SEO
Skills, Salaries & Job Prospects
Of all the roles available in the world of digital marketing, the SEO analyst is one of the most demanding.
When you’re an SEO analyst, you are the one your company or clients look to for collecting and organizing the data around their websites’ performance, interpreting what it all means for them in their market niches, and recommending the strategies that will help them achieve business goals.
It’s a huge undertaking, and so SEO analysts need to possess a fully developed skill set in multiple areas to succeed.
Fortunately, due to the technical nature of the job and the skills required to perform it, SEO analyst roles are generally well compensated in the U.S., and the need for them in 2022 is quite strong.
What Is An SEO Analyst?
When you research the different roles in SEO, you find that people often seem to confuse the positions of SEO specialist and SEO analyst.
While the two are related and actually quite close to each other, think of the SEO analyst role as one that goes beyond the specialist by taking things up to a higher level.
While the SEO specialist is in the weeds – so to speak, doing the work, implementing title tags and H1s, adding structured data to product pages, and uploading new content – the SEO analyst is looking at the bigger picture.
Analysts study the numbers – the hard data – and interpret what it means for how the website is currently performing and where improvement is needed.
It’s fair to say that, as an analyst, your job is to do exactly what your title says: to analyze websites for their SEO quality.
Analysts first look at the website as a whole and see if there is anything visible from a UX standpoint that they think could use improvements.
It could be an ineffective or missing CTA, missed internal linking opportunities, convoluted main navigation, or unoptimized title tags.
SEO analysts also want to see if there are any new pages or sections that the website could benefit from, including service, location, product, blog, FAQ, or testimonial pages.
Perhaps most importantly, SEO analysts crawl the entire site to look for any technical issues that can’t be efficiently seen with the eye.
They use numerous SEO tools – including Screaming Frog, Semrush, and Google Search Console – to look for issues relating to broken pages, redirects, meta data, load time, and structured data, etc.
Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix are then used to review page-speed issues, and then Ahrefs to study broken backlink opportunities.
While the SEO analyst is doing all this, they are also heavily involved in performing keyword and competitor research to see what keywords the website could either hone in on or start targeting to increase its opportunity to appear for relevant queries above its competitors.
As important as the analysis part of the job is, though, the recommendation portion is where things follow through.
SEO analysts have to be able to take all that data – all those keyword volumes, and intents, all those SEO elements that they’ve pored over for days or weeks – and translate it into real-life recommendations and strategies for their employer or their portfolio of clients.
Once that’s done, though, the client would implement the strategies from the SEO analyst and ideally begin reaping the rewards over the ensuing months.
Essential Skills Of An SEO Analyst
I’m really not trying to be funny here, but, to be an SEO analyst, you need to possess a mind that leans toward…the analytical.
It isn’t enough to learn and understand what makes a good website and use various SEO tools to perform research.
An effective SEO analyst has to be able to approach a website with a logical, meticulously investigative mindset.
Soft skills can always be taught, but learning a soft skill is more of a personal-growth activity that lacks definable milestones.
As a result, it can be difficult for a non-analytical person to turn around and become analytical at the level required of an SEO analyst.
With all that said, here are the essential skills of an SEO analyst, broken down into hard and soft skills:
Hard Skills
- Advanced knowledge of the best practices of SEO.
- Thorough knowledge of the workings of technical SEO.
- The ability to perform keyword research and competitive analysis.
- Knowledge of a range of SEO tools, including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs, SpyFu, GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Screaming Frog.
- Knowledge of the most common CMSs, including WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Wix, HubSpot, and Magento.
- Knowledge of content marketing, topic research, and content auditing.
- Understanding of link building, backlinks, and problems related to those areas.
- The ability to stay current on SEO best practices.
Soft Skills
- The ability to use logic.
- Curiosity and thoughtfulness.
- Critical thinking.
- Creative problem-solving.
- Organization.
- Time management.
- Effective oral and written communication.
- Interpersonal skills.
What Experience Or Certifications Are Required/Helpful?
Glassdoor has provided a basic template of the job description of an SEO analyst.
According to the job and employer review website, SEO analyst jobs typically require candidates to have a degree in a related field, such as computer science or information technology.
Other SEO analyst jobs require a bachelor’s degree in marketing or business.
According to the same Glassdoor overview of the position, most SEO analysts – 60% – have two to four years of experience doing what they do.
It can be difficult to come in and pick up on being an SEO analyst right away. The skills needed to do the job well need to be honed over time, through the hard lessons of experience.
After two to four years in that seat, though, seeing all kinds of websites come in seeking SEO audits, I would say that the SEO analyst is close to being an expert.
As far as the certifications I would recommend for anyone seeking to become an SEO analyst, you absolutely cannot go wrong with the following courses:
1. Courses From Google Analytics Academy
- Google Analytics for Beginners.
- Advanced Google Analytics.
- Google Analytics for Power Users.
- Introduction to Data Studio.
- Google Tag Manager Fundamentals.
2. Hubspot SEO Certification Course
3. SEO courses from the Semrush Academy
- Semrush SEO Toolkit.
- Audit Your Online Visibility with Semrush.
- Competitive Analysis and Keyword Research.
- On-Page and Technical SEO.
- Link Building.
- Rank Tracking.
- Semrush Site Audit with Ross Tavendale.
- Technical SEO with Bastian Grimm.
- SEO Fundamentals, Keyword Research, Backlink Management, Mobile SEO, and Local SEO – all with Greg Gifford.
- Content-Led SEO with Brian Dean.
4. Courses From Ahrefs Academy
- Ahrefs Certification Course.
- SEO Training Course.
What Does An SEO Analyst’s Salary Look Like?
For those who want to become SEO analysts, you’re in luck, because the average U.S. salary is a fairly healthy $63,058, according to ZipRecruiter.
Glassdoor puts that number sightly lower, at $62,987.
Meanwhile, Salary.com reports the average national salary for an SEO analyst to be $71,101, with most people making between $64,301 and $77,601.
As with any job, however, you can expect the salary range to increase or decrease depending on a range of factors, including the size of the employer, the geographic location, and your experience.
SEO Analyst Job Outlook In 2022
In another win for the SEO analyst of today, the prospects for this role appear to be quite strong.
A search on Indeed for “SEO analyst” in the United States turned up 975 jobs.
Of those, 592 were full-time, 566 paid above $50,000, and 291 were in remote positions.
It’s worth noting that most of these postings, 553, were for mid-level roles whereas most of the individual posts I looked at when I filtered for “mid-level” noted that the candidate must have between two and four years of experience in SEO or research and data analysis.
These Indeed job posts came from such companies as Pearson, Deloitte, Angi, LendingTree, and Merkle.
An identical search on LinkedIn turned up 966 SEO analyst jobs. Of those, 866 were full-time, 509 paid above $40,000, and 535 were on-site, followed closely by 364 remote positions.
Most of LinkedIn’s 966 SEO analyst jobs, 522, were at the associate level.
From what I saw when I checked out the job postings, that means the experience level required was only between zero and two years of experience.
The LinkedIn job posts came from a wide range of employers, but some of those included The Home Depot, Thriveworks, Havas Media Group, and Vox Media.
The Final Word
There’s no doubt about it: SEO analysts have a tough job.
It needs a lot of critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and SEO know-how to pour through websites to figure out what’s wrong with them, examine data for the answers within, and report their findings in easy-to-understand ways for companies and clients.
Candidates for SEO analyst roles usually need a bachelor’s degree in a related field, but that isn’t always required.
And, depending on the employer and the location, these professionals stand to make upwards of $50,000 in the crowded market for their skills.
If data analysis and SEO are where your professional interests meet up, you could just find the perfect role for yourself as an SEO analyst.
More resources:
Featured Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
SEO
Google Updating Cryptocurrency Advertising Policy For 2024
Google published an announcement of upcoming changes to their cryptocurrency advertising policies and advises advertisers to make themselves aware of the changes and prepare to be in compliance with the new requirements.
The upcoming updates are to Google’s Cryptocurrencies and related products policy for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. The changes are set to take effect on January 29th, 2024.
Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts are financial products that enable investors to trade shares in trusts holding substantial amounts of digital currency. These trusts provide investors with equity in cryptocurrencies without having direct ownership. They are also an option for creating a more diversified portfolio.
The policy updates by Google that are coming in 2024 aim to describe the scope and requirements for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. Advertisers targeting the United States will be able to promote these products and services as long as they abide by specific policies outlined in the updated requirements and that they also obtain certification from Google.
The updated policy changes are not limited to the United States. They will apply globally to all accounts advertising Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts.
Google’s announcement also reminded advertisers of their obligation for compliance to local laws in the areas where the ads are targeted.
Google’s approach for violations of the new policy will be to first give a warning before imposing an account suspension.
Advertisers that fail to comply with the updated policy will receive a warning at least seven days before a potential account suspension. This time period provides advertisers with an opportunity to fix non-compliance issues and to get back into compliance with the revised guidelines.
Advertisers are encouraged to refer to Google’s documentation on “About restricted financial products certification.”
The deadline for the change in policy is January 29th, 2024. Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts advertisers will need to pay close attention to the updated policies in order to ensure compliance.
Read Google’s announcement:
Updates to Cryptocurrencies and related products policy (December 2023)
SEO
SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore In 2024
Most SEO trends fade quickly. But some of them stick and deserve your attention.
Let’s explore what those are and how to take advantage of them.
If you give ChatGPT a title and ask it to write a blog post, it will—in seconds.
This is super impressive, but there are a couple of issues:
- Everyone else using ChatGPT is creating the same content. It’s the same for users of other GPT-powered AI writing tools, too—which is basically all of them.
- The content is extremely dull. Sure, you can ask ChatGPT to “make it more entertaining,” but it usually overcompensates and hands back a cringe version of the same boring content.
In the words of Gael Breton:
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use AI to write entire articles. They’ll be boring as heck. Instead, use it as a creative sparring partner to help you write better content and automate monotonous tasks.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT To write an outline from a working title and a list of keywords (which you can pull from Ahrefs)—and it does a pretty decent job.
Prompt:
Create an outline for a post entitled “[working title]” based on these keywords: [list]
Result:
When you’ve written your draft, you can ask to polish it in seconds by asking ChatGPT to proofread it.
Then you can automate the boring stuff, like creating more enticing title tags…
… and writing a meta description:
If you notice a few months down the line that your content ranks well but hasn’t won the featured snippet, ChatGPT can help with that, too.
For example, Ahrefs tells us we rank in position 3 for “affiliate marketing” but don’t own the snippet.
If we check Google, the snippet is a definition. Asking ChatGPT to simplify our definition may solve this problem.
In short, there are a near-infinite number of ways to use ChatGPT (and other AI writing tools) to create better content. And all of them buck the trend of asking it to write boring, boilerplate articles from scratch.
Programmatic SEO refers to the creation of keyword-targeted pages in an automatic (or near automatic) way.
Nomadlist’s location pages are a perfect example:
Each page focuses on a specific city and shares the same core information—internet speeds, cost, temperature, etc. All of this information is pulled programmatically from a database and the site gets an estimated 46k monthly search visits in total.
Programmatic SEO is nothing new. It’s been around forever. It’s just the hot thing right now because AI tools like ChatGPT make it easier and more accessible than ever before.
The problem? As John Mueller pointed out on Twitter X, much of it is spam:
I love fire, but also programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam.
— I am John – ⭐ Say no to cookies – biscuits only ⭐ (@JohnMu) July 25, 2023
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t use programmatic SEO to publish insane amounts of spam that’ll probably get hit in the next Google update. Use it to scale valuable content that will stand the test of time.
For example, Wise’s currency conversion pages currently get an estimated 31.7M monthly search visits:
This is because the content is actually useful. Each page features an interactive tool showing the live exchange rate for any amount…
… the exchange rate over time…
… a handy email notification option when the exchange rates exceed a certain amount…
… handy conversion charts for popular amounts…
… and a comparison of the cheapest ways to send money abroad in your chosen currency:
It doesn’t matter that all of these pages use the same template. The data is exactly what you want to see when you search [currency 1] to [currency 2].
That’s probably why Wise ranks in the top 10 for over 66,000 of these keywords:
Looking to take advantage of programmatic content in 2024 like Wise? Check out the guide below.
People love ChatGPT because it answers questions fast and succinctly, so it’s no surprise that generative AI is already making its way into search.
For example, if you ask Bing for a definition or how to do something basic, AI will generate an answer on the fly right there in the search results.
In other words, thanks to AI, users no longer have to click on a search result for answers to simple questions. It’s like featured snippets on steroids.
This might not be a huge deal right now, but when Google’s version of this (Search Generative Experience) comes out of beta, many websites will see clicks fall off a cliff.
How to take advantage of this SEO trend
Don’t invest too much in topics that generative AI can easily answer. You’ll only lose clicks like crazy to AI in the long run. Instead, start prioritizing topics that AI will struggle to answer.
How do you know which topics it will struggle to answer? Try asking ChatGPT. If it gives a good and concise answer, it’s clearly an easy question.
For example, there are hundreds of searches for how to calculate a percentage in Google Sheets every month in the US:
If you ask ChatGPT for the solution, it gives you a perfect answer in about fifty words.
This is the perfect example of a topic where generative AI will remove the need to click on a search result for many.
That’s probably not going to be the case for a topic like this:
Sure. Generative AI might be able to tell you how to create a template—but it can’t make one for you. And even if it can in the future, it will never be a personal finance expert with experience. You’ll always have to click on a search result for a template created by that person.
These are the kinds of topics to prioritize in 2024 and beyond.
Sidenote.
None of this means you should stop targeting “simple” topics altogether. You’ll always be able to get some traffic from them. My point is not to be obsessed with ranking for keywords whose days are numbered. Prioritize topics with long-term value instead.
Bonus: 3 SEO trends to ignore in 2024
Not all SEO trends move the needle. Here are just a few of those trends and why you should ignore them.
People are using voice search more than ever
In 2014, Google revealed that 41% of Americans use voice search daily. According to research by UpCity, that number was up to 50% as of 2022. I haven’t seen any data for 2023 yet, but I’d imagine it’s above 50%.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
75% of voice search results come from a page ranking in the top 3, and 40.7% come from a featured snippet. If you’re already optimizing for those things, there’s not much more you can do.
People are using visual search for shopping more than ever
In 2022, Insider Intelligence reported that 22% of US adults have shopped with visual search (Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, etc.). That number is up from just 15% in 2021.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Much like voice search, there’s no real way to optimize for visual search. Sure, it helps to have good quality product images, optimized filenames and alt text, and product schema markup on your pages—but you should be doing this stuff anyway as it’s been a best practice since forever.
People are using Bing more than ever before
Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi announced in March 2023 that the search engine had surpassed 100M daily active users for the first time ever. This came just one month after the launch of AI-powered Bing.
Why you should ignore this SEO trend
Bing might be more popular than ever, but its market share still only stands at around ~3% according to estimates by Statcounter. Google’s market share stands at roughly 92%, so that’s the one you should be optimizing for.
Plus, it’s often the case that if you rank in Google, you also rank in Bing—so it really doesn’t deserve any focus.
Final thoughts
Keeping your finger on the pulse and taking advantage of trends makes sense, but don’t let them distract you from the boring stuff that’s always worked: find what people are searching for > create content about it > build backlinks > repeat.
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter X.
SEO
Mozilla VPN Security Risks Discovered
Mozilla published the results of a recent third-party security audit of its VPN services as part of it’s commitment to user privacy and security. The survey revealed security issues which were presented to Mozilla to be addressed with fixes to ensure user privacy and security.
Many search marketers use VPNs during the course of their business especially when using a Wi-Fi connection in order to protect sensitive data, so the trustworthiness of a VNP is essential.
Mozilla VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN), is a service that hides (encrypts) a user’s Internet traffic so that no third party (like an ISP) can snoop and see what sites a user is visiting.
VPNs also add a layer of security from malicious activities such as session hijacking which can give an attacker full access to the websites a user is visiting.
There is a high expectation from users that the VPN will protect their privacy when they are browsing on the Internet.
Mozilla thus employs the services of a third party to conduct a security audit to make sure their VPN is thoroughly locked down.
Security Risks Discovered
The audit revealed vulnerabilities of medium or higher severity, ranging from Denial of Service (DoS). risks to keychain access leaks (related to encryption) and the lack of access controls.
Cure53, the third party security firm, discovered and addressed several risks. Among the issues were potential VPN leaks to the vulnerability of a rogue extension that disabled the VPN.
The scope of the audit encompassed the following products:
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for macOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Linux
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Windows
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for iOS
- Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Androi
These are the risks identified by the security audit:
- FVP-03-003: DoS via serialized intent
- FVP-03-008: Keychain access level leaks WG private key to iCloud
- VP-03-010: VPN leak via captive portal detection
- FVP-03-011: Lack of local TCP server access controls
- FVP-03-012: Rogue extension can disable VPN using mozillavpnnp (High)
The rogue extension issue was rated as high severity. Each risk was subsequently addressed by Mozilla.
Mozilla presented the results of the security audit as part of their commitment to transparency and to maintain the trust and security of their users. Conducting a third party security audit is a best practice for a VPN provider that helps assure that the VPN is trustworthy and reliable.
Read Mozilla’s announcement:
Mozilla VPN Security Audit 2023
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Meilun
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