With the success of many search engine optimization professionals in the last few years, a lot of people are probably also trying to get into this industry now in an effort to get a chunk of the SEO market. With the rise of e-commerce stores these days, SEO specialists and content writers are even more in demand. SEO has been around for only about two decades, but it has already given lots of people from all walks of life the opportunity to find lucrative careers online.

But how can one become an SEO expert and how can you land your first job as an SEO practitioner? To become an expert in SEO, you first need to know the fundamentals of search engine optimization, understand how search engines work, learn about the different types of content management systems (CMS), and be familiar with Google Analytics or Google Console. These may seem a lot, but you can actually get to learn all of them by watching YouTube videos and reading blogs about these topics one at a time.

To land your first job as an SEO professional, you can choose to take certain career paths, such as the ones stated below.

Content Marketer

The primary job of a content marketer is to help businesses achieve their targets by setting short-term goals and designing content marketing strategies meant to drive more traffic and gain more leads. Content marketers may collaborate with website designers and content writing teams to produce high-quality informative content that can help engage the target audience. Content marketers may also edit or proofread content to make sure that they are free from errors before they are published online. Moreover, it is the job of a content marketer to constantly inspire team members and ensure that they are meeting the set deadlines. Developing an editorial calendar and delegating tasks to members of the team are also part of the responsibilities of this type of SEO professional.

SEO Content Writer

An SEO content writer is someone who writes articles based on a set of given keywords. Unlike a content marketer, the primary job of an SEO content writer is to produce keyword-based or search-engine optimized articles meant to improve the rankings of a website on search engine results. An SEO content writer may or may not work under the supervision of a content marketing professional.

SEO content writers are skilled at writing high-quality content designed to be found by search engines during an organic search. They have an in-depth understanding of SEO and how it applies to website ranking and content marketing. More often than not, they also have basic knowledge on HTML and on analytics tools, such as Bing and Google Analytics.

If you are looking to land a job as an SEO content writer, you should be prepared to perform the following tasks:

• Blog writing and posting
• Writing search engine optimized articles
• Backlinking
• Keyword research
• Rank analysis
• Optimizing current copies on a client’s websites

Marketing Analyst

The primary responsibility of this SEO professional is to study and analyze market conditions to properly evaluate the potential sales of products and services. The goal is to help companies determine which products are likely to sell, how much the products should be sold, and what type of markets are likely to purchase the products. Marketing analysts may gather competitor and consumer data, forecast and monitor sales trends, prepare reports for management, and utilize statistical software for data analysis.

With the job responsibilities involved in being a marketing analyst, you should have excellent analytical skills, outstanding oral and written communication skills, superior critical thinking skills, and knowledge in market research apart from having knowledge on SEO and certain software applications, such as SPSS and SAS.

Digital Marketer

Digital marketing is popular nowadays and it continues to rise in popularity as more businesses realize that the best channel to market and distribute their products or services is on the Internet. Marketing statistics show that 78% of people who use the Internet search for products online. A study made in 2018 also showed that 1.8 billion people around the world made their purchases online, bringing global e-retail sales to $2.8 trillion. This figure has been projected to grow to up to $4.8 trillion by 2021.

The impressive growth of online shopping is a blessing to people who wants to land a job as a digital marketer. If you are planning to go this route, here are some of the primary job responsibilities that await:

• Planning and executing SEO and SEM advertising campaigns as well as display advertising campaigns
• Planning and executing email marketing, social media marketing, and database marketing campaigns
• Evaluating emerging technologies
• Designing, building, and maintaining a company’s social media presence
• Identifying trends and insights and optimizing spend and performance based on these insights
• Planning, executing, and measuring experiments and conversion tests
• Collaborating with internal teams to create landing pages and to optimize the user experience
• Evaluating end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels and customer touchpoints

Digital marketers are also expected to measure the performance of all digital marketing campaigns and to assess their efficiency based on target ROIs and KPIs.

Apart from the four career choices mentioned above, there are still many career paths to choose from for people who want to land a job as an SEO professional. The best thing about having a career in SEO is that it provides people an opportunity to branch out to other SEO-related careers when needed. For instance, an SEO content writer can also find work as a digital marketer or as a content marketer. They can even start their own online businesses offering such services to clients worldwide if they feel they already have enough resources and skills to operate their own ventures.

Ready now to land your first job as an SEO professional? Know where to start your job search first.