According to a 2020 Microsoft study on the trends in marketing skills considered important for the 2020s, SEO was named the most important hard skill. The relevance of SEO in marketing now seems to be recognized. However, there are some differences between corporations and agencies in this area, and there are often still various stumbling blocks in collaboration between different departments. Claneo founder Maggie Mues reveals in an interview why this is the case, what requirements good SEOs should fulfill, and where problems often arise.
What are your experiences so far working as an SEO in a large company and in an agency? What are the biggest differences?
Maggie : In corporations, decisions typically take much longer to make. Agencies are more known for making decisions quickly, acting quickly, and delivering results quickly.
And what do you consider the requirements for a good SEO? What does such a person ghana phone number data need to bring to the table, and what does that entail?
Maggie : In my experience, the requirements profile of a good SEO is quite diverse, as there are many different areas in which you work in SEO. There's the strategic area, where you definitely need to keep an overview of market developments and be able to analyze data well. But networking is also important for connecting with other people in the company and learning what's happening in other departments. Do I need to keep my ears open? Do I need to get involved in some way because they're talking about things that could negatively impact SEO?
In the field of technical SEO, it's also definitely an advantage if you can program yourself or at least understand how developers work. This involves working with very large amounts of data. You need to be able to familiarize yourself with all kinds of tools and know exactly which tools provide which data, as well as how to interpret and work with that data.
Are there other areas an SEO should be familiar with?
Maggie : There's also the content area, which involves creating and optimizing content—text, images, videos. Here, you should have good grammar skills, a certain aptitude for spelling and implementation, and not just the knowledge you learned in school. You should also be able to delve deeply into a wide variety of topics and then write texts in such a way that they're not just superficial, but actually answer all the questions users type into a search engine.
What about the off-page area?
Maggie : Yes, this area is also very important and is increasingly merging with content marketing. In this field, a person should be very communicative and have good organizational and networking skills, as it's heavily focused on PR work. You usually need to have a lot of irons in the fire and be able to manage your partnerships and collaborations well.