How to Become an SEO Expert

…including top 3 rankings for competitive keywords like “Google ranking factors”:

“SEO best practices”:

And “Content writing”:

In fact, Entrepreneur called me an “SEO genius”.

And in today’s guide, I’m going to reveal how YOU can become an SEO expert in record time.

What Is an SEO Expert?

An SEO expert (also known as an “SEO specialist”) is someone that optimizes websites in order to achieve higher search engine rankings.

Put another way:

An SEO expert is someone that knows how to get more traffic from search engines.

What Skills Should an SEO Expert Know?

There’s a lot more to SEO than optimizing meta tags on a website.

In fact, the best SEO specialists are people that are proficient in a number of different areas of digital marketing. This includes “core” SEO skills (like title tag optimization). But it also includes other digital marketing skills, like writing and web design.

With that, here are the key skills that an SEO expert needs to have:

• Ability to find high-volume, low-competition keywords
• Basic understanding of HTML
• How and where to add keywords to a webpage
• Intermediate to advanced copywriting skills
• Proficiency in visual content, like video and infographics
• Ability to promote and build links to key pages
• Understanding of how technical SEO impacts rankings
• Knowledge of emerging SEO trends and Google algorithm changes

In the rest of this guide, I’ll dive deeper into each of these. And show you real-life examples of people that have become SEO specialists.

How Search Engines Work

Understanding how search engines work is a key piece of knowledge for any SEO professional.

Search engines send out search engine spiders to find pages on the internet.

Next, they crawl each page’s code.

Once the page is crawled, the page is added to the search engine’s index, which is a cached collection of pages.

In other words: when you do a Google search, you’re not getting back live results. Instead, Google is showing you pages from its index. That’s why you get Google results within milliseconds.

(Fun Fact: Google has over 130 trillion pages in its index!)

When someone searches, Google looks for pages in its index that match the person’s query.

And they rank those pages based on hundreds of factors in their algorithm.

Resources to learn about search engines

How Search Works: A very well-done visual guide to how search engines work… straight from Google.

How does Google Search work?: This video by former Googler Matt Cutts gives you an in-depth peek into Google search.

You’re probably wondering:

How do Google, Bing and other search engines figure out what to rank on the first page?

Keep reading…

Understand The Basics of HTML

Do you need to be a coding ninja to be good at SEO?

No.

But do you need to understand the basics of HTML?

Yes!

Why is this important?

Google doesn’t see your site as humans do. Instead, they look at your site’s code. And if you don’t understand that code, it’s almost impossible to optimize it the right way.

Plus, if you ever run into any technical SEO problems, you’re going to be completely lost.

But when you at least know the basics of HTML, optimizing your site gets A LOT easier.

Resources to Learn HTML

Head First HTML and CSS: A Learner’s Guide to Creating Standards-Based Web Pages: A fantastic guide that pushes you to take action after every lesson. This is how I learned HTML in an afternoon.

Introduction to HTML: An interactive HTML course from Code Academy. Great for picking up the basics.

One Month HTML: A very involved training for people that want to know everything there is to know about HTML.

Finding and Choosing Keywords

Keyword research should be the first step of ANY SEO campaign.

Choose the right keywords? You’ll see your site rocket to the top of Google’s first page for keywords that thousands of people search for every month.

Choose the wrong keywords? Your site will be buried at the bottom of Google’s 5th page.

Keywords really are that important.

If you want to learn more about keyword research, this guide has you covered.

Optimizing Content

Back in the day you could stuff your content with keywords… and it would rank. Flash forward to today, and on-page SEO is much more sophisticated. Sure, you still want to include keywords on your page. But that’s just the beginning.

Use this video to get an understanding of basic and advanced on-page SEO strategies (including tons of real-life examples).

Link Building

There’s no way around it: link building is a HUGE part of SEO. And that’s not likely to change anytime soon. That’s why any SEO expert (even one that specializes in technical SEO or content) needs to be good at building backlinks.

These resources will help you learn about white hat link building approaches, strategies, and techniques:

• Link Building: The Definitive Guide
• The Rules of Link Building
• Link Building Strategies: The Complete List
• How We Gained More than 100 Links for a Travel Website via Content Marketing
• How to Get High Quality Backlinks (7 New Strategies)

Which brings us to our next chapter…

Work On Your Own Website

This is how I got started with SEO.

And it’s how I recommend that most people learn how to become an SEO expert.

Here’s why:

When you run your own website, you can make changes FAST.

No need to ping your boss on Slack to see if it’s OK to change a title tag.

No need to email your client’s web designer to add an image to a page.

See something that needs to be changed. Change it. See the results.

The cycle of test→learn→improve moves 10x faster with your own property than with someone else’s website.

Plus, when you work on your own stuff you get to see the 100+ of factors that go into a successful website (beyond straight-up SEO). I’m talking about things like design, copywriting, email list building, social media, outreach.

In other words, running your own site helps you become a well-rounded “T-Shaped Marketer”.

For example, Jerryll Noorden applied what he learned from his time as a former NASA scientist to SEO.

Which helped him take his side hustle into a highly profitable real estate business.

Here’s how Jeryll described how his experience shaped his approach to SEO today.

“As an (ex) IHMC/NASA robotics scientist. I am used to figuring things out, analyzing it dissect it and make it better, 10X. My SEO strategies are in house developed and they work better than anything I have seen thus far. My secret is to bypass Google, by figuring out what Google looks for.”

And Jerryll isn’t alone. A few years back, Maaike de Boer’s daughter was struggling with math at school.

And when Maaike looked for resources to help her daughter, she came up empty.

That’s when Maaike decided to launch a website that now gets 200k visits per month.

(Which is even more impressive if you consider that The Netherlands only has about 17 million people.)

How did Maaike get so good at SEO? She learned as much as she could about SEO (from blog posts, online courses and SEO conferences). Then, she applied what she learned to her website.

And this fast process made Maaike go from SEO newbie to SEO expert in record time.

Or as Maaike told me:

“From the beginning of the business, I trained myself in SEO. I soon discovered that the main competitors focused more on television commercials and social media. I made a difference with in-depth articles with valuable information for involved parents. By constantly optimizing the website and the articles the results got better each year.”

That said, running your own website isn’t the only way to learn SEO. You can also…

Work Somewhere

Working at an agency or as an in-house SEO is a great way to become an SEO specialist.

The big plus here is that you’re surrounded by people that already know SEO. And it’s their job to help you get up to speed.

So you tend to learn FAST.

In fact, that’s how Backlinko reader Ryan got his start. Ryan was interested in SEO. And he wanted an environment where he could learn more. So he worked as an entry-level SEO at a big agency.

And the SEO knowledge that Ryan picked up helped him grow his travel blog to one of the most popular in France.

As Ryan explained to me:

“Naturally, I applied everything I learned about SEO from the agency to my travel blog. But I kept learning on the way and always keep myself updated. That’s how I maintain my top positions.”

“Your Change Isn’t Always the Cause”

Put another way:

Correlation doesn’t always mean causation.

Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm. In fact, according to Google, they make approximately 3,000 changes to the algorithm every year.

As you can see in this shot of my Google Analytics organic traffic report, variations in your organic traffic happen all the time… even if you haven’t touched your site.

This is a mistake I made early on. I’d assume that a rankings improvement (or drop) was due to a change I made.

For example, I’d add a few keywords to a page. See my rankings go from #7 to #5. And assume my keyword optimization caused the bump.

It might have. But it could also be Google’s algorithm doing its thing.

So how do you know if your change did anything? Well, that leads us to…

Things You Can Test

In theory, you can test just about anything.

But here are some relatively easy SEO experiments to run:

• Title tags (keyword optimization)
• Title tags (organic CTR optimization)
• Content formats (list posts vs. how-to posts)
• Content lengths
• Internal linking
• External linking

And if you want to get more advanced, you can start testing different link building strategies, search intents, and paid social media promotion.

For example, a while back I wanted to see if interactive content would decrease my bounce rate and improve my time on site.

(Which I believe to be an important Google ranking signal.)

So when I launched this mega list of SEO tools, I added an interactive filter to the top of the page:

As it turned out, user interaction stats on that page were higher than other similar content on my site:

So I decided to use this same interactive element on long list posts like this one:

And the results were similar:

This experience taught me: “Interactive filters is one way to maximize user experience signals on super long content.”

This is something that I could have NEVER learned from reading blog posts or watching YouTube videos.

It had to come from experimenting.

Analytics

When I say “Analytics”, I’m mostly talking about Google Analytics.

Understanding Analytics is important for two main reasons:

1. Analytics is how you measure the success or failure of an SEO campaign.
2. Analytics can help you find SEO opportunities that are impossible to find any other way.

Here are a few resources to help you:

• Google Analytics Beginners Tutorial
• Advanced Google Analytics

User Experience

Is User Experience a direct ranking signal?

Probably not.

But user experience indirectly impacts SEO in a major way.

For example, let’s say your site is hard to use. Well, Google searchers are going to “Pogostick” back to the search results, which can hurt your rankings.

With that, here are some resources that will help you get started learning UX.

• GoodUI.org
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
• The 15 Rules Every UX Designer Should Know

Local SEO

If you plan to run (or work at) an SEO agency, local SEO will take up a big part of your day. That’s because the vast majority of SEO clients tend to be local businesses, like dentists and lawyers.

This video by Sam Oh is a great intro to local SEO.

International SEO

If your site targets more than one country, international SEO is HUGE.

If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend checking out our helpful international SEO guide.

Scaling SEO Site Audits

Like I mentioned in the last chapter, audits are a big part of an SEO specialist’s job.

Without a system, you’re going to have to start from scratch whenever you run into a new project.

For example, SEO consultant Felix (who we met earlier) does TONS of audits for his clients.

And to scale up, he created dedicated systems and processes to make the audits faster and more efficient.

Specifically, Felix documented EVERY step of the process.

That way, his team can execute audits without him.

For example, he has an Asana board that outlines every step (with a timeline):

And team members collaborate on each task using Slack.

Felix also has dozens of Google Docs that go into insane detail on how to find and fix technical SEO issues, set up the Google Search Console, and more.

All of which has helped Felix scale up this time-consuming process:

“The hard part has been in figuring out a way to scale this and transfer the knowledge and processes to colleagues. Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) has been critical to delegating and tracking work.”

Scaling Link Building and Outreach

Scaling white hat link building is no easy task.

In fact, there’s a fine line between scalable link building and straight-up spam.

Well, according to SEO consultant Calin Yablonski, you can scale outreach without being spammy.

The secret isn’t necessarily the process (although his SEO company does have a detailed process using Basecamp).

Instead, it’s about guidelines that ensure your SEO team personalizes each and every email that goes out.

And what’s interesting about Calin’s approach is that he actually involves his client in the entire process.

For example, he asks new clients to fill out a brief intake form to get an insider’s look at their industry.

Which helps them:

• Find untapped link opportunities
• Write scripts that fit the language of that space
• Understand the types of content bloggers and journalists already link to

As Calin told me:

“Link builders are the air traffic controllers of the SEO industry. Using scalable link building processes is absolutely critical to organizing and implementing a campaign effectively.”

Voice Search

This chart (based on data from Kleiner Perkins) shows you pretty much everything you need to know about the growth of voice search:

As you can see, the number of voice searches is growing VERY quickly.

In fact, I’d say that voice search optimization is one of the most important skills that modern-day SEOs need to have.

It’s still early. So it’s not 100% clear how you should optimize for voice searches.

That said, there are already some voice search best practices out there, which I cover in this guide.

Google Lens

Google recently reported that Google Lens can identify 1 billion objects.

(Thanks to AI.)

And as AI improves, image search is set to become even better.

How do you optimize a page when the “keyword” is a picture of a cat? Who knows. But it’s an emerging trend to keep an eye on.

User Intent

User intent is basically what someone wants when they do a Google search.

Do they want information? Or to buy something?

The better your content matches someone’s user intent, the higher it will rank.

Check out this case study to see how optimizing for User Intent boosted organic traffic to one of my pages by 600%.