How to become an SEO expert, according to HubSpot’s SEO team

Knowing how to become an SEO expert starts with a more basic question: Is SEO still a viable career? The answer is yes, and the path in is more open than many beginners expect. The role looks different than it did five years ago, reshaped by AI search and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT that have changed how people find information. But the core work of helping businesses get found in search hasn’t gone anywhere, and demand for people who can do it well remains strong.

A common myth is that SEO requires a computer science degree or deep technical chops. It doesn’t. Many of today’s most successful SEO professionals came from writing, content, or marketing backgrounds. Data and analysis are part of the role, but the skills that matter most early on are analytical thinking, clear communication, and a commitment to continuously learning SEO. A grasp of the modern search landscape, user intent, and the basics of how search engines work matters more than any single technical credential.

This guide walks through what a beginner needs to build a credible SEO career: the core skills and tools, certifications, hands-on experience, salary expectations, and how to keep that expertise current as AI continues to change the field.

Table of Contents

• What is an SEO expert?
• How to Become an SEO Expert
• Essential Skills for SEO Experts
• SEO Career Path and Salary Expectations

What is an SEO expert?

An SEO expert monitors search trends and uses analytics to help businesses build websites that rank highly in search engines, reach target audiences, and meet business objectives. The optimized websites they help create generate leads and drive conversions to support business growth.

Day-to-day, an SEO expert sits at the intersection of data, technology, and content, making the role as creative as it is technical. The day might start with a traffic report that flags a ranking drop caused by a technical issue, which means working with developers on a fix. SEO experts don’t always have the coding skills to resolve every issue themselves, so collaboration is part of the job.

By the afternoon, the same SEO expert could be on something highly creative. They may be building content plans and briefing the content team on keyword opportunities that could drive thousands of monthly visitors.

The day-to-day also shifts depending on the setting. In-house SEOs own organic search for a single brand and work closely with internal content and dev teams. Agency SEOs juggle multiple clients and site types at once. Freelancers and consultants handle the SEO work and run the business around it. The core skills carry across all three, but the rhythm of the work is different in each.

If you’re figuring out how to become an SEO expert, you need to know what a seasoned pro looks like.

A successful SEO expert:

• Has a well-rounded understanding of on-page, technical, and off-page SEO, and how each affects site performance independently and together.
• Understands how search engines and SERPs work, including indexing and crawling.
• Can run SEO-focused research, like keyword research or competitive analysis.
• Can analyze and report on SEO metrics, like clicks, conversions, and revenue, to make data-informed recommendations.
• Uses SEO tools like HubSpot, Semrush, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics.
• Knows how to create SEO-focused content that stays engaging for target audiences.
• Stays on top of search trends and algorithm updates that affect site performance.
• Creates SEO and AEO (answer engine optimization) strategies spanning keyword and content work, PR, and brand building.

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• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.

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What are an SEO expert’s job responsibilities?

An SEO expert’s core responsibilities span six areas: strategy and planning, technical optimization, content optimization, authority and link building, measurement and reporting, and cross-functional collaboration. The specifics vary by website and business, and no two SEO roles look the same, but these tasks hold true whether someone works in-house, at an agency, or as a freelancer.

Key SEO skills include on-page SEO, technical SEO, content strategy, analytics, and communication, but how these skills are applied depends on the environment in which the SEO specialist works.

In my experience: Having worked freelance, in-house, and with an agency, I’ve found SEO responsibilities stay broadly consistent, but how time is spent, who I’m accountable to, and the workload vary based on the team, the business, and its services. That’s especially true in agencies.

I spent years at an ecommerce agency, so a lot of my focus was on product SEO. Later, at an agency specializing in multilingual SEO and translation, much of my work involved multi-site setups, local SEO, and managing content translation and transcreation.

In-house teams sometimes outsource entire functions to contractors or agencies, so an in-house SEO might never touch certain parts of the discipline. SEO is one marketing discipline, but professionals can build entire careers around any single pillar within it. My advice: try as many parts of it as possible, notice what’s most engaging, and then specialize there.

How to Become an SEO Expert

1. Develop your skills.
2. Take a course and get certified.
3. Understand how search engines crawl and index content.
4. Gain perspective on what search engines value.
5. Understand SEO strategies and tactics and why they matter.
6. Research the field.
7. Find a method/tool that works for you.
8. Get familiar with data.
9. Regularly test your SEO knowledge.
10. Grow your network.

Learning how to become an SEO expert takes most people around 12 months, but that timeline depends entirely on practice. SEO is learned by doing, running real optimizations on real sites, not just reading about it.

The learning path isn’t strictly linear; most SEO specialists cycle through these stages rather than completing them in order.

Each step draws on real-life experience, mine as an SEO consultant, plus insights from Aja Frost, Victor Pan, and Amanda Edens Sellers, all SEO and optimization experts at HubSpot. These marketers shared what it takes to become an SEO expert and the paths they took to get there.

1. Develop your skills.

Building SEO skills is a continuous process. Algorithms change, so staying current is essential, and SEO has enough layers that no one masters them all at once.

Common SEO learning paths include self-study, structured courses, and agency or in-house experience. But no SEO expert picked up the required skills by reading alone. They got out there and practiced on real sites in real situations.

The SEO learning roadmap from learningseo.io gives a sense of how much ground there is to cover. It’s a useful map of how much ground SEO covers, and how the discipline keeps expanding into AI search. The roadmap breaks the path into stages:

• SEO fundamentals (keyword research, content and technical optimization, link building).
• Executing an SEO process.
• Working within a CMS.
• Deepening knowledge.
• Specializing within SEO.
• Automating tasks.
• Optimizing for other search engines and AI search.
• Keeping up with SEO news.
• And ongoing testing and troubleshooting.

Source

A good starting point is an existing skill. Content writers often grow into SEO as a natural extension of their work, and people from technical or developer backgrounds move the other way, picking up the content side as they go.

In my experience: No one knows much when they start. When I started in SEO, I was just working on my blog. I wrote an article about a niche topic (cycling in Azerbaijan; not a crowded field), and because the keyword was easy to rank for, the post landed at the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

I knew the basics, like keywords, title tags, and headings, from working at an ecommerce agency. I applied those foundational skills to my cycling site; the blog ranked number one, and I was hooked. I haven’t looked back since, and I’ve spent the years since learning what it takes to rank websites.

Others have similar stories. Before Aja Frost became an SEO strategist at HubSpot, she was the editor of HubSpot’s Sales Blog.

“I taught myself how to do keyword research and competitive analysis as the Editor for HubSpot’s Sales Blog,” Aja says. “The Sales Blog’s traffic had been flat for a year and a half — I noticed that the only posts that consistently generated views for us were getting all of those views from search. So I began looking for sales-related keywords we could rank for that would help boost organic traffic.”

Aja’s path from editorial work to SEO is a common one. Many SEO professionals start from a transferable skill and build outward from there.

Takeaway: The fastest way in is through an existing skill, like writing or coding, built outward through hands-on practice on real sites.

Recommended Resources

• Google Search Central is a great resource for technical and on-page SEO. Tools often have a supporting blog or resource libraries. Check out Sistrix, Semrush, or the HubSpot blog.
• Subreddits like r/SEO and r/bigseo are active.
• SEO experts post lessons and research on LinkedIn. Follow experts like Lily Ray, Kevin Indig, SEOFOMO by Aleyda Solís, or Rand Fishkin for a current and inspiring take on the industry.
• How to Teach Yourself SEO in 30 Days by HubSpot covers the essentials beginners need.
• The Essential SEO Tutorial for Thriving in the Age of AI-Driven Search by HubSpot is a fast primer on adapting to AI search.

2. Take a course and get certified.

SEO training is one of the fastest ways to build a structured base of knowledge, and one of the most accessible, since many of the best resources are free. Certifications give early-career SEOs two things: proof they’ve covered the fundamentals properly rather than piecing them together from scattered blog posts, and something concrete to show on a LinkedIn profile, an Upwork profile, or a resume before there’s a long track record of results to point to.

Taking the time also signals something to employers: a commitment to learning. More often than not, companies hiring for junior roles are looking for a good attitude and a willingness to grow, not just a checklist of skills already in place.

Source

Not all courses are created equal, so it’s worth choosing ones from credible sources. A few worth starting with are below.

In my experience: When Aja Frost did her initial SEO research, she found courses that led to certifications and opened more doors. As she puts it: “I read a ton of blog posts and eventually got my Google Analytics certification.” I started the same way, with mostly free courses. Early in my career,, I took Google Analytics courses, completed Google’s Skillshop marketing fundamentals, and earned Blue Array’s Technical SEO certification. Most are still listed on my LinkedIn today.

Recommended Resources

• HubSpot’s Free SEO Courses: A strong starting point covering SEO fundamentals, content strategy, and reporting, all free through HubSpot Academy, with a certificate at the end.
• Moz’s SEO Learning Center: Thorough, well-structured, and regularly updated; great for building knowledge across all SEO disciplines
• Google Analytics Academy: The go-to resource for getting comfortable with GA4, straight from Google
• Google Search Central: Google’s own documentation; authoritative, technical, and worth bookmarking early
• Yoast’s Academy: A free course with certification, plus a paid option for more access.

Don’t neglect AI search and answer engine optimization (AEO). A few resources to start with:

• HubSpot’s AI SEO Masterclass
• Coursera’s AI for Everyone
• Google’s AI Professional
• Microsoft’s AI Business Professional

Pro tip: The best digital marketing course is the one that helps build the skills to advance an SEO career.

Takeaway: Free, credible courses are the fastest way to cover the fundamentals and get a certification worth showing, especially early on. Don’t skip AEO.

3. Understand how search engines crawl and index content.

Search engines crawl and index content in three stages: they discover a page by following links and sitemaps (crawling), analyze and store what it’s about (indexing), and then surface it for relevant queries (ranking). Great content can’t do any of that work if a search engine can’t find, read, and understand the page first, which is why this process underpins everything an SEO professional does.

Search engines follow three primary functions:

1. Crawling, or discovering new and updated content by following links, reading sitemaps, and revisiting known pages.
2. Indexing, or analyzing the page, understanding what it’s about, and storing it in the search engine’s database.
3. Ranking, or surfacing the most relevant, high-quality results for a query.

Here’s a quick overview and what to expect from Google’s learning resources:

Visibility comes from rankings, but rankings can only happen after crawling and indexing. If a page isn’t crawled, it doesn’t get indexed; if it isn’t indexed, it can’t rank. No amount of great writing or smart keyword targeting will fix a fundamental crawlability problem.

This is why technical SEO matters from the start, even for beginners coming from a content background. An SEO professional doesn’t need to be a developer to understand site architecture, sitemaps, or crawl errors, but it is important to know they exist and why they matter.

As Amanda Edens Sellers, GTM Content Lead for AEO and SEO at HubSpot, puts it: “Becoming an expert SEO means understanding those functions and optimizing content in a way that serves users ... while keeping best practices in mind for crawling and indexing.”

Takeaway: Crawl, index, and rank are the starting points of all SEO. A page can’t rank if search engines can’t crawl and index it first, so technical basics matter even for content-focused beginners.

Recommended Resources

• The Ultimate Guide to Technical SEO by HubSpot: Comprehensive and beginner-friendly; a strong foundation for understanding the technical layer of SEO.
• How Search Engines Work by Moz: A clear, well-structured explanation of crawling, indexing, and ranking from one of the most trusted names in SEO.
• How Google Search Works by Google: Straight from the source; useful for understanding Google’s own explanation of its processes.
• Crawlability and Indexability by Semrush: Practical breakdown of what can prevent pages from being crawled or indexed.
• What Are Crawl Errors? by Yoast: A beginner-friendly explainer on identifying and fixing common crawl issues.

4. Gain perspective on what search engines value.

Search engines value content that returns the best possible result for a query. Working out what “best” means on each platform is a core part of an SEO professional’s job. For Google, it comes down to a few key signals.

• Meaning, or if he intent behind a query and how well a page matches what the searcher actually wants. This goes beyond keywords to the why behind the search.
• Relevance, or whether a page relates to that intent, including the use of relevant terms, topics, and context throughout the content.
• Quality. Google uses the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) to assess whether content is helpful, accurate, and created by someone with real knowledge of the subject.
• Usability, or the overall page experience (mobile-friendliness, navigation, and load speed), and how easy the page is to use once someone lands on it.
• Context and settings. A searcher’s past behavior, location, language, and device all shape the results they see. This matters most for local SEO, where context can change which results are most relevant.

Understanding these signals changes how SEO experts approach every decision, from content creation to technical fixes.

As Amanda Edens Sellers explains: “The better SEO professionals understand these big ideas, the better you’ll be able to understand the role ranking factors and SEO tactics play. With this context, you’ll be more effective at implementing SEO initiatives and diagnosing problems when they come up.”

Modern SEO professionals also need to look beyond Google. It’s still the main search engine, but users are increasingly turning to AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. There’s significant crossover in how these tools surface information, but the shift toward AI search is real, and staying aware of it matters.

HubSpot AEO helps marketers and SEO teams monitor where their brand appears in AI-generated answers, giving a clear picture of visibility across both traditional and AI search. As search behavior changes, knowing where a brand appears in AI search results is becoming as important as knowing where it ranks on Google.

Takeaway: Search engines reward content that matches intent, demonstrates E-E-A-T, and delivers a good page experience. Increasingly, that means optimizing for AI search alongside Google.

Recommended Resources

• The Ultimate Guide to SEO by HubSpot: A comprehensive, regularly updated resource covering every major aspect of SEO strategy and best practices.
• What is SEO by Search Engine Land: A comprehensive introduction to all things SEO.
• Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content by Google Search Central: Spells out exactly what good content looks like.
• How ChatGPT and Our Foundation Models Are Developed by OpenAI: How ChatGPT is trained.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.

Get Your Free Kit Learn more Get Your Free Kit

Download Free

All fields are required.

Form not available

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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5. Understand SEO strategies and tactics and why they matter.

Crawling and indexing get a site started, but strategy and tactics are what drive meaningful ranking results. The core SEO disciplines below, technical, on-page, keyword research, off-page, and other ranking factors, are the toolkit every aspiring SEO professional builds from.

As Amanda Edens Sellers explains: “Once a search engine can crawl and index a website, it then uses ranking factors and signals to gauge relevance, authority, trust, and experience. These then translate to the strategies SEOs can use to improve their content.”

• Technical SEO: Covers the behind-the-scenes optimizations that make a site accessible and readable to search engines. This includes fixing sitemap errors, resolving crawl issues, improving site speed, and managing structured data. Think of it as the groundwork on which everything else builds. (Indexability and crawlability)
• On-Page SEO: Focuses on optimizing individual pages so search engines understand their relevance and searchers find genuine value in them. This means strong title tags, clear header structure, purposeful internal linking, and content that goes beyond what’s already out there. (Relevance and search intent)
• Keyword Research: A core component of on-page SEO, keyword research involves analyzing search data to understand what an audience is actually looking for. That insight then shapes content strategy, helping create pages that are discoverable and useful. (Relevance and search intent)
• Off-Page SEO and Link Building: Search engines use the number and quality of external links pointing to a site as a signal of authority and trust. Building a strong backlink profile through digital PR, outreach, and content worth linking to is a long-term but high-impact discipline. (Authority and trust)
• Other Ranking Factors: Mobile usability, Core Web Vitals, page speed, and overall page experience all contribute to how search engines assess and rank content. These factors matter because search engines only want to send users to pages that actually work well. (Experience)

Knowing the basics of each discipline — technical, on-page, and off-page SEO, among other factors — is essential. Every SEO professional should get hands-on with the core disciplines above, then decide whether to go broad as a generalist or deep in a specialty.

In my experience: Over the years, I’ve worked across disciplines. As a writer-turned-SEO, my strength is content and strategy. I’m not as strong on the technical side as some, but my network fills that gap. As an on-page specialist, I work well with my husband, a former developer, who handles the heavier technical work when it’s beyond what I’d tackle confidently.

Takeaway: The core SEO disciplines, technical, on-page, keyword research, off-page, and ranking factors, all work together. Learn the basics of each before deciding where to specialize.

Recommended Resources

• The Ultimate Guide to Technical SEO by HubSpot: The go-to reference for understanding and implementing technical SEO.
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO by HubSpot: A practical, step-by-step guide to finding and prioritizing keywords that drive results.
• The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO by HubSpot: Covers every major on-page optimization factor with clear, actionable guidance.
• Link Building for SEO by HubSpot: A free lesson covering the fundamentals of building authority through backlinks.
• Off-Page SEO: What It Is & Why You Need It by HubSpot: A solid primer on the off-page signals that build domain authority over time.

6. Research the field.

SEO changes constantly, so researching the field is an ongoing part of the job, not a one-time step. Google rolls out core algorithm updates multiple times a year, and search behavior shifts as new technologies emerge. SEO professionals who build a reading habit early stay ahead of those changes instead of being caught off guard by them.

Moz’s algorithm update history illustrates how often the algorithm adapts. The hotter the days (represented in red), the more movement recorded in Google SERPs.

Source

When Aja Frost noticed that the HubSpot Sales Blog traffic had plateaued, it was research that helped her diagnose the problem: the content wasn’t matching what audiences were actually searching for. The fix wasn’t more content; it was better-informed content, shaped by what the data and the search landscape were showing.

Victor Pan, Principal AEO Technical Strategist at HubSpot and a nearly 10-year veteran of the company, credits consistent reading as one of the most important habits in his development.

“I used to be a voracious reader on all publicly available information on SEO. I had an RSS feed of search-related blogs and news websites I would go through for a whole hour every day. Mere exposure to ideas makes unknown problems in SEO easier to tackle when you have other people’s experiences or frameworks to build from,” he says.

An hour a day might not be realistic for everyone starting out, but even 15 to 20 minutes of intentional reading each day compounds quickly. The goal isn’t to read everything; it’s to stay close enough to the industry that algorithm updates, new ranking signals, and emerging best practices don’t catch anyone off guard.

In my experience: My advice on reading is to make time for long-form content, not just short-form videos or social posts. It’s easy to skim the highlights and miss the details with short-form.

I’d also recommend reading about search beyond traditional engines, such as on AI tools and social platforms. Broadening that knowledge helps SEO teams work with other parts of marketing and integrate strategies more effectively. For example, SEO teams can integrate social media findings, like content that resonates with audiences, into content plans.

Takeaway: SEO changes fast, so build a regular reading habit early. Even 15–20 minutes a day of quality sources is enough to stay ahead of algorithm updates and emerging shifts like AI search.

Recommended Resources

• Google Search Central Blog: The primary source for official Google algorithm updates and search guidance; essential reading for any practicing SEO.
• Search Engine Journal: Covers breaking SEO news, algorithm updates, and practitioner-level strategy across all disciplines.
• Search Engine Land: Another go-to for timely industry news and in-depth SEO analysis.
• Semrush Blog: Broad coverage of SEO topics focusing strongly on practical application and current best practices.
• Mozcast: A fun way of reporting on potential, current, and past algorithmic changes.
• Google’s Search Status Dashboard: The status of any current and historic algorithm updates.
• Ahrefs Blog: Consistently high-quality, data-backed content covering SEO strategy, experiments, and tool usage

7. Find a method/tool that works for you.

The best SEO tool is the one that actually gets used. Plenty of solid options are free, making them a perfect starting point. The goal early on is to build a small, reliable core toolkit and expand it as skills grow.

Every SEO professional ends up with a personal set of tools they rely on, and that toolkit usually takes shape through experimentation. The goal at this stage isn’t to master every platform on the market; it’s to find a reliable combination that covers the core workflows: keyword research, site auditing, rank tracking, and performance reporting.

Aja Frost’s experience is a good example of how this works in practice: “My reading led me to experiment with Semrush, AnswerThePublic, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and, of course, HubSpot’s own SEO tools.”

In my experience: Over the years, I’ve bounced between tools until I found what I liked. I tested Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and Semrush, then settled on Semrush. I tried Sitebulb and Screaming Frog and stuck with Screaming Frog. All of these are excellent tools; in the end, preference was the deciding factor.

A sensible starting stack for beginner SEOs looks something like this.

• Google Search Console: A must-have. It’s free, authoritative, and essential. The first tool any SEO professional should get comfortable with.
• Google Analytics 4: Pairs with Search Console to provide a complete picture of organic performance and user behavior.
• HubSpot’s SEO Tools: Built into the HubSpot platform, these tools help with topic cluster planning, on-page optimization, and tracking organic performance without switching between multiple platforms.
• Semrush or Ahrefs: The two most widely used professional platforms for keyword research, competitor analysis, and backlink auditing. Both have free tiers worth exploring before committing. SE Ranking is a great, more affordable alternative.
• AnswerThePublic: A useful tool for understanding the questions and subtopics surrounding any keyword, particularly helpful when planning content.

Takeaway: Start with a small free core tool (Search Console and GA4), add a professional tool like Semrush or Ahrefs as you grow, and pick based on what you’ll actually use.

Recommended Resources

• 32 of the Best SEO Tools for Auditing & Monitoring Your Website by HubSpot: A comprehensive roundup covering tools for every SEO use case and experience level.
• 16 AI SEO Tools and How to Use AI by HubSpot: A practical guide to the AI-powered tools reshaping SEO workflows.

8. Get familiar with data.

SEO without data is guesswork, and guesswork doesn’t hold up in front of stakeholders who want proof that their investment is paying off. Learning to read and interpret core metrics is what turns observations into strategy. The metrics below are the ones worth understanding early.

• Positioning: How close to the top a page appears in the SERPs. Position one gets more clicks than position ten dramatically, even if both pages are on the first page.
• Impressions: How many times a page appeared in search results for a given query. A high amount of impressions with a low amount of clicks often signals a title tag or meta description problem worth investigating.
• Clicks: How many times a page was clicked on from the SERPs. Comparing clicks to impressions reveals how compelling a result looks to searchers.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): What percentage of impressions resulted in a click. A low CTR on a high-impression page is one of the fastest optimization opportunities to identify.
• Organic Sessions: The number of times a page was visited via organic search. This is the metric that most directly reflects the real-world impact of SEO efforts.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of organic visitors who completed a desired action, like filling out a form or downloading a resource. Ultimately, this is the metric that connects SEO performance to business outcomes.

As Amanda Edens Sellers explains: “Each of these things measures a different aspect of search behavior. You can use them to gain valuable insights that can drive your strategy. In addition, it’s important to drill down and filter so that your data tells a more complete story.”

Pro tip: Track conversions from organic/traditional SEO separately from AEO/AI search, so the value of each is clear. As AI search evolves, stakeholders want to know their SEO professionals are on top of it. HubSpot AEO provides insights into where a brand is showing up in AI answers, making it possible to measure the impact of AEO activity alongside traditional SEO performance.

Takeaway: Learn to read core metrics like clicks, CTR, organic sessions, and conversion rate, and track SEO and AEO conversions separately to show the value of each.

Recommended Resources

• The Ultimate Guide to Google Search Console by HubSpot: A thorough walkthrough of every major Search Console feature and how to use it for SEO decision-making.
• The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics by HubSpot: Covers GA4 setup, reporting, and how to extract actionable SEO insights from organic traffic data.
• How to Use SEO Data to Make Better Decisions by HubSpot: A practical guide to turning SEO metrics into decisions.
• Tracking SEO Performance and Actionable Insights from Google Analytics by Moz: A practical framework for building a reporting workflow that connects SEO activity to meaningful outcomes
• GA4 Course by Kyle Rushton-McGregor: A paid resource, but he keeps it updated. Plus, Kyle’s free blog.
• Which SEO Metrics Matter Most to Marketing Leaders, According to Semrush’s VP of Brand Marketing by HubSpot: An expert take on the metrics leadership actually cares about.

9. Regularly test your SEO knowledge.

SEO rewards curiosity. No one knows exactly what goes into the algorithm, so testing is how SEO professionals find out what actually works. Running experiments is one of the fastest ways to turn knowledge into real understanding.

Victor Pan puts it plainly: “I test a lot of things to refine my SEO expertise. Should your brand be in your title tags? Is internal anchor text worthwhile to move rankings? What happens when you purchase fake social signals — do you see an increase in organic traffic? Failed experiments taught me just as much as successful ones, and they made me a much more confident SEO when I improved content. Just because, in one instance, making a change resulted in an improvement, doesn’t mean that change in another place will also result in an improvement, which is why we have to test and grasp causation over just correlation.”

SEO testing isn’t just about finding what works; it’s about understanding why it works, and whether it’ll work again in a different context.

Practical SEO experience can come from personal websites, freelance projects, internships, and in-house marketing work, all of which provide the real-world testing ground that no course or certification can replicate.

In my experience: A personal blog has been one of my most valuable learning tools, as a beginner and even now. It’s a low-stakes environment for running experiments, making mistakes, and watching the results without client pressure or business risk. As a bonus, my blog makes a little money each year.

Takeaway: Test your knowledge by running real experiments. A personal blog or side project is a low-stakes place to learn what works and, just as important, why.

Recommended Resources

• SearchPilot: A platform built specifically for running SEO A/B tests at scale; useful for understanding the method even before running formal experiments.
• Microsoft Clarity: Free heat mapping software that shows how users are interacting with a website.
• SEO experts on LinkedIn who share their research and expertise. Look for Lily Ray, Kevin Indig, Matt Diggity, Aleyda Solis, Michael King, and others.
• Semrush and Ahrefs often share detailed experiments within their blogs, too.

10. Grow your network.

Building a professional network accelerates learning in ways self-study can’t. Becoming a strong SEO professional isn’t only about what’s learned independently; it’s about who shares knowledge, challenges assumptions, and opens doors along the way. The SEO community is notably generous, and there are plenty of ways to tap into it without attending a single conference.

• Reddit communities like r/SEO and r/bigseo are regularly populated with real questions and candid answers from working professionals at every level.
• X remains a space where SEO experts share quick insights, test reactions to industry news, and engage in the kind of off-the-cuff thinking that doesn’t always make it into formal blog posts.
• Online communities: Women can join Women in Tech SEO on Slack or Sisters in SEO on Facebook to connect with other women in SEO. There’s also Noah Learners’ SEO Community and Liam Fallen’s OptOut Community, which welcome all.

In my experience: I can vouch for learning through online communities, though I’m much less active on X these days. Reddit, LinkedIn, and SEO groups have been essential to my growth as a professional.

SEO is subjective — what works on one website might not work on another — and part of the job is weighing the risks of strategies that can make or break a website. A second opinion helps, and an online network provides exactly that. People active in these communities also tend to meet others with complementary skills, like a great writer who turns SEO briefs into magic.

Takeaway: Networking accelerates everything. Start with free online communities like Reddit and LinkedIn, then add conferences later. The SEO community is unusually generous with help.

For those ready to connect with the SEO community in the real world, these industry conferences are excellent:

• BrightonSEO: One of the world’s largest SEO conferences; also publishes talk recordings and resources for those who can’t attend in person
• MozCon: A highly respected annual SEO conference with a strong focus on practitioner-led insights and emerging trends
• HubSpot’s Unbound: A marketing and sales conference focused on strategy, AI, content marketing, and growth, featuring industry leaders, hands-on sessions, and practical insights for modern digital marketers

Quick Start Checklist for Beginner SEOs

Learning how to become an SEO expert from scratch? Beginner SEOs can start with a handful of simple, concrete actions. The checklist below distills the steps above into the first moves anyone can take this week:

• Set up the free essentials. Create Google Search Console and GA4 accounts and connect them to a website, even a personal blog.
• Take one free course. Start with HubSpot Academy or Moz’s SEO Learning Center to cover the fundamentals and earn a certificate.
• Learn crawl, index, rank. Understand how search engines discover and store pages before anything else.
• Pick a practice site. Use a personal blog or side project as a low-stakes place to apply what you learn.
• Run keyword research. Find a low-competition keyword and write a page targeting it.
• Build a reading habit. Spend 15–20 minutes a day on a few trusted SEO sources.
• Track results. Watch impressions, clicks, and rankings in Search Console, and note what moves them.
• Join one community. Follow r/SEO, LinkedIn SEO voices, or a Slack group to ask questions and learn from others.
• Don’t skip AI search. Start paying attention to how brands show up in AI answers, not just traditional rankings.

Essential Skills for SEO Experts

Becoming an SEO specialist means combining hard and soft skills. Hard skills are technical, measurable capabilities learned through practice, such as conducting a site audit or developing a keyword strategy. Soft skills are the instincts and interpersonal strengths that shape how those findings get applied, like communicating a ranking drop to a skeptical executive or judging whether content actually deserves to rank.

The capabilities below are the core set every aspiring SEO expert should build, grouped by category.

On-page and Content Skills

Creating, structuring, and optimizing content that serves both search engines and real people is one of the most valuable skills an SEO specialist can develop. Anyone can learn to place keywords in content, but turning that into results takes someone who understands audiences and what engaging content looks like.

Here are some examples of skills that fall under on-page and content.

• Keyword Research: The ability to find, evaluate, and prioritize keywords based on search volume and relevance is one of the most essential SEO skills.
• Search Intent Mapping: Before writing or optimizing a single word, strong SEOs identify which type of content matches the query, whether the search intent is informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. Getting this right is often the difference between ranking and not ranking, because it determines what kind of content to create.
• On-Page Optimization: Knowing how to craft compelling title tags, meta descriptions, H1s, and header structures that clearly signal relevance to search engines without sacrificing readability for the actual human clicking through.
• Content Gap Analysis: Identifying topics competitors rank for that a site doesn’t yet rank for. This is one of the fastest ways to find new ranking opportunities and shape an editorial roadmap.
• Internal Linking Strategy: Understanding how to connect related content across a site in a way that distributes authority, improves crawlability, and guides users deeper into the site’s content.
• Content Refreshing and Optimization: Knowing when to update a page instead of creating new content, and how to refresh it so it signals improved quality to search engines. This delivers outsized returns for relatively low effort.

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Technical Skills

The technical side of SEO is learnable even without a background in web development or data. It’s possible to become an SEO specialist without knowing how to code entire websites; that’s what SEO teams partner with developers for. The fundamentals below are the place to start.

• Technical SEO Fundamentals: Core technical SEO knowledge, including how crawling and indexing work, how to read a site audit, how to identify and fix broken links, redirect chains, and duplicate content, is what sets strong SEO professionals apart.
• CMS Familiarity: Most SEO work happens inside a content management system. Getting comfortable with WordPress, HubSpot CMS, or similar platforms means SEO teams can implement optimizations without always relying on a developer.
• Basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Literacy: SEO professionals don’t need to be developers, but understanding basic markup, such as how a heading tag works, what a canonical tag does, and how JavaScript can block crawling, makes SEO professionals more efficient when working with technical teams.

For SEO experts who don’t have in-depth technical knowledge, much of technical SEO is handled by tools. Tools don’t just fill a knowledge gap; they also help analyze pages continuously and at scale.

Competency with SEO Tools

Mastering every SEO tool on the market isn’t necessary to start. Building the core skills for SEO and pairing them with the right SEO tools, ones that cover research, auditing, and reporting, matters more than breadth, and the toolkit can grow as those skills do. A solid beginner toolkit looks like this:

• Google Search Console (Free): The single most important tool for any SEO. It shows which queries drive traffic, which pages are indexed, and where technical issues are hiding.
• Google Analytics 4 (Free): Pairs with Search Console for a full picture of user behavior, sessions, engagement rate, and conversion paths.
• Ahrefs or Semrush: The two most widely used professional SEO tools for keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, and site auditing. Both have beginner-friendly interfaces.
• Screaming Frog (Free up to 500 URLs): A crawling tool that mimics how search engines see a site. Useful for spotting broken links, missing meta tags, and redirect chains. Good for building technical SEO skills.
• HubSpot SEO Tools: Built into the HubSpot CMS, HubSpot’s SEO tools help specialists find topic clusters, optimize pages, and track organic performance without leaving the platform they publish in.
• HubSpot AEO: As AI-generated answers become a bigger part of how users discover brands, HubSpot AEO shows SEO and marketing teams where their brand is cited in AI search results, covering a channel traditional rank trackers miss. Best for SEO professionals seeking visibility across both traditional search and AI-driven answers.
• Surfer or Clearscope: Content optimization tools that help align writing with what’s currently ranking. Great for beginners who want data-backed guidance on structure and keyword usage.

Soft Skills

SEO requires collaboration, communication, and the ability to make sense of ambiguous data.

• Analytical Thinking: SEO generates a lot of data. The ability to look at a traffic drop, a ranking shift, or a conversion dip and ask the right questions, rather than jumping to conclusions, is what separates reactive SEOs from strategic ones.
• Communication: SEO recommendations are only valuable if they are implemented. That means translating technical findings into plain language for developers, executives, and content teams who may not share their vocabulary.
• Adaptability: Search algorithms change. AI is reshaping how results are surfaced. Strategies that worked last year may need rethinking today. The best SEO professionals treat change as a constant and stay curious rather than defensive.
• Project Management: An SEO roadmap can involve dozens of moving parts across multiple teams. Staying organized, setting priorities, and tracking progress is a skill that separates SEO experts from SEO hobbyists.
• Content Judgment: Knowing what makes content useful, not just keyword-optimized, is increasingly critical as search engines get better at rewarding quality. Strong SEOs can assess a piece of content and spot what’s missing.

SEO Career Path and Salary Expectations

SEO offers a clear career path, whether the goal is climbing the ladder at a large brand, building expertise at an agency, or going independent as a consultant. And despite the disruption from AI, the evidence suggests SEO salary potential is stronger than many people expect. SEO specialists have been adapting to changes in search for years; staying current is simply part of the job. If search marketing feels like a good fit, it’s a career worth pursuing.

SEO Job Titles and Career Progression

Most search engine optimization career paths follow a recognizable progression, even if the specific titles vary by company size and industry:

• SEO Coordinator/Junior SEO Specialist: Entry-level roles focused on executing defined tasks: optimizing meta tags, conducting keyword research, supporting content teams, and learning to interpret basic reporting data. The priority at this stage is to build core skills and get comfortable with the primary tools.
• SEO Specialist/SEO Analyst: Mid-level roles with greater ownership over specific channels or projects. An SEO specialist at this level typically runs audits independently, manages content optimization workflows, builds reports, and contributes to strategy conversations.
• Senior SEO Specialist/SEO Manager: Senior contributors who own the strategy for a channel, vertical, or full site. This level involves cross-functional collaboration, stakeholder communication, and the translation of SEO data into business recommendations.
• SEO Director/Head of SEO: Leadership roles responsible for team management, budget ownership, and aligning SEO strategy with broader marketing and business objectives. At this level, the SEO job is as much about influence and communication as it is about technical execution.
• VP of SEO/Chief Marketing Officer: Executive-level roles where SEO sits alongside broader digital marketing, content, and growth functions. Not every SEO career reaches this tier, but for those who combine deep expertise with strong business acumen, it’s a realistic destination.

SEO Salary by Experience Level

SEO salary ranges vary significantly depending on location, company size, and specialization, but the broad bands below reflect typical compensation in the US market as of 2026:

Data Source: Ranges aggregated from current US salary data (Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter), as of 2026.

SEO salaries are affected by variables like:

• Location. SEO salaries in major US tech hubs like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle tend to run 20–40% higher than national averages. Remote roles have compressed this gap somewhat, but location still plays a role in many compensation structures.
• Company type. In-house roles at large consumer brands or tech companies typically offer higher base salaries and benefits packages than agency roles, which often compensate with faster skill development and broader exposure. Freelance and consulting rates can exceed both, but come without the stability of a salaried position.
• Specialization. SEO professionals with strong data or engineering literacy, or with a lot of experience in any one pillar, tend to command higher salaries.
• Industry. SEO roles in finance, SaaS, legal, and e-commerce tend to pay more than those in publishing, nonprofit, or local services, largely because the revenue impact of organic search is more directly measurable and more significant in those sectors.

SEO Career Tracks: In-House, Agency, and Freelance

There’s no single right way to build an SEO career, and the best track depends on learning style, career goals, and personal priorities. Here’s how the three main paths compare:

In-house SEO

Working as an in-house SEO means owning the organic search performance of a single brand or website.

• Pros: The advantage is depth. In-house professionals develop an intimate understanding of one business, its audience, and its competitive landscape.
• Cons: Exposure to different industries, site types, and SEO challenges is more limited than in an agency setting. If working in a startup that relies on SEO for growth, the SEO professional may need extensive experience to deliver results, as there may be no one else to set the strategy and know what works.
• Best for: SEO professionals who want ownership, cross-functional collaboration, and the satisfaction of seeing long-term results compound on a single site.

In my experience: Working in-house was my least favorite setting, partly because I had internal SEO roles as a junior and there wasn’t a group of experts to help me grow. My experience and learning opportunities improved when I moved to an agency.

Agency SEO

Agency SEOs work across multiple clients simultaneously, accelerating skill development and providing broad exposure to different industries, site architectures, and business models.

• Pros: Experience across a wide range of SEO strategies and industries. Many agencies also offer other services like paid advertising, which helps in understanding how SEO fits into the wider marketing ecosystem.
• Cons: The fast pace and juggling many clients can be a lot to handle, and an SEO professional’s time can end up thinly spread.
• Best for: Early-career SEOs who want to build skills quickly, or experienced professionals who thrive on variety and client-facing work.

In my experience: I had some of the best years of my career working at an agency. I learned a huge amount about SEO and marketing, and worked alongside some of the most talented marketers I’ve known, who helped me grow.

Freelance and Consulting

Freelance SEO offers the greatest flexibility and, at senior levels, the highest earning potential.

• Pros: Experienced consultants can command day rates or retainers that significantly exceed equivalent salaried roles.
• Cons: SEO consultants are responsible for keeping a business going, which means finding clients, managing contracts, handling taxes, and navigating the income variability that comes with project-based work.
• Best for: Experienced SEO professionals with a strong network, a defined area of expertise, and the appetite for independent work.

In my experience: Consulting is by far my favorite era of my SEO career, but I wouldn’t be here without the years spent in-house and especially at leading digital agencies. The key to freelancing is having the soft skills to manage clients and a track record that shows value. Over the years, I’ve built a strong portfolio of client success stories, which has helped me close bigger and better deals.

Pro tip: An SEO portfolio should show goals, actions, tools used, metrics, and outcomes. Build a clear picture of what a client’s website needed to achieve and how it was accomplished, and support the case study with data.

Is SEO still a good career in the age of AI?

SEO is evolving, not disappearing. AI search and answer engines are changing how people find information, but they haven’t removed the need for brands to be discoverable or for someone who understands how that discovery works.

If anything, as AI-generated content floods the web, human judgment about quality and relevance becomes more valuable. The SEO professionals best positioned for a long career are the ones who stay curious and adapt, especially those who learn answer engine optimization alongside traditional SEO.

A career in SEO is a strong choice, even with AI.

AI is reshaping SEO, but the fundamentals hold: brands still need to be found, and people still search. Content marketers need to figure out how to become an SEO expert. As AI-generated content floods the web, the ability to create and optimize content that stands out is becoming more valuable, not less.

So don’t hold back. Start with any of the recommendations and resources in this article, and most importantly, get practicing on your own website. You can build pages with HubSpot, then use HubSpot’s SEO recommendations to improve them; the tool breaks down what to fix, why it matters, and how to do it.

Finally, don’t neglect AI search. The shift toward AI-generated answers is already underway, and the SEO professionals who thrive will be those who know where their brand stands in this new landscape. HubSpot AEO helps teams track brand visibility in AI answers, identify citation opportunities, and measure the impact of AEO efforts alongside traditional SEO. It’s built for the search environment emerging right now.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.

Get Your Free Kit Learn more Get Your Free Kit

Download Free

All fields are required.

Form not available

You're all set!

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