The type of SEO work you are going to do depends on the type of industry you are working in. You may find an opportunity:
Whatever your aspirations, you need professional, high-quality SEO to distinguish you.
Our industry continues to see substantial growth year after year, and a growing number of companies across the country are recognizing the significance of SEO on their marketing initiatives.
This is evident from a growing reliance on internal and external efforts to drive organic traffic.
And if you’re looking for a career in SEO, that’s good news for you.
In this article, you’ll learn about the current state of the U.S. SEO job market, the different types of roles, what employers are looking for in winning candidates, and how to design a resume. ‘stands out.
Contents
What Does The SEO Job Market Look Like Going Into 2022?
As the SEO needs of companies grow, so does the number of SEO positions available, the diversity of those positions, and the range of industries that employ SEO professionals.
Image by Conductor, January 2022
And as your experience grows, so does your salary, so SEO is an attractive career option to invest in.
Image from Search Engine Journal, January 2022
To keep track of this evolving industry and guide you to the right SEO job, we have created this SEO job market overview.
Who Hires SEO Professionals?
In-House SEO
One of the biggest benefits of being an in-house SEO expert is having access to the research and data of its first part.
In addition, you know the company’s marketing goals and previous efforts, which puts you in a strong position to start your work.
Look for companies with dedicated SEO teams or individuals. The number of SEOs in a company gives you a sense of its current investment in the field.
Joining an existing team can also help your transition to the company and clarify opportunities for growth.
By the way, now is a good time to support a new SEO role or team.
Organic has proven itself to be the core of the company’s web traffic and remains reliable even in uncertain times.
Consider putting a new SEO role in your current company by proving the value of organic to a skeptical CMO that brings SEO in-house.
Or during an interview, suggest it as a role that you may eventually get into because of your SEO skill set.
Agency SEO
In agencies, the roles of SEO are all facing the client.
You will be supporting the SEO needs of other companies.
Difficulties include potentially not having access to first-party data, clarity in the client’s marketing objectives, or being able to directly implement the changes that will have the greatest impact.
However, the benefits include exposure to multiple clients in a variety of industries, platforms, data sources, and SEO challenges.
They will give you great experience expanding your skills and making you a very attractive job applicant.
SEO SaaS (Software As A Service) Company
You can’t get much more SEO than working for a company dedicated to the industry.
Similar to an agency, your role may be to look at the customer, using your mastery of your SaaS platform to support their needs.
This type of role can eventually lead you to oversee the strategic direction of customer relations.
In addition to SEO teams, there are a range of departments that include dedicated SEO roles:
Independent Or Freelance Consultant
Freelancing can give you more flexibility in your title, salary and hours.
You don’t engage with any particular company but by developing strong relationships with internal teams, you may be able to establish a roster of regular roles.
This type of position allows you to be very independent but also leaves you at the whim of your temporary employer.
There may be limited guidance and access to first-party data, both of which you must determine in advance to set expectations.
What Types Of SEO Jobs Are Currently Available?
Once you have investigated the industries that employ SEOs, you can look for the following positions:
In-house Or Agency
You may also find that you are qualified for roles with similar titles in marketing, analytics, content or dev departments that have an SEO component.
But read each job description carefully to make sure your expectations align with those of the company you are applying for.
SEO SaaS Company
You can also look for roles within Account Management, Sales, or Marketing.
Looking at the Career sections of these companies or the LinkedIn employee profiles helps you understand the job titles for each department.
Consultant/Freelancer
Freelancing or consulting as an SEO can give you the freedom to choose your job adventure, including choosing your title.
But this is not always the case.
Freelancing in an agency, for example, may require you to accept an assigned title based on the way SOW was written that included your position.
However, you can decide how you want to present yourself on your resume.
You can ignore specific titles and focus on a title related to the competence of your consultancy.
In that case, make sure that your achievements accurately reflect the level of effort, managerial responsibilities, and budgets as a means of expressing the scope of your experience.
What Are SEO Employers Looking For?
The most critical part of any resume is your experience.
But building a remarkable and eye-catching record of your achievements that will help the reader anticipate you in his company is a challenging feat.
Not only does every job need to show the impact of your work but you need to show growth from one to another.
Make sure you combine SEO within as many line items as possible.
For a larger-scale marketing effort or campaign, join SEO to highlight your individual contribution to the team.
When writing a description of your professional achievements, keep in mind the following sentence structures:
[Active success word] + [CPI improvement] due to [SEO initiative / project]
[Active action verb] + [SEO initiative / project] + resulting in [KPI or output improvement]
Skills
The goal is to prove how your actions, either independently or as part of a team, have contributed to the goals of the SEO business.
Three key areas of SEO skills that hiring managers are always looking for are Content Writing, Technical and Data Analytics.
Writing and language are at the heart of SEO as the goal is to compare the user’s intent, through the language used in the searches, with the content you have on your site.
It’s a form of Q&A. Valuable applicants can demonstrate how to perform keyword research, interpret it, and directly apply the content writing findings.
The same goes for knowing all the written components that make content more likely to rank well on Google, such as Title Tag, Meta Description and Alt Tags.
Preparing these yourself by using keyword research before publishing content, shows that you can save your team time and energy by getting live SEO-ed content faster. .
Most SEO technical expectations do not require direct web design, web development, or programming experience, although you should highlight any related skills you have.
These can be very beneficial for an SEO career and are skill sets that you should invest in if you want to advance your technical skills.
Key SEO technical support includes understanding and optimizing the backend components of a site that help rank it and improve its ranking.
You will be expected to run a site crawl to identify what is helping your pages (eg including meta tags) and what is hurting (eg slow page speed, broken links).
You may be asked to launch a new site or support site migration, which has many technical implications.
Depending on the company, you may be able to update the website yourself or request changes.
Requesting clarification in advance will help you determine your workload.
Knowing how to collect, organize, and analyze data is especially relevant to SEO roles.
What’s even more valuable is knowing how to gain insights from the data and use it to tell a story. To do this, make Excel your best friend if you haven’t already.
Learn how to make vlookups, concatenates, IF statements, and pivot tables.
Once you do that, you won’t know how I’ve ever lived without them.
Using SEO data, you can tell the full funnel story of organic traffic, from content that appears on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), to clicks to the site. based on specific questions, for views of the organic pages of the site, and for eventual conversions.
To do this, you need to be familiar with the site’s analytics platforms, Google’s Search Console, and any way your company tracks conversions.
Mapping this funnel will support the creation of optimization and help you get a buy-in for your efforts.
If you have no experience with these platforms, there are online courses and training available.
But also consider requesting access to these platforms in your current job, even if you don’t use them on your daily basis, to practice with them.
Proof of proficiency in at least one of these SEO-related skills and knowledge of the other two will help you stand out for SEO roles.
In addition, a hiring manager may look for the following items in your account, especially for more experienced candidates:
Optimization is the literal name of the game.
Make sure that as you write down your professional achievements, you refer to the knowledge you have discovered, the optimizations that have been implemented, and their impact.
Being able to present yourself well, communicate clearly, and concisely explain the critical thinking behind your SEO practices will make you look not only confident but reliable and trustworthy.
Think about how to express these in an efficient way in the way you write down your achievements and plan ahead for how you can let these qualities shine through in an interview.
Diversity In Your Customer, Client, And Brand Basis
Having a complete background of industry knowledge will help demonstrate your value.
Especially when working with clients, experience and familiarity with different fields make you a very attractive job prospect.
SEO Tools
It lets you jump right into various customer worlds and make yourself invaluable to them.
To highlight your skills and range of everyday skills, call out the tools you have used and mastered.
Start by creating a Skills section in your account and list the SEO tools you have had experience with.
You do not need to include specific tools under Experience.
Use that section to focus on taking credit for initiatives and results.
But if you incorporate language relevant to the processes and capabilities of the platforms and tools, your beginner readers who are familiar with the tools understand their supporting role.
The tools come in two different sets, both of which are important to include.
First, there are the paid tools and those that link directly to a website that companies and customers give you access to.
The use and application of at least one of these will be sought after by potential employers.
This is not just to check the requirements but to understand the ways you have been exposed to SEO and get a sense of how it works.
Experience with the tools will almost certainly be questioned in an interview so be prepared to address instances of platform usage and results from your inception.
For team efforts, focus on your individual role with the tools and collaboration with other team members.
Second, there are a plethora of free SEO resources that a skilled SEO professional should have at their fingertips.
They not only help you with your craft but also look great on resumes. A few include:
SEO Resume Tips For Those New To The Field
These are not required but a knowledgeable SEO hiring manager will look for these tools to indicate that you are leveraging your SEO skills and applying your SEO skills on a regular basis.
Early in your career and especially for your first job, it is good to have experience with just one of the three key SEO skills.
For example, if you were writing for a college publication, had a marketing or analytical internship, or worked on a personal development project, you turned to it and focused on the tactical skills you learned.
Mention the range of projects, skills, tools, research, and clients you have been exposed to.
As you try to join the field of SEO or are looking to move upwards, use the range of online resources to get started with SEO.
This careful guide consolidates 37 basic SEO tips into one center.
If you’re not sure where to start, focus on the best SEO skills recommended by those in the industry, especially beginner tips.
Many will tell you to learn and enhance the knowledge of the skills and tools listed above.
Also, work on the upcoming SEO project journey to understand its individual components and how they come together.
Use data to uncover searches that drive current trends, whether those searches show your page, and whether what appears encourages people to click.
Use that data to find content gaps with a high enough search volume to justify creating new content or editing existing content.
Look to understand the basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, in particular, what components Google can read and help the site rank.
Based on what Google can read, then decide if that content is relevant to a specific keyword.
Those Applying To More Experienced SEO Roles
So know when to apply your writing skills or when collaborating with writers to incorporate the best language that answers user searches in on-page and coded site components.
If you already have a few years of experience, focus on further strengthening your SEO startup in the following ways:
Emphasize how your experience and tactical skills in the three key SEO skills have evolved, especially in your more recent roles.
Show development to each and take credit for your role in the design, execution, and results of the project.
Apply a similar process to strategic growth.
Present your role in influencing a change in business practice through large-scale impact and long-term value.
For example: Explain how to train and get a buy-in from a team of content writers who were previously unfamiliar with SEO and keyword research.
Then show how your efforts both stopped unnecessary mistakes and established content for success from the moment it was published.
What Helps An SEO Resume Stand Out
Include any management experience, the number of direct reports and training hosted to show impact and recognition.
Whether you are applying for your first SEO job or looking to improve or renew your SEO startup, the list below covers all the essential, optional, and red flag components that will set you up for success in your job hunt.
Necessary Structural Components
Image created by the author, January 2022
While these may seem like obvious inclusions, there are a few things to note.
A full address would have been common in the beginning but is no longer needed as email is the primary method of communication.
If required by the employer, they request it in the application process.
Professional Experience And Skills
While details about these sections are included above, it is critical that the information you include is accurate for you and your experience and relevant to the job description.
Determine whether it is worthwhile to send different versions of your recruit to different companies based on job descriptions.
The time it will take should be worth the effort.
The placement of this section should depend on the level of professional experience you have had.
Keep it at the top of your recruit, below the contact information, if you are a recent degree or have not yet had a job with SEO-relevant skills.
Once your professional experience becomes relevant to the job you are applying for, run Education under it.
Direct experience is what the recruiter and hiring managers want to see first.
For each institution attended, including name of school, major / field of study, years attended, and degree (s) awarded.
If no degree has been awarded, summarize what has been studied but do not include the name or level of the degree.
Include any courses in SEO, copywriting, marketing, design, UX, dev / tech, or ungraded analytics that have trained and tested you in using the platform and / or awarded marketing certifications.
Optional Components Include
Add them to Skills or Experience if you took a course while employed to distinguish them from a degree-based education.
In general: The inclusion of these should go down to relevance.
If the awards represent the quality of the work, if the volunteering experience represents the quality of the character, and if the languages show a valuable skill, include them.
But if they take up too much space or look frivolous, limit them or remove them.
This is not necessary as your start should be the full representation of your work.
But sharing it can have other benefits.
You may have overlapping connections with company employees or their connections.
Or you may have published SEO or content marketing that shows you have taken the pulse of the industry.
Optional, But Not Recommended
If you include it, personalize your profile URL so that it is short and clearly contains your name.
In general: Do not include fluff or irrelevant content that will unnecessarily prolong your start and focus from your experience.
Expect readers to just start looking at the first page again so keep your relevant experience there.
Remove any of the above if you push the experience from the first page.
If you absolutely want to have two pages, put your skills, education, volunteering, and / or prizes on the second page.
Use a summary statement if you have something to add that is not obvious elsewhere in your summary.
Components That Will Negatively Impact Your Resume
But most people applying for the same job are more likely to want to call for similar qualities and qualifications, so a few statements can make you stand out from other candidates.
Assume that any company you apply to has re-reading software that can call errors or scan for plagiarism and remove you from management.
Using fonts that are too small and margins that are too narrow may seem visually unattractive and suggest that you have trouble editing your work.
Tiny margins can also prevent your startup from printing properly.
Don’t waste the reader’s time by going into irrelevant detail about past roles.
If you want to include a role to indicate a time gap, then limit it to the title, your employer, and the dates.
If you have been in the industry for more than two or three jobs, add back details from your first job (s) or internships.
Discontinuity And Short Term
While two years is no longer the standard of a tenure, staying for less than a year in various jobs can make you look unworthy of the investment a company plans to make in its new hires.
SEO Resume Examples
While there are good reasons for a short job (poorly suited, redundancies, better opportunities, etc …), you become less attractive if this is a clear trend in your work history.
Here are two examples of SEO re-use for inspiration. They incorporate titles, experience, achievements, skills and styles that help SEO to be noticed again.
You can also see how the formatting guidelines and the correct balance of the above components are represented on the paper.
Conclusion
If you choose to imitate them, be sure to change them and personalize them as much as possible.
There’s no question – writing a great resume takes serious work.
It is incredibly challenging to condense your entire professional and educational life into such a limited space.
Then you need to refine and condense more with each new position you get.
For SEO experts, this can be even more of a feat as the SEO industry has recently been recognized only as a full time job and not just a skill.
But by following these recommendations, connecting with others in the field, practicing explaining your role and achievements with non-SEOs, and pushing yourself to expand your knowledge of SEO, you will find making writing and talking about SEO more natural.
And most importantly, be just your organic self.
