Qualities of an SEO Expert

Transcription

1 Qualities of an Expert url404 h1site tagmap W3C HTML HTTPINDEX Internet Advantage Madrid (+34) Salamanca (+34) Utrecht (+31)

2 Internet Advantage Content Index 1. What is an expert? 2. 2 Hiring an Expert Technical 2.2 Creative 2.3 Analytical 2.4 Strategic Conclusion

3 1. What is an expert? Thanks to the evolution of the industry and the constant need for new skills that it brings, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define the qualities that an expert must have in order to do their job successfully, and at the same time, it is harder to identify and employ the right person to achieve the particular aims of the business. The objective remains the same: to try to attract relevant traffic to a website in order to optimise it's positioning for the search terms most relevant to the business. If only our main job was to create the code for the website and to choose the keywords that will appear in the content, however nowadays we need to do much more than that. Unsurprisingly we are now in the most competitive market that the world has ever known: the Internet. What is the role of in a business? The responsibilities of an expert is to encompass the technological infrastructure, marketing and the content of the website with the aim of improving the performance of the webpage in order to optimize its position in the eyes of the search engines and in turn the user. The best type of is one that, even if Google disappeared tomorrow, will make your page better for users. Today has far surpassed being only a technical professional and become one that is closely linked to Marketing and business and one that has a direct impact on the success of a business's website. So, do you know what is required when hiring a professional or agency? 2. Hiring an Expert If your company has an online presence, can help you to get more out of your business. But what should you be asking of a expert in order to be sure that they will deliver results? As we have said, they should have technical, creative, analytical and strategic skills. However, not all projects are the same and this "ideal" type of professional who specializes in all of the skills areas is difficult to find (and probably very expensive) and therefore it is recommendable to evaluate which profile is most appropriate in each individual case. 2

4 In order to find out if a professional is junior or senior and to help you decide what is the appropriate compensation, we have created a list of the required competencies at basic (simple but essential), intermediate and advanced level. Knowledge of the website and the internet is essential, but as we have seen, this does not only apply to the field. At certain stages of the project we require 4 areas or profiles: strategic In order to carry out a proper and well-focused optimization it will always be necessary to define a strategy which will materialize through good project management. This refers to someone with strategic capabilities. analytical It is necessary to maintain control of the Project and to precisely analyse all of the factors that can have an influence. Knowing how to use the tools available to analyse these factors and analyzing all of the data correctly, amongst others, are some of the skills required within Analytical. creative We cannot forget that the projects orientate around the users. All of the knowledge needed to enable an expert to create engaging content we have decided to call creative. technical Lastly, all of the above will fall on deaf ears if the expert does not have the ability "to talk" the language of the search engines. In order to optimize a webpage and to understand how the search engines recognize the work, they need to have programming skills and understand html, and those are the specialties of technical. 3

5 IN BRIEF: An expert must be able to: Improve a website's position in search engine results Develop a solid and well focused strategy Manage the project in which the strategy is used effectively Guarantee successful completion of the project through good communication with all involved stakeholders Do not forget to focus on the needs of the end users and the objectives of the business which they work. 2.1 Technical This works with purely technical knowledge, linked to the positioning algorithms that search engines use in order to track and define the position that each webpage should occupy. These are the building blocks of any strategy. Each webpage must fill certain technical requirements in order to achieve a better position on the first few pages of search engine results. An expert should not only recognise these requirements but also understand them and be able to implement them if necessary. The major complication found in this knowledge base is that these requirements are not always the same, and can depend on the algorithms used by each search engine to index and classify the content found online. These search algorithms are not made public and are constantly changing, something that demands experts to have fundamental knowledge of these techniques, great learning ability and the ability to adapt via a range of transferrable skills. For example: a technical must be able to understand several different parameters used to optimize HTML code, but as well as this, it is important to understand the workings of several distinct servers and to be able to change their parameters through the.htaccess file. 4

6 Tag HTML HTML: Tag: <title> HTML Tag: <img> To be able to identify and correctly optimize the HTML title tag. Technical To be able to identify and correctly optimize the HTML tag <img>to get the most benefit out of images. HTML Tag: <meta name="description"> HTML Tags: <h1>, <h2>, <h3> To be able to identify and correctly optimize the meta tag 'description'. To be able to identify and correctly optimize the HTML header tags<h1>, <h2>and<h3>. Indexing Barriers HTML Attribute: rel="nofollow" To be able to identify the different barriers in place that may impeach on the correct indexing of our webpage. To be able to identify elements with this attribute and know their correct usage. HTML Tag: <link rel="canonical"> HTML Tag: <link rel="next/prev"> To be able to identify and correctly use canonical pages. To be able to correctly page a website. Clean and optimized HTML code To be able to maintain clean and optimized HTML code aimed at loading the page quickly and correctly in a user's browser. Attractive URLs with little depth To be able to optimize URLs in such a way that they are easy to understand and remember for the user, as well as facilitating their correct indexing by search engines. 5

7 Fix broken links Metatags To be able to detect and repair broken links that can make it difficult to navigate the webpage. Technical To know all Metatags that can carry relevant information, how to use them and which to avoid. Sitemap To be able to identify, use and generate a sitemap that will allow search engines to recognise the website structure..htaccess To recognise and be able to configure the configuration file.htaccess for web servers. robots.txt To recognise and be able to configure the file robots.txt to ensure that the site will be correctly indexed by search engines. Rich snippets To know and be able to optimize micro data and other markers that may appear in rich snippets to improve visibility in search engine results. 404 personalized To be able to configure a page with 404 personalised error correctly and optimally so that the user will continue to use the site if presented with a non-existent page. Correctly plan a migration To be able to correctly plan migration of a webpage, identifying and solving possible errors. HTTP Status codes To recognise HTTP status codes and be able to identify which HTTP code each page should load. 6

8 Tag W3C HTML: Recommendations <titl <title> Mobile optimization To recognise and prioritise the completion of W3C recommendations, ensuring that sites put these recommendations in place. Technical To recognise dimensions used for mobile technology and which techniques need to be used in order to ensure that the webpage is correctly orientated towards mobile technology. Multilingual webpage optimization To identify individual techniques necessary in ensuring that a webpage is correctly orientated towards different regions. Web scraping To be able to extract information from webpages automatically and work with this information. 7

9 2.2 Creative In this skill set you will find all of the abilities that an expert will need in order to be able to get the best out of the content on our web pages, or even to generate such content should the need arise. It is important to remember that the work of an professional should be focussed towards the search engine user. These users always carry out their searchers using the written word and the results of this search are offered, as much as possible, in the written word. An professional should be able to identify the exact words that a search engine user would use when searching for specific information, offer this information in an optimized fashion to make it both appealing and useful and drive the user to browse through the site on arrival. Tag Keyword HTML: analysis <title> Indexable content To be able to identify and analyse the best keywords for each webpage or site. Creative To know which conditions the content will need to fill in order to be correctly indexed on search engines. Optimization of 'landing pages' Correct use of keywords on the site To be able to optimize the pages that the user will arrive at after having searched using the keywords established. To be able to use keywords in order to create value without over optimizing the page. Correct content formatting To format the content appropriately measuring the use of bold, italics, underlining, paragraphs and bullet points in order to make the text more useful to the user. Unique and quality content To be able to create original content that will generate user interest. 8

10 Identifying relevant spheres for a webpage To be able to optimize the different elements of a webpage according to information obtained from tools such as "colour maps." Tag Keyword HTML: variation <titl <title> Calls to action To be able to recognise which keyword variations are considered by search engines and implement these correctly. Creative The correct implementation of calls to action and other elements that can increase conversion rates. Optimization of non-text elements To correctly use visual elements that will be appealing to the user, avoiding generic content and using correct tags and code. Social factors To be able to recognise and benefit correctly from social factors that may influence search engine presence. 9

11 2.3 Analytical In order to analyse the behaviour of search engine users that then go on to visit various websites, we have a wide range of tools and date to make use of. An expert should be able to correctly use these tools to extract data, analyse said data, associate it with the correct action, recognise the significance and impact of this action and, finally, to offer a correct and accurate interpretation of everything extracted. The amount of data that a user generates whilst browsing a webpage can be rather large and analysing this information is no easy task. Furthermore, misinterpreting this information could lead to irreversible damage to the campaign strategy. For this reason, the tools that we use often require a great level of specialised knowledge of the technology itself to be used correctly and get the best out of them. This data and the analysis of it allows us to see whether our efforts are having the desired effect and, if not, to reshuffle what we are doing to become more accurate, defining our strategy with the smallest possible margin for error. Tag Basic HTML: use <title> of Google Analytics GA: Identification of metrics To recognise the Google Analytics interface, be able to implement GA and obtain basic information from the tool. Analytical To be able to recognise all aspects of Google Analytics, their significance and impact. Interpretation of Webmasters Tools To be able to interpret and analyse the data produced by different reports offered by the Google Webmasters tool. GA: Identifying sources of traffic To recognise the different sources of traffic, be able to analyse these sources and obtain relevant information in order to improve traffic flow to our website. 10

12 Tag Key HTML: word monitoring <titl <title> Competitor analysis To be able to carry out an exhaustive and personalised monitoring of keywords that may be of interest to us for a certain webpage. Analytical To be able to analyse websites that are competing for the same keywords and analyse relevant factors referring to each of these. Using spread sheets for data analysis The correct usage of spread sheet tools such as Excel to carry out an in-depth data analysis. Other tools for analysis To recognise other tools that will allow us to obtain relevant information for analytics purposes. Interpretation of analysis To be able to interpret data obtained from analysis and transfer this interpretation into terminology that the client can understand. GA: Configuration of objectives To be able to configure objectives in Google Analytics, recognise the different types of objective and how to assign significant value to them. Nivel: avanzado GA: Campaign monitoring To know how to configure campaigns, link Analytics with AdWords, create URLs with tags and know how to monitor these campaigns. Advanced use of Google Analytics To recognise and correctly use all functions of Google Analytics, including the most advanced such as: experiments, events, alerts, personalisation and segmentation. Regular expressions To understand and use regular expressions in order to manipulate and filter text more efficiently. 11

13 2.4 Strategic The difficulty of organising strategies that are more and more advanced, involving a larger amount of parties from different sectors, of whom certain members could have a larger impact and larger financial repercussions means that the person responsible for their success must possess certain specific skills that will allow them to develop the strategy and manage the projects that they involve in the most effective way possible. This skill set is probably the most transferrable of all those mentioned, requiring the expert to be able to successfully face a multitude of situations, all involving professionals from a range of different backgrounds. Tag Knowledge HTML: <title> of tools Project management To recognise all tools that may be relevant in allowing an team to carry out its task as efficiently as possible. Strategic To be able to manage a set project by defining the stages, those involved and correctly administrating the effort involved in each task. Knowledge of the sector and perspective To be up to date and know all relevant goings on within the professional sector that could influence the daily workings of an team. Training capabilities To be able to correctly pass on any knowledge gained, whether it be in training sessions, talks or conferences. Writing of documents To produce documents that pass on information in a clear and concise manner, using clear and positive language. International profile To identify and recognise various cultural factors, be able to communicate with people from other cultural backgrounds and know how to internationalize a website correctly. 12

14 Client relations management Managing of expectations To be able to use various CRM tools as well as communicating correctly and in the appropriate manner with clients. Strategic To give a realistic and objective idea of the achievements that can be obtained to all parties involved in the project. Crisis management To be able to manage resources and react in a professional manner to unexpected situations, communicating efficiently and correctly with all affected parties. Knowledge of the industry To gain an influential and well recognised position in the online marketing industry via social networks, taking part in events and through other mediums. Spreading the experience and knowledge that you acquire to colleagues. 13

15 3. Conclusion Any company that carries out online sales projects will usually, at some point, use an expert, as the search engines are the main point of access to the content available on the Internet and a strong positioning within them offers an immediate return. However finding an appropriate and capable professional can often be difficult. To help you with this task, Internet Advantage has identified the ideal skills that can be required by an expert, dividing them into four main skills categories: Technical Creative Analytical Strategic On one hand this enables you to determine the most important area for your project and choose the most appropriate and well round candidate or team. We have provided a list of required competencies for each category ordering them from basic to advanced level, which can serve as a guide when evaluating professionals during the recruitment process. Internet Advantage is also developing an online test that can be used by professionals who wish to verify their own profile. We hope that we can help in the case of any company as well as recruitment agencies and head hunters when wishing to identify the most suitable professionals to form a team who will carry out successful projects and in turn, contribute to the growth of the industry. 14