Master the essential SEO skills that drive rankings, traffic, and career growth. From keyword research to technical optimization, discover what specialists need to succeed in SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) sits at the heart of digital marketing and heavily impacts its success. Whether you’re a freelance marketer, in-house specialist, or part of an agency team, SEO skills are what drive visibility, organic traffic, and measurable business growth.
Without them, even the best content goes unseen. Why do these skills still matter? Because algorithms are complex and constantly evolving, and the market continues to change.
No matter where in digital marketing you work, these SEO skills can have a significant impact on the success of your campaigns, and even your career trajectory. Understanding how search engines work lets you build better campaigns.
In this guide, we’ll cover the core SEO skills that you should know, and how you can master them.
Core SEO Skills
1. Keyword Research & Targeting
Keyword research identifies the words and phrases your potential audience uses to find products, services, or information online. By targeting the right keywords, you attract high-intent traffic and match user needs, increasing clicks and conversions.
Semrush Academy’s Keyword Essentials Course provides everything SEO specialists need to get started. Tools like AnswerThePublic and Google Keyword Planner are great for conducting your keyword research.
Start by practicing on your own website or a brand you like. Identify keyword gaps, compare search volume and difficulty, and map keywords to content topics.
2. On-Page SEO
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic. It ensures your content is structured for both users and search engines. Titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and internal linking all contribute to this.
HubSpot Academy’s SEO Training Course provides a solid understanding of on-page SEO, and tools like Yoast SEO, SurferSEO, and RankMath help identify optimization opportunities. They can be essential parts of an SEO specialist’s daily workflow.
Use these tools to audit a page and improve its title tag, add structured headings, optimize images with alt tags, and refine internal linking.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to the underlying technical issues that affect your website and its SEO performance. By optimizing your site to load faster and be more mobile-friendly, crawlable, and indexable, you'll position your website to rank higher in SERPs.
Even great content isn’t going to rank well if the foundations aren't perfect. Semrush Academy’s Technical SEO Course will help you get to grips with this, and tools like Screaming Frog are great for identifying and addressing technical SEO issues.
By running a site crawl with Screaming Frog, for example, you can identify broken links, find missing meta descriptions, and check for duplicate content.
4. Content Optimization
Optimizing content means improving readability, keyword usage, and value to align with search intent. Once optimized, this content helps fuel SEO success by increasing engagement and dwell time, and improving authority. These are key search signals.
Grammarly, SurferSEO, and Clearscope can be valuable tools for optimizing this content in various ways. They’ll help you tighten up the language and grammar while carefully aligning with SEO intent. HubSpot also offers a Content Marketing Certification to help build your foundational knowledge.
You can start by taking an underperforming blog post and reoptimizing it using different headings, better keyword variation, and improved readability.
5. Link Building & Outreach
Link building is the process of earning backlinks from reputable sites to boost your domain authority and trustworthiness. Outreach is a key part of this, building relationships with these websites to earn backlinks often takes weeks or months.
It matters because Google and other search engines see backlinks as signals of credibility and trust within your niche, which can improve your SERP rankings. Tools like Ahrefs and Pitchbox help streamline this process by letting you manage your link building efforts from a single platform.
A common practice is to review a website's content, identify broken links or gaps where a link to your website would fit naturally, and reach out to the site owner with a gentle suggestion.
Link building overlaps closely with digital PR strategies, where relationship-building and outreach are equally important.
6. Local SEO
Local SEO helps brick-and-mortar businesses grow by helping them rank for geographically-focused search terms, like "best coffee shops near me" or "furniture stores in Boston." For these businesses, the foot traffic local SEO helps drive can be vital for sales and growth.
Local service-based businesses, like plumbers, electricians, or landscapers, also benefit from local SEO by appearing in searches like "plumber in NYC" or "emergency electrician near me." Unlike retail stores, these businesses rely on generating leads and service calls rather than foot traffic.
Google Business Profile, Moz Local, and BrightLocal are some of the more common tools and platforms to use for this. Google Skillshop even offers a Google Business Profile Course to help get you started with local SEO efforts.
When creating or optimizing a local business profile, add accurate contact information, highlight reviews, and ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) is consistent across all directories.
7. SEO Analytics & Reporting
You’ll need to go through and understand quite a bit of raw SEO data to improve and refine an SEO strategy, which is where SEO analytics and reporting come in. These tools let you transform raw data into actionable insights.
Data-driven SEO helps to prove return on investment while showing exactly what’s working and what needs to be changed. Google Analytics 4 and Looker Studio help you analyze your SEO efforts while creating easy-to-digest reports.
To simplify tracking, create a dashboard that monitors impressions, CTR, rankings, and conversions. Use this information to make ongoing improvements.
8. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis, as the name suggests, is the process of analyzing your competitor’s SEO efforts to see what is and isn’t working. It helps you identify opportunities to capitalize on, gaps to fill, and ways to refine your own strategy.
You can even use competitor analysis to prospect for high-quality backlinks. SpyFu and SimilarWeb let you uncover what SEO strategies, keywords, and backlinks your competitors are using. Semrush’s Competitor Research course is a great start with this.
When engaging in competitor analysis, pick at least three competitors. Compare their top-ranking keywords, backlink profiles, and high-performing content to identify patterns you can leverage.
9. SEO Auditing
An SEO audit is a comprehensive evaluation of a website’s SEO performance. It shows you exactly how well-optimized your site is while highlighting areas for improvement. Regular audits let you continuously update and improve your website over time.
HubSpot has an SEO audit lesson as part of its SEO Certification course that shows you exactly how to perform an audit and take action on the results. Semrush’s Site Audit Tool, Screaming Frog, and even Google Search Console are all valuable tools for this.
As a rule of thumb, running a full audit, categorizing issues by type (content, technical, etc.), and creating a prioritized action plan.
10. Staying Current With Algorithm Updates
Search engines use algorithms to rank websites and links in SERP results, with Google is notorious for implementing major, and even minor, updates regularly. These updates often target negative SEO tactics while making search results more relevant for users.
Staying up-to-date with algorithm updates is crucial to avoid using outdated or harmful SEO tactics. After each confirmed update, analyze your website over the following weeks to see how you’ve been affected.
Tools like Google Search Console and Rank Ranger can help you monitor these changes. With careful analysis, you’ll determine exactly how your site has been affected and what needs to change.
Soft Skills
SEO skills might look good on paper, but they often aren’t enough. SEO specialists also need multiple soft skills to have a successful career. These include:
- Analytical Thinking - The ability to interpret data, identify trends, and make data-backed decisions.
- Communication - The ability to explain complex SEO concepts to non-technical stakeholders and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
- Adaptability - The ability to keep pace with algorithm changes, tool updates, and evolving best practices.
While other soft skills can help, these are some of the more essential. At the very least, SEO specialists will use them almost daily.
Tools & Certifications Summary
SEO specialists need to use various tools throughout their careers. Some of the most essential include:
- Google Search Console
- GA4
- Screaming Frog
- SurferSEO
Certifications can also help SEO specialists build expertise and credibility. If budget is a concern, several free options provide valuable training:
- HubSpot’s Content Marketing Certification
- Semrush’s Technical SEO and AI Search Essentials
- HubSpot’s SEO Training
For a more comprehensive list of training resources, check out our guide to the best digital marketing courses.
Conclusion
Mastering SEO doesn't mean trying to learn everything at once. Instead, it's about taking a consistent and hands-on approach. Start with one of the core SEO skills, complete a free certification, and apply it to your own website or test project.
From there, expand into technical areas and complementary skills to build a well-rounded expertise. These skills open doors to diverse career paths in digital marketing, content strategy, and analytics.
Ready to put your SEO skills to work? Explore SEO job opportunities on our job board today and discover where your expertise can take you.
Start your SEO journey today and reach new marketing heights.