Published 
Updated
Search engine optimisation grew from a technical discipline into a versatile profession where you wear many hats. Master these seven SEO skills and you will see noticeably better results. If you are in the final year of your MBO (Dutch vocational) programme, you can practise them hands-on during our MBO online marketing internship.
This goes further than reading a report. Google Analytics and Looker Studio show you when you rise or fall in rankings and conversions. The real question is, do you understand why? Which keywords and which change give you the result you are after? That is where analytical ability comes in.
Usually you are one or the other, sometimes both. The creative type excels at copywriting and strong content, the technical type at code, back end and technical SEO. If you are purely creative, learn the basics of how a site works and make sure you have technical help on hand. Think of it as a racing car. You drive fast, but your car only wins a race with a strong technical team around it.
You might think CRO has nothing to do with attracting traffic. Look at it differently. SEO brings you plenty of visitors, but more visitors rarely turn into more customers on their own. So weave links that sell and forms that capture leads into your blogs. If you sell dining chairs, write an article about the top five, with a link to the piece you sell. Some knowledge is enough here, no need to become an expert.
Learn to tell correlation from causation. If you sell organic ice cream, sales rise along with the number of sunburns, but one does not cause the other at all. The temperature drives both. A strong specialist asks three questions of every dataset. What happened, why and what do I do about it? That way you approach a problem from multiple angles.
A specialist who does their own keyword research and writes the content is worth their weight in gold. It goes beyond blogs alone. Convincing clients and teams to choose the right direction is something you do in meetings, with case studies and with infectious enthusiasm. SEO is about building trust and making complex ideas clear.
SEO has long been teamwork. You work with people who promote your content, with copywriters for the headlines and with developers who put technical changes live. If you can work well with all these people, the project runs smoothly. If that is a struggle, bring in a project manager.
Google tweaks its algorithm at a breakneck pace, faster than any person can keep up with. The way to move with it? Testing. From your title and meta description to an A/B test of your content, or expanding into Belgium or Germany with an hreflang tag. When you test, you discover what works and what you can leave aside.
One skill is coming in strong. Being able to work fluently with AI. Steering a language model smartly for research, ideas and drafts speeds up all your other skills, provided you stay in charge and keep control of quality. Those who use AI as their right hand do in an hour what takes others a day.
Master these skills and you stand strong in a profession that keeps changing. If you recognise yourself in this profile, read what our vacancy for an SEO specialist involves.
The next step
Discover your biggest growth opportunities with a free opportunity analysis (worth β¬416) β a tailor-made report, free of charge and with no obligation.
About the author
Dominic Pietersz
Your dedicated point of contact
Dominic helps SMEs grow through Google and other channels. With his international experience, he turns challenges into concrete growth.
Follow Dominic on LinkedInInspiration Β· During a job interview, I realised how many hats an SEO specialist wears these days. On the way back, I wrote out these seven skills.
