SEO manager: have you heard of it? Do you want to find out what it means to do SEO and what skills you need to have to become an SEO specialist? I will explain in this article, first of all, you need to understand what SEO is and how it is done.
SEO Manager: what is SEO
An SEO manager works with SEO; the acronym stands for Search Engine Optimisation, the optimization of a website for placement in search engine rankings among the organic results. An SEO manager is also very skilled in the art of writing for users (not just search engines), so-called SEO copywriting.
Increasing the visibility of a site depends on many factors, including:
- organic positioning;
- optimization;
- search engines.
- What is meant by organic positioning?
Organic positioning is a type of indexing that allows a site to acquire a relevant position among the results offered by Google. Giving visibility to a site means keeping it always among the top positions in the SERP. If you want to be the best, you have to aim high and come out of mediocrity, which is why you have to rely on an SEO consultant (or become an SEO manager yourself) to best position your site. The page must first be reported to Google, then it can be positioned. The better your site is positioned, the greater the chances that a customer will get to know your business proposition through the pages of your site. This will not only help you take care of your company’s visibility but also its reputation on the web. Thus, good optimization leads to increased traffic to your website.
- What is being optimized?
The SEO manager works on optimizing specific keywords. Doing SEO means first of all creating effective and comprehensive content, using the keywords through which we would like to be intercepted. With the optimization of specific keywords, these become the best answer to the user’s query, gaining top positions in the SERP.
Organic positioning is a much more time-consuming practice than paid campaigns where sponsored results are created, but the budget invested is limited and once it is finished, the web visibility also vanishes.
- How does a search engine work?
When a user requests information from Google, the search engine activates the crawling phase in which it explores and analyses the web in its entirety (scanning sites, files, pages, photos, videos). The purpose of this action is to extrapolate results on the basis of content with the same keywords the user has searched with; these can be found in the body of the text, in the title, headings, and meta-tags.
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SEO Manager: organic positioning and optimization
Let’s get to the heart of SEO. In the profession of an SEO manager, the choice of keywords is the main strategic step to achieve good positioning. The research and selection of keywords are done through the use of software that can offer a study of the competition (competitive benchmarking) for the growth of one’s business. It is always better to use specific keywords, not too generic, and to put the long tail theory into practice. According to the long tail theory, keywords consisting of several (and thus more targeted) words have a very low competitiveness and a higher conversion rate, thus a better chance of SEO ranking than more generic keywords.
But how do we know whether the keywords we have chosen are actually being searched for by users? We rely on those who know more than us: Google AdWords is the tool with which an SEO manager monitors this process. In fact, by using the ‘Keyword Planning Tool’ under ‘Tools’, we can get suggestions on keyword correlations. In addition, we can visualize data and trends in search volume, plan SEO campaigns, and acquire performance information. By means of statistical tables, AdWords shows us the number of monthly searches performed by users at home and abroad with certain keywords.
In order to plan SEO campaigns based on a strong strategy, one needs to be able to mediate between the keywords suggested by AdWords and those with a higher monthly search. The more specific the term, the fewer the monthly searches.
In addition to the study and use of keywords, attention must be paid to these four factors:
- ensure that the search engine can access the site, using a professional hosting service;
- exhaustively fill in Meta Tags, such as the Title Tag;
- pay attention to the form of the content and make it easy to read, and fluent;
- manage inbound and outbound links.
Giving the search engine access to a piece of content is crucial if it is to be found by users without difficulty. It must be understood that nowadays the biggest challenge is played out on the web, which is why anyone wishing to enter this world or learn more about it must understand the need for a professional figure such as the SEO manager. Online becomes the playing field where a game is played that is not without competition, and an SEO consultant makes the climb to victory easier.
When I speak of a search engine, I am not necessarily referring to Google (although it remains the most widely used in the world); let us see how optimization on Google differs from other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.
SEO and search engines
Tell me what search engine you use and I will tell you what an SEO you are! It sounds like a play on words but it is indeed so.
As statistics from Greenlight show, more than 70% of users worldwide use Google as their search engine. In our country, 95 percent of users are loyal to Google, 1.9 percent to Yahoo! and 0.6 percent to Bing; the remainder is divided among the smaller search engines
Depending on the search engine used, there are specific techniques that need to be implemented to reach the top of the SERPs that the SEO Manager must be aware of.
Let us see what the webmasters of the various search engines recommend.
SEO Manager: Search Engine Optimisation and Google
- The content you submit to Google should be no different from the content you propose to your users; do not lapse into cloaking. Think of your pages as a project for users;
- the site should have a clear order, it should provide information, and have well-kept content. In addition, each page of the site should be reachable by at least one static link;
- check that title tags and alt tags are targeted and detailed;
- insert link.
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SEO and Yahoo!
- Focus on SEO link building;
- takes care of the content of the pages;
- dedicated to site updates;
- test new versions of the product/service.
SEO and Bing
- Propose keywords and correlates that users might use to identify a particular product or service.
- the weight of each page must be limited to less than 150 KB; images and videos in high resolution make the site very heavy;
- if you want to index your company name, do not put it inside the company logo or even in the images.
The work of an SEO Specialist differs between on-site and off-site SEO; so far we have only mentioned it, now let us define precisely what characterizes both practices.
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SEO Manager: On-site & Off-site SEO
The term SEO On-Site refers to all those activities an SEO manager works on to create effective content by working directly on one’s own site, on the form and structure of the article, i.e. internal activities.
The main factors on which the On-Site SEO activity is based are:
1. Content
By Content I am referring to everything that has to do with the drafting and structure of textual content:
- choice of keywords and density of use;
- outgoing links;
- length of the piece;
- frequency of publication;
- bulleted lists;
- the division into paragraphs;
- image optimization.
2. Rich snippet
What is a snippet? It is the string of words that the user sees when performing a search and consists of the title, description, and URL of the site. A good SEO manager must make sure that the snippet offers details about the content of the site it ‘previews’; e.g. the photo of the author of the article, reviews, star ratings, etc.
The Rich snippet does not directly affect SEO positioning, but it certainly has advantages, such as:
- increase in CTR;
- reputation enhancement;
- geolocation.
The points just listed are consequential to each other. In fact, if the result has a snippet, it will get more clicks and, consequently, produce more visits to the site. The more visits, to effective content, the more Google will have an ‘eye on’ that content. Of course, the inclusion of geographic information helps to identify where a business is physically located and thus creates a targeted result.
3. Site code and structure
In this case, we are mainly talking about:
- tags (title tag, meta description, headline tag, alt tag);
- sitemap;
- permalink.
And a structural hierarchy of content that facilitates scanning by Google robots.
Off-site SEO, on the other hand, refers to those activities that an SEO manager takes care of from outside, generating traffic to their site; in a word, link building.
Link building is a strategy based on building a network of links from other pages that link back to your site. Of course, to achieve such consideration, the content of your site must be of quality. Search engines regard incoming links as an important ranking factor, but they must be authoritative and relevant for the content to which these links point to be considered quality. One of the SEO manager’s tasks is to make sure that in the eyes of Google and users, of course, your site and the links to it are credible.
Thus, links and so-called link popularity are fundamental factors for ranking and, consequently, a priority element for anyone who wants to get results from their site. Thanks to link building, we can realize how ‘popular’, credible, and valuable a site actually is.
If an SEO manager wants to place a link with a specific keyword, he or she must place it within it; in this case, that word is called anchor text, which will identify that link as a reference to a site or page that talks about that topic.
But how does an SEO manager work to achieve good link building?
- Help from home: ask friends and acquaintances, who have a blog or site, to link to your page;
- exploit geolocalisation: put your site on local online pages;
- include the site in directories (platforms where you can publish articles, images, and videos);
- spy on competitors’ links and analyze them (through tools such as MagesticSeo, OpenSiteExplorer, etc.).
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SEO Manager: free tools
how to analyze the SEO of a site
After learning all the concepts listed so far, we come to the subject of SEO tools, software that analyses the SEO of a site. The SEO manager avails himself of the help of platforms such as Google Search Console, Seo Zoom, and Sem Rush, which function a bit like ‘virtual doctors’, keeping an eye on the health of a site. In this post, we look at three of them.
- GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Google Search Console can be accessed via a Google account, to verify who is the administrator of the website to be analyzed. For those using WordPress, instead of uploading the HTML file to the site to be analyzed, you can use an alternative method by selecting the HTML tag entry, which will provide a meta tag to be copied and pasted into the home page of your site, in the head section. At the end of the procedure, Google Search Console will send you a report indicating the ‘health status’ of your site.
- SEO ZOOM
Again, just enter the URL of the site and click on ‘Analyse’. This software provides a keyword database that is perhaps among the most well-stocked. You can connect SEO Zoom to Google Analytics and Google Search Console, so the SEO Manager can keep an eye on competitors and analyze keyword ranking data. A keyword analysis is the platform’s most powerful tool; it reveals both which keywords are the most competitive and the traffic generated by content in which certain keywords are used. It also shows you what conditions may have caused changes in the traffic to your site.
- GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Analytics is the platform on which everything is really at stake; the software generates data analysis and statistics regarding user behavior on a website. The correct analysis of this data, also by the SEO Manager, will determine the success (or failure) of the site. In the administration section, simply click on ‘Reports’ to obtain the most useful reports from an SEO perspective, which are subdivided as follows:
- Audience
outlines the specific profile of the user who has visited the site, whether they do so on a regular basis, from which geographical area they are connected, etc.
- Acquisition
shows through which acquisition channels the user landed on your site, generating traffic (organic, from AdWords campaigns, via Social).
- Behavior
tracks the behavior of a user with respect to the time he/she remains on the site, which pages he/she concentrates on, and which show a higher bounce rate.
A good SEO manager totally deviates from black hat SEO, a practice whereby one tries to rank a site by cheating. How? By purposely increasing the number of keywords in a text, inserting hidden text or links (using the same color as the background). It is an unprofessional shortcut to fool the search engine and outrank content that is instead of quality.
So an SEO black hat is a ‘villain’ in the IT field, and more specifically in the SEO field, who uses unlawful ploys to deceive search engines and climb the SERPs; here are the most commonly used black hat practices:
- Hidden text and links, exactly what I state above: text or links in the same color as the background of a page;
- Gateway pages, have no real content (so they are useless to users) but are created to be optimized;
- Cloaking pages, pages made for search engines but different from what users see;
- Increase keyword frequency, and increase the number of keywords in the text, to increase the chance of being found on the web.
- Desert scraping is the technique of taking content that is no longer indexed, that has expired domains, for instance, and ‘recycling’ it to increase text content.
- Link spam is software with which links can be exchanged to increase the link popularity of a page.
The term black hat derives from the black headgear used in Western films by bad guys and has been taken up in this context precisely to refer to those who do SEO incorrectly. Don’t be a ‘bad’ SEO manager, always aim for quality content. If you follow all the points addressed in this post step by step, you will not find it so difficult! Climb the SERPs and outperform your competitors!
“A sentence must not contain unnecessary words, a paragraph must not have unnecessary sentences for the same reason that a drawing must not have redundant strokes or machine parts that are not used.”
– Mr. William Strunk
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