More companies are continuing to shift their advertising spend from traditional offline methods like print, TV and radio, to digital marketing platforms.
As the need to drive more traffic, customers and revenue by using organic traffic, the demand for SEO services has also been increasing.
Read on to find out how to kick-start your career in becoming an SEO manager.
What is an SEO Manager?
An SEO manager does many of the daily tasks related to an SEO campaign, from creating digital marketing strategies which improve a website in terms of its search engine ranking to working with key stakeholders. They are usually employed within an agency or an in-house department within a company.
An SEO manager ensures that the activities (like content writing and link building) done by the SEO department are performed according to the company's requirements. They typically have a good overall understanding of the building blocks of SEO, but don't do strategy work. That would be left to less senior members of the team.
An SEO manager should have a broad knowledge of the four primary areas of SEO:
- Technical SEO (site audit and improving the site's technical performance)
- Onsite SEO (including keyword research. content distribution and optimizing pages for the search engines)
- Off-Site SEO (creating quality backlinks, using a link building service)
A company will usually have one or more specialist SEO's who have deep understanding and practical experience in each one of the above areas. Whilst SEO managers are more likely to be responsible for creating a strategy and managing its implementation by an SEO team of specialists. There are many instances where SEO managers must go beyond their scope of work. In some cases, they will get their hands dirty and be directly involved in tasks like testing, analyzing website performance and reporting to the client.
What an SEO Manager Does
According to Rand Fishkin of Moz, T-Shaped marketers possess essential qualities that have made a significant impact in SEO teams.
A T-shaped SEO manager will have just a light level of knowledge in a broad range of skills, and deep knowledge in one.
How can you use the T-shaped marketer approach to your advantage?
As well as gaining experience in the management skills below, pick one of the broad skills and gain mastery of it.
Must-Have Management Skills for SEO Managers
Project Management
Planning a successful digital marketing project requires a certain level of skill. From establishing practical goals, to resource allocation, maintaining effective communication with all stakeholders, and problem solving. Ultimately, it's all about executing the best SEO strategies to obtain successful search engine results for your client’s.
Coordinating an SEO Team
People management is an essential skill.The proven ability to coordinate team members in their marketing activities, like on page SEO specialists, a content marketing team, outreach specialists, etc. is important.
Reporting and Data Analysis
SEO managers must be able to regularly collect and analyze website traffic data. Understanding which pages generate the most traffic and leads for clients (or whatever metric meets their business goals), means SEO managers can make data-driven decisions. This allows them to prioritize optimization to have the greatest impact whilst using the least resources. You can also diagnose problems and prescribe fixes. Start by learning about Google Analytics. Google Search Console can also give you a good understanding of how a website is performing in Google.
If you can show data that proves your recommended strategy has worked, you will gain credibility in the client's eyes. For instance, if you can clearly show results with improving keyword rankings and growing traffic.
Organizational and Planning Skills
SEO strategies can often be quite complicated but having the right processes can make sure deliverables are completed on time and more importantly meet the client's business objectives.
Project management tools like Monday, Clickup or Asana allow team members to assign themselves tasks, set deliverable dates and mark tasks as completed. It also helps the SEO manager to forecast whether extra resources are needed.
People Skills
A manager must have the ability to liaise with a wide variety of people from many different departments. You need to demonstrate exceptional people skills, at all levels.
Client Communication
The challenges for an SEO manager usually come from clients who want instant results - they want a first page position on Google tomorrow - this is one of many reasons, an SEO manager needs to show patience.
Sending out a weekly update email to clients on the status of their SEO campaign can make a huge difference. Even a simple report with data from Google Analytics and screenshots to highlight keyword and traffic gains shows the client you're actively monitoring the campaign.
Monthly client reports sent on the first of each month, discuss the previous month's deliverables and results, as well as the tasks planned for this month, like increases in traffic and conversions.
Building a good relationship with a client will make it easier to manage client expectations without alienating any key stakeholders.
Team Communication
Weekly "Mini-Scrum" Meetings are quick meetings to give them a strategic perspective. For example: reviewing the current workflow, any wins, training, upcoming tasks and bottlenecks.
Presentation Skills
Outstanding presentation skills are key for any aspiring project manager. It's not just about having an awesome slide show - you need to be an excellent communicator too. People always remember great communicators. When you're leading a team, it's essential to have confidence.
Broad Technical Skills for SEO Managers
Typically, an SEO manager or director is a person with enough SEO knowledge in the field of marketing to know what it takes to rank highly in Google's search engine. They ensure that the website has a solid foundation for success. Then work on improving the relevance of the website in Google, as well as its user experience and user interaction. Finally, they communicate with clients about ongoing developments in their SEO campaigns and growth initiatives.
1. Technical SEO
This usually involves an SEO Audit, which means analyzing a website, diagnosing any issues, identifying potential solutions, and discovering new areas of potential growth. Some of the areas covered include:
- HTML: It's useful for SEOs to understand the basics so they can diagnose and fix any problems.
- Indexing and Crawling: Having a thorough understanding of how search engines index pages to show the right results and crawl websites is important.
- Site Speed: Page load speed is a website ranking factor so it's vital to get right.
- Site Structure: Getting the best URL structure for each page is crucial for its optimization as well as for internal linking.
- Mobile Friendly: Having a mobile accessible site not only makes it more user friendly but is also favored by the search engines.
- Structured Data Markup: Does each web page have all relevant data required, for example, events, reviews, people, etc.
2. Onsite SEO
- Competitive Analysis: This market analysis involves researching the top competitors, gaining insights from their keywords, content, backlinks, etc.
- Keyword Research: Discovering relevant keywords that people type into the search engines, that your client's website can rank for.
- On-page Optimization: Having a thorough understanding of good on-page optimization, including meta tags (titles and descriptions), headings, textual formatting, and other content.
- Content Marketing: Building a content strategy to plan, create and distribute outstanding content designed specifically for potential customers.
- Conversion Rate Optimization: Understanding user intent and creating page layouts that are easy to navigate. Using software to perform experiments resulting in increasing conversion rates and driving revenue.
3. Off-Site SEO
- Link Diagnosis: Analyzing the client site to see if there are any problems, and how to resolve them.
- Link Analysis: Researching the competitors backlink profiles.
- Link Strategy: Creating a plan based on the links your client site would need to rank for its target keywords.
- Link Outreach: Finding relevant target sites, creating content and managing outreach to build links.
How to Become an SEO Manager
You may feel overwhelmed by all the technical knowledge you need to be an SEO manager after reading this.
Don't worry, most people who start in SEO have little to no knowledge either. Although in general, SEO is not taught in universities, it's something you can learn on the job. There are no hard and fast rules for getting your foot in the door but it is important to have certain skill sets if you want to make it as a digital marketer in this industry.
Be more proactive. Have a never-ending thirst for knowledge. Learn about the best on and off page SEO strategies. Keep up to date on the latest Google search algorithm updates. Start reading blogs like Moz.com, Searchenginejournal.com and Searchengineland.com. Attend events like Brighton SEO or MozCon.
You can also pick up SEO skills by creating your own blog and start trying things out, learning as you go. You’ll gain practical experience with search engine optimization, that you can add to your resume when applying for your next search marketing role.
Entry Level SEO Jobs
Once you have practical SEO experience (6-12 months is fine) and have started to rank websites, start applying for entry-level jobs for SEO professionals.
This will be an opportunity to gain valuable industry experience in a real digital marketing team, and could be your stepping stone to Senior SEO Manager roles (or similar). Day to day tasks may involve: optimizing websites, managing search marketing projects, collaborating with an in house marketing team and working directly with customers.
Some of the roles you could apply for include: "Junior SEO", "SEO Intern", "SEO specialist" “SEO specialist” or "digital marketing specialist."
Be willing to start at the bottom. There are many manual SEO tasks that don't require any previous experience. If you're a go-getter and willing to start with basic tasks, you can quickly build up an array of skills - there will always be an SEO agency keen to hire you eventually.
It can take 18-24 months (about 2 years) to get to a proficient level of SEO. But how quickly you progress will very much depend on your willingness to learn both at work and in your own spare time.
Salary and Demand
The average base salary for an SEO manager is $79,965 per year in the United States, or £38,162 in the United Kingdom.
Salaries can vary depending on several factors such as work location, years of experience, academic background, and certifications.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not specifically track SEO managers. But the BLS does give a good indication of the overall growth of the SEO industry - it tracks the job outlook of advertising and marketing managers which is expected to grow by 6 percent by 2029, which they class as "faster than average."
Pro Tip
Take a look at the job descriptions provided by companies you may be interested in working for and see what they are looking for. Try to formulate your own job description as you will find that it is easier to attract a company's attention if you have a unique or specific skill that they are looking for. They may also look for people with experience in the job they offer.
Many organizations are requesting candidates to have experience working in the field of SEO. Many employers consider a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement while others expect individuals with a master's degree or a doctorate.
SEO Manager Interview Questions
These questions to help prepare for interviews and secure a job as a SEO Manager. If you're an expert on the topic, it should be simple to answer these questions. If not, make sure to practice these interview questions before going into any interviews.
1. What are the most important SEO factors for ranking well on Google?
2. What is a long-tail keyword and how does it differ from a short-tail keyword?
3. How do you determine an effective title for a website page?
4. Explain the difference between "on-page" and "off-page" SEO.
5. What is the most efficient tactic to increase search engine rankings for a website?
6. What are some of the ways you can optimize a website's content for search crawlers?
7. Explain what Google considers as important "off-page" factors.
8. What is your opinion on the value of keywords? (i.e., ranking)
9. What is your opinion on using "keyword stuffing"?
10. How does Google perceive duplicate content? Does it hurt or help rankings?
11. What is meant by the term "citation"?
12. What are some of the ways you can build link popularity?
14. How does Google measure the quality of inbound links?
15. What are some of the factors that Google may consider as a website's "rankings history"?
16. How do you deal with duplicate content problems in a website?
17. What is meant by "ranking factors"? How are they different from influence factors?
18. What is your opinion about determining the value of a link?
19. What is the number one thing to remember about SEO?
Conclusion
SEO management may seem like a cyclical job requiring a plan to be created, analyzing results, and planning again. It can also be very strategic.
You will find a challenging position but one with high rewards, with many opportunities for advancement.