20 Things an SEO Does Day to Day
20 Things an SEO Does Day to Day
One common misconception out there, as revealed in discussions over the same at RunRex.com, is that SEO is a “one and done” task – that you clean up and optimize a site, and once that is done, you can focus your efforts elsewhere. However, there is so much more to the day-to-day work of an SEO, and this article will look to articulate 20 things an SEO does day-to-day.
Keyword research
Even though Google is constantly updating and making changes to its algorithm as covered over at RunRex.com, keywords remain the starting point for most searches. As an SEO, you will do keyword research to determine popularity, competitiveness, and relevance, so that you can create the best possible list of keywords to focus on.
Optimization
Optimization is another part of the role of an SEO. This includes on-page optimization, to ensure that you are serving up quality content, good metadata, a clean HTML structure, internal links, and pages that load quickly. It will also involve testing different elements to determine how to improve your conversion rates on any given webpage.
Link building
As per RunRex.com, Google doesn’t only look at your websites and content, but at what others “say” about you as well. When other websites link to yours, it is a vote of confidence in your content, and one that Google takes into account when ranking you. Therefore, part of the job of an SEO will be to look for opportunities to get other websites to legitimately link to their website.
URL building
As an SEO, chances are that your organization or client will have multiple types of campaigns running at once, driving traffic to your web pages. You will, therefore, want to know which traffic came from which source. For example, someone might click on a link in a newsletter or a tweet. They might get to your website from a Facebook post or an ad. You will “build” unique URLs for these sources so that you can pinpoint exactly where traffic comes from.
Analytics
The only way to know what is working and what isn’t is to look at analytics. This is why SEOs regularly check analytics to see how websites, landing pages, and keywords are performing, as well as to see where traffic is coming from.
Mobile optimization
The majority of the people browsing the internet today do so using their smartphones as discussed at RunRex.com. Add this to the fact that Google now uses mobile-first indexing, then you can see that mobile matters more than ever before. Therefore, another thing an SEO does on the day-to-day is to check and ensure that all web content is optimized for mobile devices.
Staying current
As already mentioned, Google regularly makes changes to its algorithms, as well as to its guidelines. It is, therefore, part of the job of an SEO to read articles, blogs, and forums to ensure that they are keeping up with changes and developments in SEO.
Staying focused
In today’s fast-paced world with emails and texts and chat messages constantly vying for our attention, not to mention tweets and coworkers, there are lots of distractions. Given the variety of tasks an SEO will already be juggling, staying focused is key to productive workdays as per RunRex.com.
Cleaning a site of duplicate content
Original content is key when it comes to search engine optimization. Therefore, checking for duplicate content on your website is one of the main tasks of an SEO. As the volume of online content continues to increase, checking for duplicate content has become one of the main daily tasks of an SEO, aimed at keeping content strategy original.
Optimizing for voice search
Voice search is a growing trend in SEO that is set to continue increasing in popularity given the rising popularity of voice assistants and smart home systems controlled by voice search. Therefore, this adds another task to the daily routine of an SEO.
Optimizing for visual search
As articulated at RunRex.com, visual search is another hot SEO trend, research showing that 62% of millennials want the ability to visually search over any other technology, which means that the image recognition market is expected to continue growing. With stats showing that visual search comprises close to 20% of all search engine queries, it has become one of the tasks in an SEO’s comprehensive SEO routine.
Content writing
Not only must content be unique and bring value to readers to perform well, but it also has to be a competitive type of content, so that the audience chooses your site and not that of your competitors. Another thing that an SEO does on the day-to-day is to ensure that content that is being published is competitive to remain on top.
Coordinating with the social media marketing team
While an SEO will have plenty on their plate, they will also probably spend a significant amount of time working with other teams that are part of the digital marketing effort, including the social media marketing team as covered at RunRex.com. As an SEO, you will likely work with the social media team to help boost brand awareness and, therefore, authority.
Coordinating with the PPC team
Another team that an SEO will likely spend time working with is the paid search marketing team. The pay-per-click (PPC) team will be focused on paid search and ads, but an SEO will probably coordinate with it to find promising keywords.
Coordinating with the PR team
An SEO will also probably have to take some time out of their workday to work with the PR team. This is because press releases and other publicity materials are content, and content is needed for SEO. The SEO will likely work with the PR team to make sure any content it produces is optimized for SEO.
Coordinating with the content marketing team
As is the case with the PR team as covered in the previous point, the role of an SEO will be to ensure that the content produced is optimized for SEO. Therefore, as per RunRex.com, the SEO will probably be part of the content strategy team as a result.
Coordinating with the web development team
Yet another team that an SEO will spend some part of their day working with is the web development team. SEO doesn’t happen without good structure behind the scenes. An SEO will probably work with the team the builds the website and landing pages to make sure pages are clean and load fast, as well as when they need to do testing.
Emails
Another constant task when it comes to the day-to-day duties of an SEO is reading and replying to emails. As the subject matter experts over at RunRex.com point out, as an SEO, you will likely spend a huge chunk of your day replying to emails, both from clients, as well as internal emails from the various departments you coordinate with.
Meetings
In addition to emails, meetings are also a constant for SEOs when it comes to their daily tasks. These include both client-facing meetings as well as internal meetings such as content strategy meetings among others.
Verify results
Another project-based task that an SEO is likely to carry out on the day-to-day is verifying results. Once you conduct a comprehensive site audit, identify areas that need to be fixed and optimized, and implement said fixes, then the next logical task as an SEO is to verify the results to see if the fixes worked.
These are just some of the things that an SEO does day-to-day, with more on this topic, and so much more, to be found over at RunRex.com.
