A Day in the Life of an SEO Consultant

Introduction

Working in the field of optimizing a website can mean a lot of things, but it’s definitely never boring! If you are new to the industry and wondering what your daily activities should look like, consider the following guidelines on how a good SEO specialist structures their workdays.

Build and monitor link links

Since link creation plays such a vital role in the success of a website, all SEO consultants try to make this practice a part of their daily routine. The only exception to this rule appears in the big SEO agencies, in which consultants are specialized in dealing with different aspects of the SEO process—whether it is content creation, site optimization, link creation, or another element of the digital marketing process.

In all other cases, SEO consultants are constantly looking for new opportunities to create links, reading industry blogs to find new link-building ideas, or following existing links to monitor and correct changes to a website’s “backlink” profile.

Education and community interactions

As the internet marketing industry is constantly changing, continuing education is an important part of any working day. In most cases, this takes the form of examining blogs in the industry to keep up to date with any major changes in recently discovered SEO algorithms or techniques. At the same time, SEO consultants can leave comments on these articles, post messages in community forums, or ask questions on social media sites. These techniques not only help to expand the knowledge of an SEO consultant but are also excellent to build a reputation and a high level of authority in an industry.

Testing SEO theories

SEO consultants put SEO theories into practice on their websites to conclusively determine what is good and what does not work at any given time.

Because Google and the other search engines never fully reveal all their secrets (and because not all the tips found on blogs in the industry are legitimate or reliable), a good SEO consultant knows that he will discover the truth about the components that determine the ranking of a website in a good position in searches, just by himself experimenting with the settings and theories discovered.

Track leaderboards, traffic, and conversion rates

Probably the most boring part of any day of an SEO consultant is the time spent tracking traffic and conversion rate values. A good SEO consultant is based on complete data sets and unfortunately, there are really no shortcuts when it comes to compiling and analyzing these figures. But no matter how dizzying this data collection may be, SEO consultants admit that it is of vital importance. Staying high on even minor declines in web data trends can help SEO consultants eliminate potentially serious problems by taking corrective action before the search engine’s serious penalties can be assessed.

Optimization on the site

Optimization on the site never ends. No matter how many code corrections, content changes, or image updates an SEO consultant makes, there will always be new elements to optimize and others that can be better optimized.

For this reason, many agencies will expand their team of SEO analysts before developing any other part of their companies, especially given that changes to the elements on the site often lead to the fastest improvements in the performance of a site. Unlike backlinks, which can take time to index and capitalize, changes on the site can make a significant difference in how well search engines can read a website, making these changes a top priority for any SEO consultant—based on agency or otherwise.

Monitoring of competitors

Paying attention to the changes made on the websites of competitors offers a number of advantages to SEO consultants.

Careful monitoring of a competitor’s backlink profile can expose the weaknesses of the company’s strategy, which allows the SEO consultant to outperform his opponent in searches.

For example, if a competitor’s linking link chart does not present evidence of connection with social media marketing, focusing on this strategy could provide an advantage from an SEO point of view necessary to achieve higher natural search rankings.

At the same time, monitoring the activities of a competitor can reveal information about new strategies that work or not. Monitoring of both internal websites and competitors’ pages can take a long time, but a good SEO consultant knows that there is a lot of quality information to gain if they are willing to make efforts.

Collaboration with internal development, design, and marketing teams

Today, SEO is more than just backlinks and optimization on the site. A good SEO campaign requires collaboration with development teams (to ensure that a website’s code works optimally from an SEO point of view), with marketing teams (to identify any branding elements that should be used appropriately on the site), and with design teams (to improve product sales pages and create a stronger on-site user experience).

As a result, all SEO consultants have to spend time collaborating with the relevant parties, either with internally employed colleagues or by setting up meetings with customer service departments. Although these activities remove from the working time of an SEO consultant, they are important, as they can eventually lead to a more powerful website that better attracts both site visitors and search engines. Just like anyone who works online knows that there is never a shortage of email messages to check.

From customer communications to internal company updates and from industry newsletters to social media profile notifications, all SEO consultants spend at least part of their day checking and responding to emails.

Socialization

Spending time connecting with other industry consultants isn’t just important for SEO consultants who belong to agencies, who often rely on these occasional contacts to create new businesses and learn new techniques by “talking on breaks” with each other. As an added bonus, going out on breaks and socializing with other consultants can be one of the easiest ways to build bonds ever.

I can’t tell you how many table outings we’ve turned into powerful, high-value links.

Conclusion

Whether you use this list to think about whether a job in SEO is right for you, be aware that your daily activities will vary slightly depending on the management structure in your organization. Indeed, there may be certain days when you focus solely on-site optimization and others where you totally focus on link-building campaigns. However, this sketch should give you a better idea of the responsibilities that SEO consultants have—no matter where and how they work. I hope you find it useful when it comes to working more effectively with these important members of the team!