Ideal SEO / Social Media Employee Skillset
-
I’ve been wondering recently what makes a good SEO / Social Media employee. It seems to me that SEO and Social Media are in the process of merging into a single role.
What are your thoughts on the skills that this new world SEO / Social Media employee would need? Or do you think these roles should ideally remain separate and that a “traditional” SEO is more what is needed?
My own role has been moving much more towards social media recently and I was wondering if this was a common trend!
-
Thanks again Seb, that makes a lot of sense. I definitely see the difficulty in finding someone who is both logical and creative, especially someone who can bring both those skills to the workplace.
-
Hi John,
No worries!
If it's an in-house SEO for a small-medium company then all of the above duties can be handles but 1 person, but you may find that the actual PR side of things is done by someone else. If itis from a consulting perspective then you may struggle a little bit.
This is a complete blanket statement and I know a lot of fellow SEO's may not agree but SEO tends to be more logical whereas Social is more creative and the two tend to attract different personalities. If you can find someone that can do all of the above and enjoys it then you've found someone that would be able to consult as well as do the tasks at hand.
Most SEO's will know at least basic HTML and CSS or have the ability to search google to find out what it is they need to do + 1 additional language (PHP / Ruby / net).
As a lot of sites are now CMS based, a basic understanding of Joomla/Wordpress is highly recommended and excel is also an invaluable tool for most SEO's.
Hope that's helped
-
Thanks for your reply Sebastian!
It sounds like it's difficult to merge the two roles from a consulting perspective. Do you think that this would also be a problem for an in-house SEO?
You mention that programming is important, what technologies would be the core set that an SEO should understand?
Apologies if this is a basic question as I'm still new to the world of SEO and have mostly been approaching it from a reporting perspective!
-
I agree with you that social and SEO are merging, but I do feel that while both should know each others skill sets, they are still two separate roles, for the time being at least.
SEO:
Technical Knowledge
Programming
Copywriting
Link Building
Understanding Social Networks / AuthorRank / Twitter / FB / LinkedInSocial:
Reputation Management
PR
Understanding how SEO & Social work together
Brand AwarenessDue to the relative intensity of both roles, if you were to work on both for a particular client, you'd be limited to a handful of clients. Whereas if the roles are separated you can handle a larger client base.
That's the way I see it anyway!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best Practices for Getting Shares, Likes, Etc on Social Media?
I wanted to know what the best practices are for getting people to re-tweet, like, share, and google plus your website. What has worked best for all of you, and what has worked not so well? Thanks!
Industry News | | OOMDODigital0 -
How do I ascertain how/why a site appears higher/lower in search results, based on different search terms?
The site in question is www.bullethq.comHere are the search terms I used, and what position Bullethq.com appears in the SERP's: <colgroup><col width="188"><col width="58"><col width="95"></colgroup>
Industry News | | PeterConnor
| Search-term | Position | Page returned |
| irish payroll online | 5 | Home Page |
| irish payroll online software | 20 | Home Page |
| online irish payroll software | 20 | Home Page |
| online payroll | 75 | (Blog post) | Could someone be so kind as to help me figure this out?0 -
SearchDex for SEO consultation? Price feedback?
I know the JCPenny story from 2011 and read their CEO response to that. I've been pleased with my conversations with them so far and was given a reference that checked out well. Now us. We are a small business and our expertise is in print manufacturing and fulfillment. A portion of our business is running a network of retail websites related to the print business and that network generates six figure revenue, but we rely entirely on our affiliates to promote and drive traffic. I've been learning SEO for about 9 months - primarily just so that I can be informed while managing our direct to consumer initiative. But we don't have the internal expertise to pull off a campaign that is not heavily outsourced so that is why I'm open to talking with SearchDex. Does anyone have any feelings about them one way or another? Does anyone have a recommendation for me to talk to that might be an even better fit for what we want to do?
Industry News | | rickpeyton0 -
Hiring an SEO in North West England
I'm looking to hire an SEO Expert in North West England. We are only a small web deisgn company (less than 10 staff) and have more SEO work than we can handle at the moment. Is there anyone looking for a job in Norh West - UK ? Cheers, Darren
Industry News | | PIXUS
www.nwonline.co.uk0 -
How to go about removing bad/irrelevent links?
We have been made aware of a series of irrelevant links on some rather dodgy sites. http://www.designerdogstop.com/level-static/http://www.bestfirepits.net/some-of-the-best-vacations-for-families/2010/05/05/ http://whatcigarsdoismoke.com/cigar-lighters/cigarette-cigar-2/ http://dollfuss.org/build-bear-hawaii/ Absolute rubbish im sure you will agree. These links must surely be causing our link profile some damage. They are currently wordpress sites with no means of contacting the authors. What ways and means are there of removing these negative pages and links? Cheers all, any help appreciated.
Industry News | | TimHolmes0 -
SEO Serice Company for aspx website
Do you know a reputable SEO company that has good experience in optimizing aspx website ? We are looking for one if you know one.
Industry News | | ypl0 -
What is the best place to learn reputation management, with regards to SEO
I have a new client that needs help with a bad review. Of course it may not be able to be deleted, but I have started to scratch the surface on how to help 'push it down' using SEO. Can any offer advice on a definitive source of learning reputation management? Many thanks!
Industry News | | adell500 -
Who would you like to ask a SEO question the most?
I was wondering about which people in the industry you'd like to ask a question the most in the q&a? On my list is Matt Cutts (obviously), Marshall Simmonds, Jimmy Wales and Biz Stone.
Industry News | | ThomasHgenhaven0