SEO has become part of the everyday vernacular of the digital marketing landscape, but how does one actually become an SEO professional? Does reading Moz or Search Engine Land a couple of times a week really make you an SEO pro?
If you are looking to expand your SEO skills and add SEO to your professional tool belt, here are 5 skills you should absolutely focus on:
1. HTML/ CSS
Example of HTML Coding
Coding is one of those skills every marketer knows they should learn, but often times neglect, because they end up leaning on their dev team. But if you plan to become a true SEO professional you need to be able to code, understand code and know when your Website is broken.
Why you ask?
If you are an in-house or agency SEO you cannot wait around for your dev or engineering team to fix every little bug on your Website. You need to able to go into the backend and correct coding issues on your own. This not only allows you to become more valuable, but it also saves you, your agency or business time and money. And who doesn’t like that?
Do yourself a favor and enlist the help of an online coding program like CodeAcademy to teach yourself the basics of HTML and CSS. Trust me, you will thank yourself for learning some basic coding!
Below are some of the must-read SEO articles form around the Web this week.
1. Which Sites Win the Most Featured Snippets – STAT
Have you ever wondered what steps you could take to help ensure your Website is selected for Googles’ answer box and knowledge graphs? You’re not alone.
STAT, a search analytics software company, recently released a white paper that presents the findings of an analysis of more than 1,000,000 high-CPC queries.
STAT Featured Snippet White paper
In their Whitepaper, they offer some great tips for optimizing your content to be selected in featured snippets. Here are few that stuck out.
- Make sure your content has more than 1,000 words
- Add tables tags (table tags)
- Add lists (ol and li tags)
- Make sure your H2s have exact match or partial match keywords
- Make sure these pages are shared out on your social media accounts
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