Key Responsibilities of an SEO Specialist
As an SEO Specialist, regardless of whether you are a junior or senior SEO Specialist, you are expected to carry out the following:
Keyword research
Keyword research involves identifying the relevant and popular keywords based on difficulty level targeting the right audiences. With experience comes the ability to find and target keywords around budget and deadline.
When keyword research is done professionally, it is one of the most important parts of overall SEO.
Outlining content for writers
Depending upon the role, SEO Specialists are expected to outline the content for content writers.
That’s why proper keyword research is a crucial part of any SEO Specialist.
Did you know?
Landing pages or blog posts can be targeted for several keywords with good keyword research and content. Based on how authoritative your website is and how competitive keywords are, content can be curated for multiple keywords.
Technical SEO
As an SEO Specialist, monitoring the Technical SEO of websites is very important.
Various duties around Technical SEO include:
- Monitoring website performance and improvements
- Website architecture
- Mobile-friendliness
- Optimising sitemaps for crawling
- Monitoring Site indexing
Link Building
Building connections and outreach is another important aspect of SEO Specialists. This helps in acquiring new links and building backlinks to websites.
Did you know?
With backlinks, the relevancy and authority of the website are important. If you build a good quality link from one authoritative website relevant to your industry, it outweighs tens of spammy backlinks. So always focus on quality over quantity.
Factors deciding SEO Specialist's Salary?
The main factors that set an SEO Specialist's salary are:
- Experience level
- Skill sets
- Company size
- Location
Experience level
The more experience you have the more you will get paid.
Personally, I am not a big believer in experience in terms of years. I think the results achieved are more important than years of experience. If you have achieved rankings in different industries and maintained them over time, you are more likely to get a good offer.
Skills
Having the skills listed above is a must. But if you have extra skills such as HTML coding, and WordPress Development you will get a much better offer.
In my case, I started as a WordPress Developer and shifted to SEO Services when I started to notice websites I built did really well in SEO. So, I am more towards digital marketing agency setup these days.
Company Size
Bigger companies such as enterprises and corporates pay well compared to agencies or small businesses. But getting into these companies is relatively tough.
Also in my experience, companies that pay more in lead generation where lead acquisition costs are significantly high pay handsomely.
Location
Companies located in major cities such as Sydney, and Melbourne for example, pay more in Australia due to demand and competition.
SEO Specialist Salary Range
Based on your experience, SEO Specialists can earn anywhere between 60K to 150K in Australia.
As a Junior SEO Specialist with one to two years of experience, you will most likely be offered starting from 60K based on your skills, experience and results you have achieved.
As a Mid-level SEO Specialist with more than 3 years of experience, you will most likely be offered starting from 80K based on your skills, experience and results you have achieved.
As a Senior SEO Specialist with more than 5 years of experience, you will most likely be offered starting from 100K based on your skills, experience and results you have achieved.
How to land an entry-level SEO Specialist job?
Landing an entry-level role as SEO Specialist can be tough but it’s not that super hard if you are smart and proactive.
Let me share with you my experience in the IT journey in Australia. I will be precise in guiding you on how to land your first role as an SEO Specialist.
In Australia, most employers when hiring for junior roles look for these 5 main things:
- Enthusiasm
- Level of Commitment
- Hunger to learn
- Team players and how they fit into an existing team
- Attitude
There is a popular saying in Australia. Skills can be taught but you need the right attitude to excel.
To be precise this is what I will do to land junior level SEO Specialist role:
- Launch a portfolio site with certain keywords in mind. These keywords don’t need to be competitive
- Build a good website focused on content, website architecture implementing an internal link strategy
- Optimize the website using a good WordPress web host, caching plugin
- Implement solid Technical SEO
- Implement solid On-Page SEO
- Rank website for long tail keywords and local SEO
I will also keep up to date with any recent SEO algorithm updates, latest trends etc.
There is a high chance of getting hired if you present well in interviews and show the employers that you are eager to learn and achieve results at any cost.
Conclusion
I hope this blog provides you with some ideas about the SEO Specialist salary guide and how to land your first role as an SEO Specialist.
