How to become a really good SEO

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I’ve been doing SEO for 15+ years now and it’s been a long road of “self-optimization” to where I am today. There are a few recommendations I would like to give to people who want to be really good at their job.

First of all, what does “really good” mean? That’s actually difficult to say, as the answer is very subjective. I would probably prefer to replace “really good” with “effective”.

So, how do you become an effective SEO?
There are several levels and dimensions here. The combination of the following components has made me effective.

Contents

1 Technical expertise and technological understanding of search engines and information retrieval
2 Testing + ranking experience
3 Empathy and communication skills
4 Conclusion: Effective SEO requires expertise, ranking experience and soft skills

Technical expertise and technological understanding of search engines and information retrieval

When I started with SEO in 2008, I read SEO books, listened to SEO podcasts and looked at Google’s information. After a few years, however, I realized that the information was repetitive.

After Google fundamentally expanded its infrastructure in 2012 with the Penguin update and the switch to a semantic, entity-based search engine, neither the recommendations for SEO in the usual publications nor the information from Google really changed in the long term.

There was a stagnation of knowledge.

I had to find new sources besides the “industry standards” and started looking for basic information on semantics and entity-based search.
I realized that I needed to understand modern search engines to avoid going round and round in circles and running into a knowledge dead end.

Google itself is very open with information about indexing and crawling, but keeps a very low profile when it comes to ranking. To learn more about information retrieval and semantic search, I bought non-fiction books on information retrieval and, inspired by Bill Slawski, started reading patents and scientific papers or the first leaked documents like the Quality Rater Guidelines.

This brought me to a thought-leader knowledge on topics such as semantic SEO, E-E-A-T and information retrieval in general.

To this day, this knowledge enables me to better assess SEO recommendations, take the right paths and no longer run into dead ends all too often. You also become more opinionated, can recognize myths and hypes independently and weigh up whether you want to look more into a topic.

I have created a database and the SEO Research Suite for researching SEO-relevant documents such as Google patents and research papers.

This type of knowledge acquisition and continuous learning requires a great deal of motivation to want to fundamentally understand technologies and systems, even if it takes time and discipline, as the really exciting sources are often not so easy to understand.

Many SEOs avoid this step and remain mediocre in terms of expertise and therefore efficiency.

For me, building a fundamental knowledge base about information retrieval is essential for effective SEO. Depending on the context, other skills and talents are then added, such as

Programming skills
Talent for content creation
Confident handling of data and data analysis
…

Testing + ranking experience

Through testing, these theories can be verified and you develop a feeling for what influence which measures have.

Ranking experience over several projects consolidates the assumptions and the theories become certainties.

All of this improves the effectiveness of SEO.

There are so many SEO tips and hypes year after year that you can waste a lot of time and resources implementing irrelevant things that have little or no effect.

Not only do you invest your own resources and budget in the right things, but you can better judge how certain optimizations work in terms of time, but also with what leverage.

This is extremely important, as SEOs can cause a lot of work in many other departments such as IT or editorial. Wrongly invested resources are doubly damaging, as you waste the budget and lose time.

Testing improves your own ability to assess tactical search engine optimization.

Ranking experience comes with time and is a result of repeatedly experiencing ranking behavior after implementing measures.

SEOs spend a large part of their work analyzing and formulating recommendations for action for the various “implementers”. If there is no implementation, no ranking experience can be gained. You are stuck in the “SEO theory dead end”.

I know SEOs who are excellent analysts, know their way around tools and do excellent audits. But they have never managed to get a project to the top positions in the long term.

To be less dependent on external resources, it is therefore advantageous to run your own test projects. There, measures can be implemented quickly and ranking experience can be gained faster.

If you are dependent on other resources and want to gain this ranking experience quickly even without your own test projects, you need to recognize the potential economic impact of SEO and prioritize its implementation in the respective departments accordingly. In companies where SEO is only seen as a “dinghy”, it is difficult to gain ranking experience and develop effectiveness.

Empathy and communication skills

Probably the biggest challenge of an SEO, both in the agency and in-house, is to act proactively and confidently as an interface between management, IT/development, web design, editorial, marketing, PR and graphics.

It is always important to keep an eye on the different interests of these stakeholders. As an SEO, you are always dependent on the cooperation of colleagues from the various specialist departments, as the majority of implementations are not carried out by the SEO manager themselves and fail due to a lack of resources or the willingness to cooperate in other departments.

In-house SEO managers in particular, who are new to a company, are initially busy identifying, educating and building bridges between the various interest groups. This requires a certain amount of communication skill.

Modern SEO has evolved from a basement child to an interface discipline that can generate little impact without the support of other departments.

In this role, the SEO proactively advises all neighboring departments. The consideration of SEO in many companies is not yet anchored in the processes of SEO-relevant areas. Establishing this also requires a certain amount of assertiveness and leadership talent to get everyone involved on board.

If you don’t have these parties on your side, you lack effectiveness. This requires diplomacy and empathy. If you convey the feeling that you are encroaching too far into the territory of the respective area, you have to expect resistance.

Many of the old-school SEOs I’ve met are lone wolves. These types will always find it difficult to navigate the corporate hierarchy and politics.

Conclusion: Effective SEO requires expertise, ranking experience and soft skills

I assume that most people want to be successful in their job and that a certain amount of recognition also plays a role. Then I recommend having the ambition to be above average in your profession.

There is a lot of mediocrity in the SEO industry. Many SEOs are satisfied with the information from the “standard media”, have no real ranking experience and therefore swim along with the rest of the average or follow the well-known SEO voices in the industry without opinion.

Even if this seems to be sufficient for some, the risk of economic damage is high because, as already mentioned, SEOs primarily use other resources for implementation. Here it is important to use the often scarce resources efficiently in order to turn SEO into economic success for the company.

About the Author
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About Olaf Kopp

Olaf Kopp is Co-Founder, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO) and Head of SEO & Content at Aufgesang GmbH. He is an internationally recognized industry expert in semantic SEO, E-E-A-T, modern search engine technology, content marketing and customer journey management. As an author, Olaf Kopp writes for national and international magazines such as Search Engine Land, t3n, Website Boosting, Hubspot, Sistrix, Oncrawl, Searchmetrics, Upload … . In 2022 he was Top contributor for Search Engine Land. His blog is one of the most famous online marketing blogs in Germany. In addition, Olaf Kopp is a speaker for SEO and content marketing SMX, CMCx, OMT, OMX, Campixx...