SEO Specialist | Role & Responsibilities

An SEO Specialist will carry out onsite and offsite activities aimed at increasing organic website traffic, leading eventually to increased revenue resulting from either online sales or leads worked and closed by a sales team.

Develop and implement your SEO strategy
Develop an SEO campaign calendar for management approval, to be rolled out once approved
Coordinate with marketing professionals such as writers and designers to create landing pages necessary to execute the SEO strategy
Conduct keyword research & identify buyer-intent keywords likely to drive high-converting traffic
Optimise website copy, content assets, page titles, metadata, to ensure content is readily accessible by the Google bots
Work with social media teams to ensure that campaigns are in sync and aligned towards corporate goals
Create website content, from landing page content relevant to SEO campaigns, to blog posts and more*

*Note that all SEO managers are capable writers, as SEO and writing are mutually exclusive as skills

Head of Digital Marketing vs. Social Media Coordinator

What tasks should be the responsibility of the Head of Digital Marketing and not the SEO Manager?

Front-line marketing specialists, 90% of the time, report to senior marketing managers. While this applies in medium to large enterprise (where most full-time SEO managers can be found). If you are a technician, solopreneur or small business owner, note that the following will ideally be completed/covered by someone, which could either be you (you can enrol in our Digital Marketer courses should you need to expand your knowledge) or one of our Australian Marketing Managers. 

  • Where SEO fits into your entire digital strategy (overall revenue goals, social, email, paid)
  • The current website traffic volumes and the desired traffic goals
  • The return on investment you expect to achieve from SEO activities

Training & Deployment Process

Given that your SEO Specialist has a clear job description and a large amount of upfront work they can initially sink their teeth into (SEO Audit, keyword research, calendar creation etc), your initial training can be kept relatively brief, focus on several key areas:

  1. Communication and sharing of your overall marketing plan and how your SEO fits into this
  2. Communication of your mission and values
  3. Agreement of key marketing principles such as your brand voice and writing style, buyer intent keywords
  4. Clarity around how long the preparation stage should take
  5. Providing access to any relevant platforms such as:
    1. WordPress
    2. Google Analytics
    3. Your marketing platform (such as Hubspot) or Hootsuite, etc.

We would not anticipate this initial training to take more than 3 hours.

When engaging an SEO Specialist, the first 30 to 60 hours will likely need to be spent on the following:

  • SEO Audit. 10-20hrs
  • Keyword research. 5 hours
  • Industry knowledge research & training. 10 to 20 hours.
  • Competitor research. 5 to 10 hours
  • Content calendar creation. 2 hours

SEO is reasonably hands-off role to manage, with the vast majority of the work taking place with your SEO Specialist working alone as they engage in deep work.

Your role will be to:

  1. Ensure the role is set up properly with a clear job description (choose from the above)
  2. Ensure the role has crystal clear KPIs (see below) that are realistic and based on the current state of play and historical data
  3. Meet with your SEO Specialist monthly or twice monthly to go over key items such as:
    1. Quality checking and approving recent articles or blog posts (written by them or a writer)
    2. Co-brainstorming relevant blog topics
    3. Reviewing organic traffic performance

Key Performance Indicators

Below is a list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to SEO Specialists. Note that if your goals are not in line with the KPIs set out below (for example, if you want and needs leads right now), then consider carefully if hiring an SEO Manager the most optimal decision for your business right now.

Reporting Structure

Who should hire an SEO Specialist?

Depending upon the size of the organisation, an SEO manager should ideally report to, in ascending order:

  • The Chief Marketing officer (in medium to large organisations)
  • The Head of Marketing
  • The Head of Digital Marketing
  • The Marketing Manager
  • The Head of Search Marketing

If you are a technician, solopreneur, or small business owner with no marketing experience and a website with low traffic volume (under 1,000/per month), we suggest that you hire an SEO Manager for 20 to 40 hours per month or engage one of our Australian SEO managers in a fixed price SEO leasing agreement.

Common Mistakes & Misconceptions

Below is a list of mistakes, misconceptions, and scenarios that hiring managers can find themselves in when hiring a Social Media Coordinator:

When engaging an SEO Manager, the first 20 to 50 hours will likely need to be spent on the following:

  • SEO audit (analysis of historical performance and the current state of play)
  • Keyword research
  • Keyword planning
  • SEO campaign and calendar creation
  • Competitor analysis

A great way to get an instant boost to your SEO efforts is to push your newly created content across your social channels and across paid channels.

For example, your SEO Specialist has identified a keyword cluster that shows solid buyer-intent. They have liaised with your writers and created a wonderful 2,500-word blog post for your target audience. They have optimised the post and placed it on your blog. The only problem is, right now, no one knows that it is there. Have your SEO Specialist liaise with your social media team and share this content asset across all relevant social channels. Why not take it a step further and reach an audience beyond your existing community. Have your paid media team drive paid traffic to this blog post via a boosted post or a paid campaign?