Algorithms govern working of Search Engines and it is the duty of an SEO professional to convince them that your website or webpage deserves one of the top spots in SERPs.
Following 5 suggestions will help you upgrade your SEO skills, convince search engines and become a certified SEO professional, so let us directly delve into those-
5 Tips to Become an SEO Professional
1. Know the SEO Tools & Browser Extensions
For professional SEO experts, it is must to start by installing useful SEO Tools and browser extensions. Some of the top tools are-
Stayfocusd
- This browser extension lets you create a blacklist of sites that you think may kill your productivity
- Stayfocusd sets an amount of time you should spend on those black listed sites each weekday
Quick Login for Google Accounts
- If you have multiple logins for personal and professional Google Accounts then Quick Login for Google Accounts extension is must for you
- It lets you quickly switch between up to 10 Google accounts and you will never forget a password again
WriteMonkey
- It is a word processor that is very useful for SEO professionals as it ensures great user experience for blog posts or longer consultancy documents
- It can let SEO professionals produce a document much faster
- It lets you stay up to date by keeping you up with industry news
- It allows you to easily store interesting articles, snippets of text or videos in an accessible place for future consumption
Timer
- SEO professional should use Timers to build their concentration span
- If you really struggle to concentrate on your SEO work then this one is must for you
Process Automation Tools
- Best SEO professional tends to automate their repetitive tasks by effectively using some process automation SEO Analysis tools
- There are so many process automations tools are available like TweetDeck, which is a Twitter management tool
- TweetDeck lets users automate and schedule their tweeting
- Another process automation tool that is quite famous is Hootsuite
- Hootsuite aids SEOers manage multiple social networks from a single dashboard
- There are many other SEO management dashboards available for SEO professionals such as Britedge, Matrix Search and SearchEnabler
- These tools let SEO professionals manage multiple tasks and analytics at a single dashboard
- Some other tools like Makesbridge, Marketo, HubSpot, and MailChimp lets you automate and manage your emails, selling, blogging, customer relations and social sharing
2. Know the Important SEO Practices
Future of SEO professionals is based upon the SEO practices followed by them. Below given are some key SEO practices-
Page titles
- Page titles are one of the most important aspects of SEO and each page should have a unique page title that describes the page’s content in the most accurate way possible
- Your page title should be brief and descriptive that should help users understand what the page is about
- Home page title includes the name of your website/business along with the information like the physical location of your company and a few of its main focuses or offers
- Post/other pages title should describe what the page is about and it should be attractive to the searcher
Page Description
- The page description meta tag gives users, and search engines a summary of what the site page is about
- You should always provide a unique page description for all pages, products and posts of your website and should keep the size between 140-150 characters
- You should avoid repeating the title in the page description
- You should also not use too many keywords
Permanent link structure
- It is used to describe the format of URLS for pages or individual posts of your site
- Permanent link structure is shown in the search results and browser address bar
- SEO professionals should use URLs that are easy to understand for search engines and users
- You should use hyphens ‘ – ‘ for separating the words, plus, you must avoid lengthy URLs
- It is advisable to use words that describe what the page is about
- No keyword stuffing should be done
Examples of BAD URL structures
https://www.example.com/socialmedianews
Examples of GOOD URL structures
https://www.example.com/social-media-news
Breadcrumb
- Successful SEO professionals always make sure that they have a breadcrumb on all their internal pages
- Breadcrumb is actually a set of links at the top of the page that help in navigation
- SEO professionals who use WordPress can find free plugins to create a breadcrumb
Internal links
- You need to have links in a page that point to other pages within the website
- Internal linking is one of the most important on site SEO practices
Text formatting and the use of H1, H2 and H3
- You should not just publish text on your website without using some basic formatting
- You can use H1 tags for the title of your post and H2 tags for the main headings
- You can use BOLDand Italics formats to draw users attention
- It is important to use small paragraphs and a font size that is easy to read
The 404 Page
- Proper 404 page contributes to better user experience
- If any page searched by a user does not exist or your user mistypes a URL or follows a broken link then 404 page is shown to him/her
- You should give some info to the user of what happened on your 404 page rather than displaying “Not found”
- Your 404 page should have a design consistent with the other pages of your website
Image Optimization
- You should use Alt Text to describe the image, plus, using keywords is also advisable but you should not overdo it
- You should use meaningful names with dashes
- You should Optimize the image size and image size is inversely proportional to site speed, means smaller the size of the image (in KB) the faster is your web site
Page Speed
- SEO professionals should know that page speed is one of the most significant SEO ranking factors and they should optimize their web sites for speed
- Search Engines’ always prefer to provide the searcher with the most accurate results in the quickest possible way
- A website that loads in less than 4seconds ranks better in search results, gets more page visits per user and ensures better conversions
- To ensure better page speed you should remove any unnecessary plug-ins, optimize the size of your images, plus, you should use a caching service or plug-in
- You can go to webpagetest.org/to test how many seconds your pages take to load from different locations, browsers and internet speed
- You can also go to Google Page Speed Service for analyzing your web site
- You can use CDN (Content Delivery Network) services such as Cloud Flare or Amazon Cloud Front if your site has lots of images on your site
Get Links from Other Websites
- Besides considering on-page SEO factors of a page, websites that have incoming links from other websites deserve a better ranking
- Incoming links are counted as ‘votes of trust’ and it ensures positive effect on a website’s ranking position
- Links are no longer a matter of quantity but of quality
- Natural links play significant role in rankings while artificially generated links may get you into trouble
- To get natural links it is important to publish great content on your website as this will naturally attract links
- You should put your content in front of other influencers, bloggers and webmasters that may potentially link to your website
- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social media channels are great promotion tools for ensuring link building
- You may link to other websites and then reach out to the respective webmasters asking them to return the favor
- You may also publish content on other websites and then can add links that point to your pages. This is known as guest posting
- You should read Google’s guidelines on link building, plus, you can use tools like SEMRUSHfor analyzing the link profiles of your competitors
Mobile friendly web sites
- It is very important for SEO professionals to use mobile friendly websites
- Your website should be optimized for viewing on the mobile browser
- Adopting a responsive website design is the best way to approach Mobile SEO
User Sitemap
- A sitemap can be understood as a list of all pages or posts of your website
- You need 2 types of sitemaps
- First one is xml sitemap that you need to submit to Google, and other search engines
- Second one is an html sitemap that you need to help visitors find your content
Content is still king
- All the over mentioned practices would work effectively if you have good content on your website
- Website with good, unique, and quality content does better in the long run
- Good content is the post or page that accurately answers users’ questions
- To create good content you need to make sure that your content delivers what promised in the title
Check your external links
- External links are actually the links in your web site that point to other sites
- For external links you need to ensure that you are not linking to spam websites
- You should also never link to web sites with inappropriate content
- You must avoid broken links
- You should not involve in selling or exchanging links
Webmaster tools and Analytics
- By submitting your site to webmaster tools, you can get valuable information about your website
- SEO professionals who submit their site to Google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster tools enjoy lots of benefits
- You can get the needed feedback on the number of pages indexed, plus, you will get notified about the potential issues such as access issues, etc.
- Webmaster tools also let you see the number of incoming and internal links
- Google Analytics helps SEO professionals see how visitors find their website
- Google Analytics guides you about direct visits, referrals, searches, etc.
- You can know how much time your visitors spend on your page, what keywords they type, number of pages they view per visit, etc.
SEO Audit
- For effective professional SEO Audit, you should run a crawler, as this will help you check for crawl blunders of your site
- You can use tools like SEO Spider and Link Sleuth to make the SEO auditing smooth
- Your site should be Google Penguin compliant
3. Know the latest SEO Trends
The best SEO professional always knows what latest SEO trends are. Future of SEO professionals is based on how much aware and adaptable they are towards the latest SEO trends. Some of the latest SEO trends are-
SEO Trends
- Google’s AMP is the future of mobile
- 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance
- The rise of Dense Content
- Machine Learning Will Change the Way the Algorithm Works
- Personal Branding Will Become an SEO Secret Weapon
- User Experience Optimization (UEO) Will Start to Blur the Lines with SEO
- Personal Digital Assistants is More Sophisticated, Changing the Way Many of us Perform Search Queries
- Optimizing for voice search
4. Art of Communication in SEO
- I have frequent interaction with many of HRs who hire SEO professional, and as per their views, knowing the art of communication in SEO is must
- Mostly SEO managers have dedicated content writers with them for various business needs, still, they need to be a good communication professional
- Art of communication in SEO helps you when you are making deals, giving presentations, exchanging emails with potential clients and making announcements
- Your way of communication should ensure that you are the official communicator of the deal
- It is important for SEO professionals to work on their communication skills, learn their skills, know SEO Interview questions and win the client
5. Know the available SEO Training & Certification
- To be the best SEO professional, going through SEO training that includes practical lessons on all the over-mentioned SEO practices and latest SEO trends is highly recommendable.
- Accurate SEO training also helps SEO professional clear different certification exams and become a certified SEO professional
- Certification, Google Certifications & Hubspot Inbound Certifications are some of the SEO certifications that you can opt for and be a certified SEO professional
Final Thoughts
While the fundamentals rarely change, the SEO is dynamic and always evolving. For SEO professionals, it is must to stay informed and engaged in the SEO industry.
You need to follow top SEO sources to know latest SEO trends, plus, joining an SEO Certification course will help you be a certified and successful SEO professional.
Update me in comments what you consider most important to be a certified SEO professional.
