10 Skills Every SEO Expert Should Have

Whether you’re going to hire someone to run your SEO campaign or you’re going to take a stab at it on your own, there are certain skills that are simply a must. SEO’s are a very unique group of individuals that often have a diverse set of skills and experience. As with any profession, there are great SEO’s and some not great SEO’s. And so without further ado, I give you my list of ten skills every SEO expert must possess:
The Must-Have Skills in SEO

1. Problem Solving – Every website is different and thus every SEO plan is different to get the desired results. When performing SEO you perform a great deal of problem solving whether it is finding potential issues with a site, or competitive research, there are many potential issues that come up.
2. Prioritization – There are many different levels to SEO, and an expert should know what website changes need to be done and in what order they need to be done in.
3. Research – You have to feel comfortable and confident in your researching abilities. A majority of an SEO job is researching keywords, analytics, competition, and any search engine changes. If you can’t research correctly and successfully, then you can put an effective plan together to get top rankings.
4. Analysis – Every expert should know how to pull analytics and read data. SEO is extremely report-based, so an expert without math skills or the ability to understand different data software will be in trouble.
5. Decision Making – You are constantly making decisions as an SEO professional because things are constantly changing. SEO is never consistent, and when you first start creating an SEO strategy for a company you are going to have to make assumptions quickly. You won’t always have the statistics you want to make a perfect, confident decision, but you should have the know-how to make the best decision for a given situation.
6. Flexibility – An SEO approach has to change with each new website because each website is different. You must be able to switch strategies at any given moment without slowing down.
7. Content – It’s important that an SEO expert understands what makes great content. Even though most SEO experts hire writes to do the writing, they must have the sense of the type of content that will earn clicks. Be able to follow trends and then delegate work to the writers.
8. Coding – An SEO expert will need to be familiar with Meta tags and the basics of web design. Web designers don’t always worry about SEO because SEO isn’t always “attractive,” so it is the job of the SEO expert to help figure out a way to mesh the two aspects of the site.
9. People – Having people skills will help an SEO expert in the communication department. Many clients and company owners get upset with SEO experts because they don’t understand how it works, so feeling comfortable talking with these people is important. You don’t just want to communicate your point effectively, but you want to do it in a way that can really reassure people that SEO results will happen—it just takes time.
10. Desire to Learn – Because SEO is constantly changing, it is important that an expert has a desire to learn. Believe it or not, this is a skill. Some people simply prefer to learn what they can to do their job, then go home and do other things. For an SEO expert, work cannot be something to just “get through.” You will want to have that rare skill of figuring out ways to learn more.

Are there any skills that you would add to the list? What skills have you found to be the most important when working with SEO?