How to become an SEO in 10 steps in 2022.

Introduction

SEO has grown from the early days of blogging in the 2000s to a full-blown science of ranking in search engines. It is no longer as simple as inserting keywords, spamming news outlets for backlinks, and hoping you get on the first page. It is certainly not rocket science, but it’s more complex now.

To become an SEO in 2022, you must learn some essential skills. Skills like understanding how search engines work in crawling content (Tech SEO), deciphering search intent (strategy) and making sure you are offering valuable information in the best way (content writing). It is a tall order with no shortcut or magic bullet. It requires work. So if you are not ready to put in the work, then don’t bother to read further. But if you don’t mind rolling up your sleeve to do meaningful work, go ahead.

In this guide, I’ll walk through 10 steps to help you build the skills necessary for success as an SEO in 2022.

Establish Your Career Goals.

First and foremost, what are your goals? Setting realistic goals is important if you’re serious about becoming an SEO. For example, instead of saying, “I want to be an SEO expert, “ you could focus on tech SEO, content creation, or the strategy part of SEO.

If you are unclear about which part of SEO you want to become an expert at first, there is no need to worry. There is no rush to specialise; you can choose one area, and if you don’t like it, you can change your mind later. Your goal now is to pick a path, any path in SEO and start working on it. Before you can call yourself an SEO expert, you must know about all the areas.

Skill Up.

After setting goals, the next step is to skill up. SEO is about skills. The good thing is that there are so many resources to guide you in learning SEO. Here are a few resources you can check out.

• Udemy courses
• Traffic Think Tank
• Google search console
• Moz guide to SEO
• Ahrefs guide to SEO
• Use social media to learn from other experts who have built successful careers around SEO and SEM strategies. Top 50 SEO experts to follow on LinkedIn.

These courses are the first step in skilling up as there present the theory part SEO. The major learning happens when you implement what you’ve learnt following steps 3–10. Also, in addition to these courses, follow SEO blogs to study the latest SEO and SEM trends and best practices used by the top 1% in the industry. This practice will shorten your learning curve faster.

Build a playbox.

You can’t become an SEO without practice. No matter the amount of knowledge you acquire from courses, nothing beats practice.

To start, you can build a personal blog where you create content on anything you like… almost anything you like. For example, if you start a blog about gardening, you will still learn if that is something you enjoy writing about. But the fastest way to cement ideas in your head is to write about them. For example, SEO is not my hobby, I can certainly talk about it over dinner, but I would prefer to talk about mental models, productivity, and creativity. But writing about SEO forces me to document my learning and improves the passive learning that occurs when I take SEO courses and read SEO blogs.

To build a blog, read the steps to build a new blog in 2022.

Learn How to Perform Keyword Research.

Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that people are searching for and ranking your website higher in the search results. It’s important to understand how to perform keyword research because it will help you stay on top of trends, increase your website traffic and lower bounce rates.

If you already have a site that ranks for some keywords, you can use Google Search Console or SEMrush (or both) to find out what keywords people use when they visit your site or search for information about you online. You can do this manually by looking at Google Analytics reports or manually checking out cornerstone pages on your site that rank well for certain terms (for example, an article about how to lose weight).

Check out other related sites using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool; this will give you insights into how much traffic these websites get from certain keywords and what type of content they publish so that you know what kind of material would work best for you!

But if you are starting from scratch, you need to follow some proven ways to rank for the keywords your potential audience is searching for. Read this to find out more.

Twelve proven tactics to perform keyword research for a new website.

Understand How to Use SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush

To manage a site successfully, in addition to your learning and skills, you will need to learn how to use tools to do keyword research, manage the technical side of SEO and build out your content calendar.

There are major tools expert SEOs swear by, and we’ve created a non-exhaustive list below.

1. AHrefs
2. SEMRush
3. Moz
4. Keywoddit

If you are still starting and want to know the best free tools to use for SEO on your new sites, check out this article by Ahrefs.

Learn About Google Analytics.

SEO can be substituted for ‘Google rankings’ because most searches you want to optimise happen in Google. So you must learn how to read your site’s google analytics. It can initially seem daunting, but you can get used to it. First, you need to make your site crawlable and set up google analytics for your blog. We went deep into how to do that in this article.

The first step to understanding what Google Analytics can do for you is learning about sessions, pageviews and bounce rates. A session is when someone visits your site. A pageview is the number of times a user views a single page on your site. Finally, the bounce rate measures how many users leave after visiting a website before returning (the percentage).

To get started with Google Analytics, you’ll need an account if you don’t already have one set up by using this link: https://www.googleanalytics.com/signup

The ultimate newbie guide to Google Analytics

Use Google Search Console to Monitor and Maintain Your Site’s Search Performance

Google Search Console is a free web-based tool for webmasters. It provides a range of useful features for SEO professionals, including:

• Sites: View your site’s crawl stats and search analytics.
• Search Traffic: Track organic traffic from Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search

You can also see how many visitors you’re getting from paid search ads on Google AdWords and Bing Ads; this information will help you optimize your PPC campaigns across the board — it’ll show you where they’re performing well so that others can benefit from those areas too!

With Google Analytics, your goal is to analyse your site’s performance and understand what is working and what needs to be tweaked. SEO is about experimenting to find out what works and doubling down on it. If you are coming from a non-technical background, learning how to use GSC to understand what is happening with your site will be a steep learning curve, but it’s not impossible to master.

How to build the scientific process into your SEO process

Utilize Social Media as Part of Your SEO Strategy.

As you practice the SEO skills you learnt from the courses, you can show your expertise (on what you’ve learnt) online. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook allow you to share your learnings.

Your online sharing allows you to network with other SEOs who can answer questions you have about SEO, recommend you for job roles, or even employ you. And don’t just think of making posts; as you post, ensure you communicate with other SEOs, by commenting on other people’s posts. And don’t just write cliche comments, like ‘I agree’, ‘This makes sense’ and the like; make sure your comments add to the conversation.

Your sharing on social media is also important as most employers ask for social media links and may go through your profile, and if you’ve been sharing helpful content, it’s a plus for you.

Social media is a great way to get your name out there, connect with other people in the industry and share your content.

Follow Technical SEO Best Practices.

Follow Technical SEO Best Practices.

• Identify the right keywords and phrases to target.
• Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Meter, SEMrush Keyword Explorer, or Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool to see how hard it will be to rank for certain terms. If you have a lot of competition in your industry (for example: “SEO agency”), then use longtail keywords that are less competitive while still making sense (i.e., “best SEO agencies in Los Angeles County”).

Become an Expert in at Least One Area of SEO.

There has been a recent buzz about becoming a T-shaped marketer. It means you are knowledgeable in every marketing area and have also developed expertise in one area. The same thing can be said in becoming an SEO; you need to be T-shaped. There is the strategy, content creation, link building, and tech SEO and … your goal is to know most things in the major areas but build expertise in one vertical.

The most important thing you can do to become an SEO expert is to focus on a specific area. So as you build out your site and try to rank, you should start focusing on the areas that you feel more comfortable handling.

But you don’t have to be in a hurry. The goal is to become an expert in a few years. So take the first year to widen your knowledge as much as possible. And you can even decide to go deeper in some areas before becoming an expert in one. Just remember that you are better off being an expert in one area than being average in all areas.

Conclusion

The steps here will help you build your career in 2022 and beyond. You can do this by studying the latest SEO and SEM trends and best practices. Then, building a blog to share your latest findings on your learning. Next, write high-quality articles on topics around SEO. Joining relevant groups on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Twitter where other SEOs hang out so that you can learn from them directly instead of only through books or blogs like mine. And last but not least: never give up!

The field of SEO is ever-expanding, but you can stay on top of the trends by cultivating a continuous learning attitude and practising continuously on your personal blog. We hope you’ve found this guide helpful as you begin your journey toward becoming an SEO in 2022!