Complete guide on how to be an SEO expert in 2020
Who are SEO experts
Who is an SEO expert, is the question you need to ask and need the best and thoughtful answer to if you want to become one.
So, who are SEO experts then? The one line answer to this is someone who has achieved expertise in search engine optimization. But don’t all and everyone who is doing and offering SEO claims to be an expert? Yes, they do.
So, the question now really is, how do you who really is an expert in SEO?
The truth about SEO (or any other professional area) is that everyone can do search engine optimization by learning the basics. When they start doing it and have ranked few keywords for few websites then most of them start calling themselves experts.
Who is an SEO expert or specialist and how to know they are
Two factors make an expert in search engine optimization.
A good level of expert and in depth knowledge and skills in that field.
And then an equally good level of expertise which gets reflected from achieving results.
If you can repeatedly rank many keywords on top on Google and bring a good volume of traffic to a website and know how to do it in different situations and for different websites then you are an SEO expert.
For this, it is very beneficial, time saving and best decision & investment in early career days to learn from such experts.
I have achieve thousands of first page & top Google keyword rankings and thousands of monthly Google traffic. Now you can learn how to do it with my this SEO course in Delhi or India.
Or you can take this Complete SEO training Masterclass 2021 on How to Rank in the US, UK or anywhere across the globe.
It is also the effort that you made to really find the answers yourself. It is the decision you took to go beyond the normal way of doing SEO and beyond the normal results which everyone achieves from doing SEO.
It is the eagerness and the interest to go beyond and look deeper even when you got the results which according to most of the people doing SEO is OK.
All this makes one an expert in search engine optimization. An expert is not necessarily someone who knows all in SEO. As there can hardly be anyone. And you do need to know all to be an expert in SEO.
An SEO expert is someone who knows more and in depth about one of more aspects or areas of doing search engine optimization. He or she is the person has learned and practiced it, has achieved some level of mastery and deeper knowledge and can apply it too to achieve results.
A true expert only can be the best SEO consultant in Dwarka, Delhi, India, US or anywhere in the world and offer best services through his or her expertise.
The best SEO experts are those who have developed their own ways and expertise by learning, researching, observing and practicing.
You can also learn from professional experts, practice it, observe and analyse what you get as results, look deeper and understand and then practice more. This is also a way to become SEO experts, a little faster. Take up an SEO master course which is complete in training.
Every professional can be an expert, become a thorough professional first
You are reading this because you want to be an expert or a professional.
So, now to who is an SEO professional?
In this profession or industry, like any other, a person who is has good knowledge, understanding and is well trained and skilled in SEO is called the SEO professional.
He is the one who knows, understands and can do complete SEO from start to finish. This means that a professional in search engine optimization knows what to do for a website, can plan the whole SEO and eventually rank the website on top of the first page of search engines like Google for the targeted keywords.
For you may be the two terms are the same. But they are different, and refer to different levels of experience and expertise and skills.
If you are beginning to learn SEO then you first have to become a professional. Every beginner can become a good professional and every professional can be an expert. All you need is right learning and right practice and application of knowledge and skills. Start your learning with this step by step SEO guide for beginners. What you need is to add little more skills and expertise and be one step better than what you already are as a professional.
For example.
Now a days, ranking on the first is just not enough. You need to rank websites in the first 5 or 3 positions for most of your targeted keywords. Then there is more to it. Now there are also snippet results for many queries. So, the expert also know or at least can aim and plan to rank for search snippets. There is lot more that an SEO specialists can do and do.
People with those set of skills are in great demand. This is for two reasons. First, SEO is important for online success of businesses. SEO is important for a business and brings many benefits. Second, SEO is one of the techniques of digital marketing. And as the whole digital marketing is gaining importance and popularity each day, so does search engine optimization. To add one more, SEO can bring you free organic traffic for the life of your website, if done in the proper way and is continued.
So, as an SEO professional, you got a great career ahead and lots and lots of growth opportunities. What you need is to learn SEO best and before that know how to learn SEO completely and in the best way. This is the second step of learning SEO after this.
Now let us understand what all you need to know, understand and learn to become a successful professional in SEO field. This means you need to understand what all in SEO one will be doing and how best to do it.
What SEO experts do
You can identify a search engine optimization expert by what they offer and do. Some of which are:
They have learned SEO, by themselves and from scratch
They share their knowledge and tell you how to learn SEO fast from scratch as they did
They often can be seen as teaching SEO
They also offer their expertise as services
They focus on one or more specific areas of expertise in SEO, but also know it complete
So, this is what SEO experts do.
Most of the SEO experts either teach SEO or they start offering expert SEO consulting services. Most of these specialists do both.
The reason why experts become or prefer to call themselves a consultant is because as consultants you remain and are more actively involved in practicing search engine optimization. An agency owner would be more involved in managing the agency rather than in doing SEO.
Be any city like Mumbai or Delhi in India SEO consultants are experts in what they do and take on selective projects which usually are of high value. They select these few projects by careful evaluation. They select those projects which allow these experts to the best they know and work free hand.
How they became SEO experts
Believe me when I say that most of the experts in SEO acquired these expertise by themselves. What this means is all what they know on how to do search engine optimization they learned it on their own. They read, probably went through tons of blogs, online content, made efforts to understand and go deeper, practiced what they learned, and practiced more.
The one thing which I can think of which makes one an expert and separates few from all others who do SEO is this.
While all who know SEO do what they know, experts practice SEO to improve what they are doing and what they already know, and to learn more. They are also in the back of their minds constantly looking to learn new things or do the same things in newer and more efficient or effective ways.
Why people need SEO experts and their expertise
You always need experts in any industry or field. And if that field is such which provides the scope of creating new things or ways, go deeper and learn or discover more, and more than you have to have experts.
In such fields there will always be experts. Therefore, SEO profession also has many experts.
There is one stronger reason why SEO needs experts which is also perhaps the biggest benefit of having such experts.
When it comes to learning SEO, there is no standard syllabus or guidelines as to what one should learn and know in order to become a professional. There are no minimum education or knowledge criteria.
It is to the credit of these experts only that we know much about SEO. They discovered deeper insights, created new concepts or helped us understand better the existing ones, and also created new ways or techniques.
And of course, they can achieve much better results from SEO than others. Companies, businesses, website owners, bloggers who can afford their services always prefer to hire these experts because they know much better what they are doing.
They can look deeper and accurately into any problem you have, what actually you need and what you should go for, and they certainly know how to achieve that for you.
How you can become an SEO expert
To become an SEO expert the first thing you need to do is start learning about SEO. This is the first step for everyone. Whether you want to become an SEO professional, SEO consultant or an SEO expert, you need to start by learning it. And you need to learn it as complete and deep.
Now here is one other way to become an expert in search engine optimization. This is how I acquired my level of expertise in SEO. And so I believe I should share it with you.
It is your attitude and approach towards learning. And it is also what you are aiming for. If you only and only want to start a career and you are content with just having a job and hope to grow normally through your career then you may not reach the expertise level.
But do not worry or think too much at the start of your learning journey. Most of us start only with a reason and objective of learning what is SEO. You do not set your goals at that early in your journey.
But if you have the right attitude and approach towards learning then you would always strive to learn something more and learn something new. This is what takes you to a level where you have gained some expertise in SEO.
So, here is what helped me in get some level of expertise in SEO.
Experience, Observing and Experimentation.
Experience is what you will automatically acquire when you start working.
But that only counts as the number of years that you have worked for.
Aim to get value from that experience.
How you do that?
Try to look into what you are doing and what results you are getting. Create a habit of observing.
When you look little deeper then you look at things which you did not see before.
After that try to use or create other methods of doing the same thing. Ask yourself, can I do it in any other way or can I do it better? This is what leads to experimenting.
Again observe the results and add all this to your experience which will bring you expertise in search engine optimization.
Your step by step roadmap to becoming an SEO Consultant with expertise
How to start becoming an expert SEO Consultant
There are basically two ways to become an SEO professional and expert and to start your career. One is taking up a job in this field. This is a great way to practically apply all that you have learned. You also get to learn how SEO works in the real world. You can learn more from your colleagues and seniors. As you learn you grow your career.
Second option is to start your own work. This is little risky option at the start of your career when you have just learned the theoretical part. SEO in real world involves lot many other things. To be some sort of expert one needs some experience. Starting your own work also means that you are completely on your own unless you build a team.
There is a third unique way which we would like to suggest to all SEO candidates. This is how I started out and build my skills, expertise in this field and also moved on to other related channels which I mentioned.
You can learn the basics of HTML and build a website of your own. Then start doing SEO for this website just like you would do for a client if you were in a job. Practice everything with this website and try to rank it for its selected keywords.
This way you will learn more and will gain practical experience too.
Now let us take a look at the career options you can have in SEO.
SEO practices to help you become an expert SEO Consultant
How best to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Best is to start with the very basic — know how search engines work
SEO is a very dynamic industry and practice and just the theoretical knowledge is not enough. It is dynamic because primarily because the search engines keep evolving every time on a continuous basis.
You need to know how search engines work and also know what are the latest updates. You do not have to be obsessive about all the latest updates of search engines and all the jargons SEO community keeps on using.
One of the most important things you need to know when you are doing SEO is Google algorithm updates. Since Google has the maximum market share of search engine market or platform and we get most of the traffic from Google only, we need to know how it ranks the websites, how it views and displays search results, and more.
Google's algorithms and their past and recent updates give us this idea. One also needs to be aware of how search engines work and what they consider as good and bad for every aspect of SEO for on page, technical and off page techniques.
In one way this would again bring you back to knowing how search engines are looking at SEO of these days. What are the latest things that are being looked down or considered as negative. You need to avoid these as much you can.
What basically one needs to understand is the basic working methodology that drives all these algorithm updates, changes or new algorithms. The only thing or the most important thing that search engines want to achieve through their algorithms and updates is to deliver better and relevant results to the users.
Do what search engines value the most
You need to know what is right and what is wrong, especially from the point of view of search engines as they are the best (and the only) judge. Here, it becomes important that you are well aware of the three types of SEO which are being followed: the white hat SEO; the black hat SEO; and the gray hat SEO.
Keeping yourself well-informed about the practices which are still considered as good and are highly valued by search engines, is always a good idea. Also, as we said earlier, keep up-to-date with all the latest practices which you can follow and include in your services.
Besides having a sound knowledge of the basics you also need to know what is the latest that is happening in this industry. It will surely help and take your SEO to the next, more advanced and specialized level, if you also know what are the latest trends, methods, strategies that are effective in today's SEO. Being aware of the what latest is happing and changing in the SEO landscape will always add to your knowledge, awareness and skills.
One also needs to know and understand how these changes or trends will affect the SEO industry and particularly what you are doing in SEO, for your own sites or for clients. Also you need to understand and find out how to actually use these changes, improvements in techniques and strategies so that you are not doing things that are no longer effective and result oriented.
SEO has expanded in scope
One also needs to be aware of skills and activities that are closely associated with SEO. These are needed in order to execute better and more comprehensive SEO campaigns and deliver better results. These include use of social media, some proficiency or an eye for good content and content writing, it may also involve designing elements like designing images or even infographics for social media and content. Being good in writing also applies in emailing which is also used in SEO. Then you also need to do Internet research on a consistent basis, starting from keyword research to researching sites to link from.
SEO starts with your website – Understand Importance of website
Of course, you would say. Since SEO means optimization of website and making it rank in search engines, it is very obvious that website is the base and the only platform on and for which you do SEO.
A website is important, and SEO makes you realize that importance. SEO is where the visitors or the customers come, it is where people from anywhere and who do not know you or your business find out who you are and what you do, a website is your face to the online word and your 24/7 marketing platform. So, the importance of a website is huge for the role it plays, and even if do not consider SEO.
For this reasons a website becomes all the more important for SEO and optimizing it completely for search engines and for the user, becomes hugely important.
One of the most important thing which you would be constantly in touch with are the website elements when you want to constantly optimize it.
The most important thing here is to realize the importance of website's content. Then the other important thing is to make a website mobile friendly. It is already some time now that search engines, especially Google, has introduced mobile first indexing. This shows their strong preference for a mobile friendly site.
It is important here to say that along with mobile friendly your site speed should also be fast enough. Do you know that users may go away from your site if it takes longer to open. A delay of every additional second in opening increases your site's bounce rate which simply means that more and more visitors are going away after clicking on your site through search results or reference sites.
Google has two tools which allow you to check mobile friendliness and speed of your site. You can go to this link here to test mobile friendliness of your website. This tool from Google allows you to test the speed of your site. Site speed is one the most critical part. The tool checks your site speed both for mobile and desktop versions.
Give direction to your SEO
One also needs to be able to do an audit. This means having a sharp eye for all the improvements a site needs to make it better optimized. Once you are thorough with on page and technical SEO and after some practice you would be able to do it. Advanced and full scale (and usually paid) audits also includes profiling and auditing of the backlinks and all off page activities of a website.
Audit can provide you with a strong base and a direction for search optimizing that website. And there are in fact many tools, both free and paid, to do audit. However, one needs to know all the SEO basics to understand and implement the points a tool may throw up for a website.
Concluding on how to become an SEO expert
To be able to do search engine optimization in the right way one should know about the Google updates and algorithms. And then the thing to remember is SEO now a days has gone way ahead and is not limited to link building or optimization. You would be using creative and various form of content like images, infographics, videos, and lot many other methods which were not exactly covered as part of SEO some time back. But the first thing you should do is have a mobile friendly website and do a thorough keyword research.
Habits which will help you in becoming an SEO expert
Learn & explore
Dig deeper
You will fail, overcome it
Never be afraid to restart
Recognize your strong areas & interest in SEO early
Here is a typical process from a beginner to an SEO expert
A beginner
Know about SEO
Learn SEO
Start working
Start achieving results
Become a professional
Look at how you can do better
Acquire expertise in one or few areas
Build upon those expertise
Build strong base around expertise, in entire or most parts of SEO
Practice your expertise
Practice, Practice, Practice and keep Practicing
Here are few resources we have to help you in your journey to becoming an search engine optimization expert.
How to Learn SEO fast from scratch
If you are a complete beginner then know how to learn SEO from scratch and fast with this 101 guide.
Practical Online SEO Tutorial
The Best online, practical and SEO step by step Guide for beginners to start learning SEO.
SEO Institute
The Best online SEO training course from our expert SEO Institute in Dwarka, Delhi, India for beginners.
Complete master SEO course training
This is the advanced and complete expert SEO course with practical training in SEO.
How to teach yourself SEO
Learn how to teach SEO to yourself and others. Know who are SEO teachers and how to become one.