issues is crucial as you’ll be able to easily identify them and get them fixed.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is not something that you set and forget. Once you get used to the on-page SEO tasks, you will be spending only 10-15 minutes on each content published.

You need to focus on some of the most important On-Page SEO elements. My latest guide on writing SEO-friendly content covers every aspect of on-page SEO.

Just follow the guide and you’ll be good at on-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO

One of the difficult aspects of SEO but important in improving search ranking if you’re in a competitive niche.

Off-page SEO is any task that take place outside of your website with the sole purpose to improve search engine rankings. Link building plays an important role in off-page SEO strategies but there is more to it.

Google Algorithm looks at the quantity and quality of links pointing to a specific web page to determine where the page should be positioned on the search engine ranking pages.

There are few link-related off-page SEO factors that influence search engine rankings:

  1. Referring domains: Having links from a variety of domains not only helps in higher rankings but also increases organic search traffic.
  2. Link authority: Quality matters when it comes to link building. When a particular site with higher authority points to another site, the site will be seen as an authority in the eyes of search engines.
  3.  Do-follow & No-follow links: According to Google, only links with do-follow tags are prioritized and links with no follow tag do not provide any value. But, it is important to have a combination of both to show that the site is acquiring links naturally. Moreover, no-follow links can drive referral traffic as well.
  4. Anchor text: The clickable link words used to link one web page to another. In the past, SEO experts suggested using keyword-rich anchor text to add more value to the link. But, Google’s Penguin algorithm update has indicated that using keyword-rich anchor text link building to manipulate search rankings can result in Google Penalty.
  5. Relevance: Other than link authority, the relevancy of the link matters too. According to recent research, relevance is more important than authority. But, it is better to focus on acquiring authority links from relevant sites that competitors find harder to acquire.

Off-page SEO is slightly harder than on-page SEO as you don’t have full control over off-page SEO factors. But trust me, when there is something harder to do, the result will be better.

You can’t ignore off-page SEO efforts if you want to position yourself as an SEO expert.

There are other basic SEO tasks that require attention. You need to make sure the basic tools are integrated with the website. The following tasks should not be ignored:

  • Setup Google Analytics
  • Place the Google Analytics tracking code correctly
  • Setup Google Search Console for all versions of the website
  • Choose the country the website is targeting on Google Search Console
  • Submit XML sitemap to Google Search Console
  • Connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console
  • If you’re using WordPress, choose either Yoast SEO or Rankmath plugin to ease your SEO efforts
  • Make sure to install SSL cert to the website
  • Check whether your site is mobile-friendly and responsive on all mobile devices

These additional basic SEO tasks are easy to implement. It’s not rocket science. If you’re not sure, simply Google them and there are hundreds of tutorials available for each task.

Get Started with WordPress

As an SEO expert, you want to work with an SEO-friendly CMS. WordPress is one of the best SEO-friendly CMS that was launched in 2003 by Matthew Charles Mullenweg.

According to Hosting Tribunal, WordPress powers 35% of the Internet in 2020. If you take a look at only CMS-built sites, then 60% of them are built with WordPress.

So what makes WordPress special compared to other CMS?

Here are some of the reasons.

WordPress offers a great User Experience (UX)

WordPress has thousands of themes and plugins that make the websites look simply stunning and user-friendly. The user experience offered by WordPress allows you to keep your visitors longer on the website and stay engaged with the published content.

WordPress offers lots of options to customize the sites. It is easy to make the website look better than competitors with the use of the right themes and plugins.

User experience (UX) is measured using metrics like bounce rate and dwell time. When a site offers excellent user experience, the visitors tend to stay longer and has high chances to become a paying customer. User experience is one of the important Google ranking factors as the search engine wants to rank sites that offer the best experience for their users.

Compared to other CMS platforms, it is relatively easy to edit permalinks with WordPress. Have you see a URL something like the following:

“https://marketinginasia.com/2020/07/16/the-world-of-luxury-in-a-crisis/”

The URL has included the date which makes it less professional. With WordPress, you can easily change the permalink and include your primary keyword.

The permalink feature help SEO experts to provide short and informative URL which also increases the chances of ranking on search engines by including the main keyword.


It is easy to insert title and meta descriptions with WordPress

Content titles and meta description improves the search engine rankings. As long as your title and meta description is relevant to the search query, there is a high chance for your site to appear on search engine result pages depending on the competition.

So, how WordPress can help you with the title and meta description implementation?

There are two main SEO plugins available for WordPress which are Yoast SEO and Rank Math. Adding one of the plugins will help you to add the right title and meta description for your posts and pages in minutes.


WordPress simplifies image optimization

When you create pages and posts, it is essential to include images to attract your visitors and keep them engaged with the content. These images can increase your search rankings as well.  Optimizing images in WordPress is extremely easy:

  • You can add “alt text” for every image in the media section. You can add your target keywords to the image description. The search engine crawlers will pick it up and rank the images on the search engine’s image results.
  • To avoid slow loading speed caused by image sizes, you can reduce the image sizes with the right plugins.


Easy to improve page loading speed with WordPress

As mentioned earlier in the Technical SEO section, the loading speed of your website is one of the most crucial ranking factors as Google has rolled out mobile-first indexing.

You don’t want to cause issues to both users and search engines with a slow website.  With WordPress, you can increase your loading speed by using the right plugins.

Use the following plugins to boost your site’s speed:

  • Shortpixel Image Optimizer: Compresses image files and PDF files to speed up your site’s load time.
  • Autoptimize: caches the site, and minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML codes to improve your site’s load time.


WordPress has hundreds of SEO-Friendly themes

The SEO-friendliness of themes is determined by the following factors:

  • Valid coding: WordPress themes are developed according to up-to-date coding standards to make them compatible with all browsers. It also has valid HTML and CSS codes that are compatible with every mobile device.
  • Responsive design: Most WordPress themes are designed to be responsive. The responsiveness of your website improves the user experience which keeps the visitors engaged and stay longer.

There are other SEO-Friendly CMS too. But, WordPress is one of the commonly used CMS which does not require technical expertise to handle.

As an SEO expert, you need to master WordPress as the majority of sites you’ll be optimizing are built with WordPress.

Learn Google Analytics and Google Search Console

There are a variety of SEO tools available in the market. You can choose the ones that suit you the most depending on the type of SEO activities you’re involved with.

But, you need to master both Google Analytics and Google Search Console as an SEO specialist. An SEO expert that doesn’t know how to use these tools is like a sailor that doesn’t know how to use a compass.

There are many valuable things you will get to know by mastering Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

You might know how to integrate Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

But do you know how to use them to improve your SEO efforts?

The following resources will help you understand how to use both Google Analytics and Google Search Console to improve SEO:

Develop your own sites

Understanding the fundamentals of SEO is not enough. You need to apply what you learn. When you don’t have hands-on experience with SEO, it’s quite difficult to apply the right SEO strategies for other businesses.

Start doing SEO for yourself. If you want to be an SEO expert you need to apply the SEO strategies you’ve learned to your own blog, affiliate site, or even mobile applications.

You need to keep on learning. Learn HTML and CSS. Write and publish optimized content and see how they show up in SERPs.

Let me share my personal experience in developing my own sites. I’m a website flipper and I’ve flipped 13 sites to date. Each site was sold for thousands. Not in RM but in USD. ( I was still working full-time when I was flipping websites)

I’ve developed sites from scratch, wrote the contents, optimized them for search engines, and monetize them with either Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, or Ezoic.

I find it challenging and interesting in building authority niche sites. It helps me explore new niches and improve my knowledge of them while building sites that make me money.

All the sites I’ve built over the years are completely focused on organic search traffic. I never focused on other sources of traffic as I believe that organic search traffic is more targeted and valuable compared to others.

You can check out one of my case studies on how I purchased an online gaming guide site and increased the organic search traffic by 5600% before selling it for $6k just within 6 months.

You don’t have to build and flip websites. Just get hands-on experience working on SEO.

Trust me, it will help you learn a lot of new things too.

SEO is not a static digital marketing element. As search engines continuously improving their algorithms to create a better user experience, it is important for SEO experts to stay informed with the changes.

According to Google, they are making thousands of changes to their ranking algorithms in a year. Without knowing the changes and how it impacts the SERPs, you won’t be able to sustain or increase organic search traffic to the sites you’re working on.

There are few SEO news sites worth following and will help you stay informed with the SEO changes.

Bookmark the following resources or create a Google alert when something is published on those sites.

  • Search Engine Land: One of my favorite blogs. It is also one of the oldest websites in the SEO industry. Founded by Danny Sullivan who is currently working for Google. This is the first site you want to check out and confirm whether there are any Google algorithm changes or updates.
  • Google Webmaster Central Blog: Official blog by Google for webmasters. But it’s useful for SEO experts as well. Follow this blog to stay updated with the latest changes in the Google search engine.
  • Search Engine Journal: Although this site focused on educating and empowering the SEO community, it’s also one of the best sites to get timely information on Google algorithm changes.

Read and understand Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines

Ever heard of Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines?

Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines are documents given to individuals that Google personally employs to rate websites. The guideline provides the important elements and conditions that need to be observed and how the site should be rated.

But this quality rating report does not affect the search ranking of the sites involved. The guideline is a long document and it will be better if you understand the simplified version.

It’s basically known as E-A-T which stands for:

  • Expertise
  • Authoritativeness
  • Trustworthiness

Understanding each of these elements will be good enough if you’re just starting out. If you want to be an SEO Expert, you need to read and understand the entire guideline.

You can check out the following resources to know more about Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines:

Choose the right SEO tools

The truth is you can do SEO manually without any tools. But, you will be spending your valuable time on tasks that can be easily automated with tools.

As an SEO expert, you want to focus on tasks that can get better results for your clients.  I have to agree that some of the best SEO tools are expensive but in the long run, the results and the return you get for your clients will be far better than the monthly fee you spent on the tools.

These are some of the top SEO tools you can use:

  • Google Search Console [Free]: Google Search Console is one of the most underrated SEO tools that can provide valuable information about your website. It also helps in finding technical SEO errors like index and crawling issues.
  • Google Analytics [Free]: There are hundreds of analytical tools out there. But, Google Analytics is an official tool by Google that allows you to track your website traffic and understand the visitors’ behavior. There are a lot of metrics that you can analyze to improve the site’s performance.
  • SEMRush [ Paid]: One of my favorite SEO tools that I’ve been using for the past 3 years. It’s not free but it’s worth the money. You can perform tasks like keywords research, competitor analysis, backlink profile analysis, and many other tasks with this tool. The tool is consistently updated with new features to help SEO experts.

Analyze and understand the SERPs

This is where your knowledge and skills shine.

You need to look at the search engine results pages (SERPs). You need to analyze and understand the results.

These are the things you should look for:

  • What kind of results shows up when you search for a particular keyword or topic?
  • How do the title and description show up?
  • Which sites are doing better on the search result pages?

If you’ve been serious with SEO, you might already know about Long-Tail keywords. When you perform searches with a different types of keywords the results differ.

For instance, try searching for  “how to make chicken biryani” and “chicken biryani”.

You will see a few featured snippets of recipes when you search for “how to make chicken biryani” because it shows the best result for the user’s search intent.

But when you search for “chicken biryani”, you still see the recipes in the results but you can also see the knowledge graph of “chicken biryani”. So Google always focuses on the intent behind the user’s query and serves them with the best content format.

So, you have to analyze and understand the SERPs to come with an effective SEO strategy that works. You don’t want to simply provide content that does not fulfil the user’s search intent.

Learn content marketing

According to Karan Sharma, co-founder of Kinexy Media Inc, SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul.

SEO covers the technical aspect of a website and how to effectively optimize your site to be crawled and indexed by search engines. It also includes how search engine bots understand your content and position them on the SERPs.

Gone are the days when content are developed with the sole purpose of ranking. And you can’t stuff keywords and expect your content to rank. I still do see websites heavily stuffing the keywords for their homepage. and it doesn’t make sense at all.

Since Google rolled Hummingbird and Rankbrain algorithm updates, content published on websites should be user-oriented and provide value for the readers.

This is where content marketing works perfectly with SEO. You might want to read my recent article on writing SEO-friendly content:

How To Write SEO-Friendly Content in 2022

When we talk about content, some experts will ask you to focus on the quality of content produced whereas some will ask you to focus on the quantity.

If you ask me, you should do both. You need to produce a considerable amount of content without affecting the quality. Google loves in-depth content. But, Google also loves content that provide direct answers to the user’s query. So you need to combine both.

The fact is that even the top SEO experts have trouble staying on top of the SERPs. I can argue all day long that SEO is better than other digital marketing strategies, but it is important to clearly understand and focus on the channels that can bring quality leads and sales for the business.

SEO has changed over the years. You just need to combine content marketing along with SEO to dominate the SERPs. But, as I’ve mentioned earlier, if you see opportunities from other channels focus on that as well when it comes to content marketing.

Marketing your content on various channels is a must in today’s competitive world.

Link building. One of the most important elements of SEO and a hard one too. It’s a process of getting other websites (relevant to your niche) to link back to your website. Apart from the increasing authority for your website, it also helps in driving referral traffic.

Google emphasizes on links to determine the quality of the website. Thus, it uses it as one of the important ranking signals. It doesn’t mean that you need to have thousands of links to prove your authority. A few hundred quality and relevant links are sufficient enough.

A decade ago, building links was easy. You can simply hire someone on Fiverr and they will help you get thousands of backlinks (mostly spam ones). But it doesn’t work that way anymore.

Google has continuously updated its algorithm to remove sites with unethical link building practices (blackhat SEO). In 2012, Google launched the Penguin Algorithm update with the aim to penalize sites with low-quality and spammy links.

So, there is no shortcut to link building today. You need to build links the right way with white-hat link building strategies.

You can learn more about white-hat link building strategies from the following resources:

Don’t rely on SEO checklist

SEO specialists often have their own SEO checklist to follow when they start optimizing a particular website. Having a checklist is good but only to a certain extent.

If you start relying on an SEO checklist it becomes a routine and you become inflexible and unaware that the checklist is not working anymore.

As you know, search engines are constantly changing all the time.

You need to start adapting to the new changes in search engines. If you’re fond of the checklist, it will make you blindly walk through the process and end up with poor results.

You need to be result-oriented. Drop-in rankings are common and you need to adapt to the changes and identify what is wrong and fix them. Don’t be shy in asking help if things are not working.

Join SEO experts social media groups

There are hundreds of SEO Facebook groups and most of them are not being monitored and filled with a bunch of morons spamming the group with irrelevant posts.

These are some of the top SEO Facebook groups worth joining ( I’m a member of these groups too :)):

I feel these 3 groups are the most reliable ones. If you know any other valuable Facebook groups, please feel free to email me and I’ll add them to the list.

You don’t need to specifically join an SEO group. You can also join general marketing groups which consist of marketers with different expertise. Improving your knowledge of other digital marketing strategies isn’t that bad.

Follow Top SEO Blogs and Experts

No one knows everything. You will learn something new every single day.

Following the top SEO blogs and experts can help you improve your SEO knowledge and stay informed with the new changes in the SEO industry.

You don’t have to follow every single one of them. Just select the ones that are related to you the most. They have different styles of writing and share different perspectives.

Choose the one you’ll love reading when a new post is published.

I’ve curated a list of top SEO blogs to read and bookmark in 2021.

Get started right away.

Attend SEO events and Conferences

The sad part of being an SEO in Malaysia is that there are no events or conferences on SEO. But, there are events that focus on digital marketing.

In this Covid-19 period, there are hundreds of webinars being organized and you should definitely take part.

In-person events and conferences are on hold for now.

You can easily attend International SEO webinars today and improve your SEO knowledge and see what’s new in the industry.

Although some conferences and virtual summits are quite pricey, it’s worth the investment.

These are some of the top virtual SEO events and conferences you should check out:

If you have the time, try to attend these virtual events. These events are often organized in big conference halls but this time you can attend them online.  So just make use of this opportunity and gain knowledge from the experts.

Grow your personal network

You can’t answer every single question related to SEO. You can’t be an expert in every area of SEO. It’s not impossible but mastering a specific area of SEO will be better.

I have some of the best SEO professionals in my network. Some of them are good at Local SEO but know nothing about Technical SEO.

There are some in my network is fantastic in content development and promotion but terrible at link building.

You can argue with me that you’re good at every aspect of SEO. But at some point, you need someone to help you out. You can go on calling yourself “guru” or whatsoever but when you’re stuck you will start finding people to help you out.

So don’t be arrogant and start building connections.

Building good relationships is important in the SEO industry.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are the best ones to start.

And please stop being selfish. Don’t just take information from others.

Learn to give and take and that’s the right way to build a personal network.

If you want to position yourself as an expert, be ready to share your expertise and experience.

Don’t keep talking about money. I understand that your time is money but sharing between a network of people should be mutual.

Take advantage of Free SEO Resources

You don’t have to pay for everything. I understand nothing comes free but nothing wrong with improving your knowledge using free resources readily available on the Internet.

If you’re a self-starter, you won’t have any problem finding your way to acquire new skills. And SEO is one of them. I’m a self-taught SEO person. I did not buy any course or attend any training for SEO.

If you need someone to guide you, you’re free to approach the right person with the expertise to help you.

These are some of the top SEO resources available for free on the Internet:

Improve your SEO skills with continuous learning

You can’t stop learning about SEO and declare yourself as an expert. SEO experts don’t usually claim themselves as experts as they know that SEO is something that evolves along with search engines and requires continuous learning.

It’s not something like your college degree. Once you complete them, you’ll be given a certificate of accomplishment. But you won’t even use 30% of what you’ve learned in the industry.

There are many certifications available for SEOs today. But, none of them actually matter. Do you know why Google certifications only have 1-year validity?

It’s because Google changes over time.

To stay in the SEO game, you need to continuously educate yourself on the changes and stay updated.

Stay alert and try to learn as much as possible. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of marketers giving up on SEO and focus on something else. And there are some that have been continuously dedicating themselves to SEO and I’m one of them 🙂

Perform continuous SEO experiments

Let me be transparent here.

I don’t develop sites for fun. My main is to perform various experiments with sites from on-page SEO to technical SEO and check their outcome.

I have developed more than 20 sites over the years and only manage to sell 13 of them. Some of the remaining ones were fully abandoned and some of them are my passive income assets.

When you perform SEO experiments on different niches you’ll learn a lot of things not only about SEO but also about the business world. If you’ve worked with different niches, you will know that they require different SEO strategies. Some strategies might work when you’re starting out but will start to tank over time.

You need to think creatively to come out from the saturation point. Some industries have a limited target audience, especially B2B businesses. However, the competition is extremely high as everyone is trying to get their share of the bigger pie. In some industries, the bigger giants are already dominating the market.

To stay competitive as an SEO expert, you need to perform various experiments to identify and validate the methods that work. If you’re going to rely on generic SEO methods, you will be stuck at one point and unable to move forward.

Develop an SEO System 

I know what you’re thinking.

I’ve mentioned that you should not have a generic SEO process.

I’m still sticking to what I’ve said. A system and a process are two different entities.

A system is a core element that you implement in your business. Whereas, processes are the small elements that you get into order to make the system work efficiently. The processes within the system can change overtime to make sure the system works efficiently without any issues.

Do you know why you need a system for SEO?

Even if you’re not around or not working on a company’s SEO work, it should automatically work. You won’t be able to perform every SEO task on your own. At some point, you need to outsource the tasks to someone else or hire someone to work for you.

So the ones working with you should get tasks assigned to them perfectly to make sure the system is not affected. Let me give you an example,

You want to rank for a competitive keyword. So ranking for the competition is your main objective and the system you’ve created will work on achieving the objective. So, to achieve the objective there are few processes that need to be carried out:

  1. In-depth research on the keywords and find opportunities and weaknesses.
  2. Use the research data to come up with a content idea.
  3. Check the sites and contents ranking on the first page of Google.
  4. Determine how to create better content than the ranking ones.
  5. Get the content developed.
  6. Perform manual outreach to people/sites you used as sources and notify them.
  7. If there is a broken link building opportunity, contact the site owner to include the link.
  8. Share the content on all social media platforms.
  9. Continuously track the performance for the next 90 days. Check for SERPs position.
  10. Perform blogging outreach to relevant blogs to get link placement through guest posting.

This is just an example.

The combination of these processes is your system. You can change your processes depending on the effectiveness. If there are changes to Google algorithm, modify them accordingly.

Be patient for results

Sometimes you can achieve the results fast when there is no competition. But the fact is that SEO takes time to work and you shouldn’t rush to conclusions and give up fast.

SEO is not a fast way to generate traffic. PPC is the best way to generate quick traffic and you need to pay for each click. Once you stop your PPC campaign, the traffic will be back to zero.

SEO is for the ones looking for long-term results. When you start a business you can’t expect fast growth and it grows in stages. It’s the same with SEO. You can see the growth by stages and will help you drive organic search traffic for the long term.

SEO also focuses on freshness. The site needs to be updated to suit the current situation. For example, one of the content talks about the top sales strategies to use in 2012, you need to update the content to suit 2020 because the strategies might be outdated.

Keep an eye on the rankings and traffic and give enough time from 90 days to 120 days before taking further decisions.

Conclusion

Being an SEO specialist is awesome. You can do a lot of things by acquiring SEO knowledge. Most SEO specialists have their own site that generates income.

They often use their knowledge and skills for their own business before helping other businesses.

If you ask me, every traditional marketer should acquire SEO knowledge to step up their game as everyone is going online today. It’s good to have social media marketing skills but it does not help in gaining exposure on search engines.

Becoming an SEO specialist it’s not easy but not impossible either. If you follow everything I’ve mentioned in their article, you’ll be on the right track to becoming a good SEO expert.

Many might suggest taking a course from reputable training centers, but I’m quite sceptical about it because you won’t have hands-on experience by taking up courses. Maybe you might get the fundamentals right to get started.

Some even preached that SEO is dead. Search engines and SEO are here to stay for years to come as search engines are the only place people go to look for solutions to their problems.

Get started now and make sure to start with patience and integrity. And make sure you’re hungry for knowledge.

Naven Pillai

An experienced digital marketing strategist with 8+ years of experience. Helped various small and medium businesses to generate massive traffic from digital marketing channels. In addition to digital marketing consulting work, Naven owns multiple authority sites that generates passive income.

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