SEO Job Description

With the accelerated digital transformation in recent years, having an exceptional SEO specialist onboard is imperative. Finding an exceptional SEO candidate will help your organization stand out against the highly saturated competition on search engines.

First, let’s take a look at a comprehensive job description to attract the right fit. Scroll down below to view the sample template, which should only serve as a guide and may be edited according to your company’s needs.

SEO Specialist Job Description Template

About the Company

This is where you make a first impression with prospective hires. In this section, write a concise paragraph about your company and what candidates can expect from working with your team. 

Here are a few details you may include in your introduction: 

• Products & services

• Company size

• Company’s mission & goals

• Key clients

• Company culture & work environment 

Job Description

As an SEO specialist, you will be responsible for managing all SEO activities, make use of marketing research strategies and analysis to improve a website’s ranking on all major search engines like Google. You will update the website to include the most popular and relevant keywords used in search engine queries, helping search engines find those sites and display them to web users. 

Roles and Responsibilities

• Develop SEO campaigns to meet the objectives and ROI goals of clients.

• Perform comprehensive SEO audits of websites including lead or sales performance data, rankings data, crawl logs, and site analysis tools (e.g. Google Analytics or AHREFs) to create an actionable plan for improvement and optimization.

• Analyze on-page, off-page, and technical factors of the site and provide recommendations to improve its overall SEO growth and performance.

• Conduct periodic keyword research, technical and content audits, and competitor analysis to discover new SEO opportunities and improve site traffic.

• Create and review detailed campaign performance data and future-looking strategic roadmaps.

• Improve the site’s domain authority by performing link research and link-building activities.

• Manage SEO content and work with clients and in-house teams to establish topics and the timeline for workflow.

• Build the entire SEO strategy, including a content marketing and link-building initiatives.

• Increase organic traffic, research buyer persona, achieve featured snippets, and track online metrics.

• Determine the latest industry news, SEO trends, tools and algorithm, effective benchmarks, and best practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or relevant field.

• Minimum of 3 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

• Experience in leading and managing SEO, digital metrics, and web traffic and analytics.

• Skilled at on-page and off-page optimization and keyword research and analysis.

• Demonstrable knowledge of link building, content, and social media strategies. 

• Knowledge of ranking factors and search engine algorithms.

• Proven ability to perform SEO audits and successfully implement site optimization.

• Up-to-date with the latest industry trends, tools and algorithms, SEO best practices, and competitor news through audience insights and digital analytics.

• Excellent written and oral communication skills.

Skills

• On-Page and Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Link Building

• SEO Audits

• Keyword Research

• Web Content Writing

• Metrics

• On-page Optimization

• Off-page SEO

• Web Analytics

• Content Marketing

• Basic knowledge of CSS & HTML

• Content Management

What Is An SEO Expert?

A great SEO expert goes beyond cookie-cutter page optimization for the sole purpose of ranking high on search engines. They ensure that search results are relevant to enable a positive user experience, web traffic growth, lead generation, and brand awareness. 

A good candidate looks at the overall value it adds to search engines, and provides highly relevant content that matches the keyword search intent. Below are a few tools SEO experts must know about. They should be able to be savvy with a few of them.  

SEO Tools Candidates Should Know 

Keyword search: 

• Google Keyword Planner 

• Google Search Console 

• Answer the Public 

• Google Trends

• AdWords & SEO Permutation Generator

• AHREFS Keyword Explorer 

• SEMrush Generator

Content optimization: 

• Clearscope 

• SEO Surfer 

• MarketMuse

• Frase

• Dashword

• SEMrush 

• Grammarly

Credible SEO Certifications

Some of your candidates may have SEO certifications. While this isn’t a usual requirement for most companies, it certainly may give them an edge. 

• HubSpot Academy

• Moz SEO Essentials Certification

• Google’s Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Certification

• UV Davis SEO 

For more information, visit our hiring guide and interview questions. 

SEO vs SEM: Which One Should You Really Hire? 

SEO mainly focuses on gaining traffic from organic search, whereas SEM gets traffic from both organic and paid search. On Google, the latter is able to find a place in the pay-per-click space. 

SEO mainly focuses on four things: 

• Keyword search: Identifies what people are searching for online. 

• On-page: Creates and optimizes content for relevant audience.

• Off-page: Builds authority from other credible websites. 

• Technical SEO: Assures search engines can crawl and index your pages. 

SEM focuses on both SEO and PPC (pay-per-click). Thus, your organization may want to hire an SEM specialist if it has the budget for ad spaces on search engines. However, SEO specialists are very effective when it comes to organic traffic. It highly depends on your company’s budget and needs. 

To know more information about the SEM role, read our SEM job description. 

SEO Specialist Salary

At the time of writing, Glassdoor indicates that the likely annual salary of performance marketing managers in the US ranges from $48,000 to US$76,000.