Author: Petra Kis-Herczegh
How do you set a five-year plan when you don’t know what the industry will look like in six months? Even at the conference level of the SEO industry, expert speakers regularly have to update their presentations to account for the latest updates.
Job descriptions are constantly shifting, requiring SEOs to cover more within their skillset, from creative copywriting to engineering machine learning algorithms and prompting AI tools. So, how do you keep up to date with it all?
The answer is simple—become really good at learning—but the execution requires attention to detail. Whether that’s learning to adapt, learning from others, learning from your own mistakes, or learning how you learn best, this process should be the first thing on your mind when you think of career development.
In this article, I’m going to cover some key elements you can start focusing on to kickstart your career progression. In each category, experts from the industry have weighed in to share their experience.
Table of contents:
Lead with your transferable skills
“You don’t have to know what you want to do in two years’ time. Actually, that kind of rigidity can make you miss opportunities in front of you. Like life, careers are fluid. You might start in SEO but find you build skills that move you into analytics, performance marketing, product, development, or more. You'll learn more by diversifying and leaning into your strongest skills instead of chasing a constant linear progression.” — Samantha Verge, Marketing Manager at PitPat
Embracing lifelong learning is the most beneficial thing you can do to continuously progress your career. Generally speaking, the most effective approach for this is to start with your existing, transferable skills.
If you ask experienced SEOs whether they ‘wanted’ to learn Google Analytics 4 (GA4), most would tell you that they didn’t, but oftentimes we just don’t have a choice. In times like this, a strong understanding of your transferable skills is extremely useful.
Let’s say you’re tasked to recreate SEO reports from Universal Analytics (UA) in GA4.
If you have strong analytical skills, you might want to start your learning by exploring the new metrics, how they are collected, and how they are grouped. If you’re familiar with learning and exploring new databases, you might find that this approach makes it much easier to create new reports (compared to creating exact replicas of UA reports).
Or, if you’re more user- and solution-minded, you could start by noting the purpose of each report and the problem(s) they solve, and then start your learning by exploring how GA4 can answer those very same questions.
However, it’s hard to tell what’s hype and what’s here to stay when it comes to digital marketing skills, and skills can become requirements almost overnight. When that happens, you have two options:
Accept, adapt, and learn the skills required to continue on your path.
Shift your career towards the things you enjoy learning about.
Either way, learning is required, which is why it helps to understand a little bit more about how we, as people, learn.
Imagine your brain as an air traffic network. The airlines represent your expertise in different areas and the routes are the skills required. Routes in high demand will become more efficient, while routes that are no longer required might get abandoned. Imagine what has to happen when there’s suddenly a demand for new skills.
That’s learning. When picking up a new skill, it’s best to initially lean on your existing, transferable skills—in our air traffic example (above), that means relying on existing routes. Perhaps going directly from A to B requires a lot more investment than to use existing routes to go from A to C and then C to B.
There’s certainly more than one way to learn new job skills, but no matter how you choose to approach it, weigh out your motivation, the investment you’re willing to make, and the transferable skills that can help you get there.
Optimize your learning through self-efficacy
“It was humbling to begin my SEO career in my thirties at such a junior level, and imposter syndrome was a big factor. Initially, I constantly reminded myself that I had been successful in both of my previous careers (as a teacher and journalist) and that both required continuous learning—something I had done many times before and knew I would have to do countless times again in my life. So, I leaned in and eventually minor successes gave me the confidence to take on bigger responsibilities, and now I’ve managed my own SEO publication for over two years.” — George Nguyen, Editor-in-Chief, Wix SEO Learning Hub
To better understand your motivations, the investment required and your transferable skills, you need to understand self-efficacy (i.e., your belief in your capacity to execute the behaviors necessary to reach a specific level of performance, according to the APA).
Self-efficacy is basically your confidence in what you know and what you can learn. They go hand-in-hand: learning improves self-efficacy and self-efficacy improves learning.
The connection between these concepts can play out in two distinct ways:
Self-limiting beliefs — This refers to when your low self-efficacy prevents you from learning something new. Let’s say you want to apply for a job but, after reading the job description, you feel unqualified, and so you don’t apply. Obviously, that means you won’t go through the interview process and you definitely won’t get the job, which means you lost out on a learning experience as well as potential a job offer. Buck this pattern by shifting your mindset to focus on the process. There are also a number of factors that could help you conquer self-limiting beliefs, such as peer support and external demands. You might have someone refer you for a role you otherwise wouldn’t have applied for. Whether you get the job or not, the process should yield some useful feedback that you can learn from.
Self-fulfilling beliefs — Eventually, as you undergo more learning experiences, your self-efficacy improves, and the process becomes smoother and less intimidating. If required digital marketing skills keep changing every year, then the only way to keep up is to ensure your self-efficacy serves you well. It’s similar to how you need to understand the business you’re working for in order to come up with an effective SEO strategy. The better you understand how things work (and how you work), the environment you are operating in, and the people you work with, the more effective you will become despite Google updates and market shifts.
It takes self awareness, self discovery, and a good amount of reflection to accurately judge what skills are relevant for your career. Page experience, NFTs, generative AI—there’s always hype around what’s new in digital marketing, but don’t get distracted—make sure to consider your own unique personality and confidence as a key factor for prioritization, because that’s what self-efficacy is.
Build an authentic personal brand
People often think building a personal brand is all about ‘raising your profile’ and becoming known in your industry, which can be a part of it, but is this really why you should do it?
Just like branding for businesses, your personal brand needs consistency, so it’s important to define why you’re building your personal brand.
If you think of personal branding within the role of career progression, the goal is to form meaningful connections because these will help open up relevant opportunities. Whether that’s an opportunity to learn something new, support someone else’s progression, find your next role, or even to start a business with someone. The keyword here is relevance—which, as an SEO, you should already be very familiar with.
“In the beginning, I didn't understand the true importance of crafting a distinct personal brand. It has allowed me to build relationships and improve my speaking and networking skills in public, whilst in private I focus on sharpening my tactical skills. This has really helped push my career forward. So, my words of advice for anyone reading this, and thinking about it is to put effort into building that personal brand. Share your expertise, connect with your audience across various platforms, and don't be afraid to admit when you get things wrong and be prepared to learn from others. This has really helped push my career forward.” — Azeem Ahmad, Digital Marketing Consultant & Podcast Host, Azeem Digital Asks
Try things that help you connect with others in the industry. These could (but doesn’t necessarily have to) include:
Speaking at industry events
Hosting a podcast
Participating in industry conversations on social platforms,
Contributing to blogs (or starting your own) to share expertise
Engage in company initiatives that resonate with you or suggest initiatives that don’t exist today but might be a good way to connect with likeminded people in the industry. Join communities and participate in them, or even create your own. Share, empower, support, and ask for support.
This could also be something on a smaller scale, but much more relevant to your direct environment, such as creating a workshop within your company to share a useful skill or presenting the result of your work to the wider team or department. There are so many different ways to build your personal brand, but no matter how you approach it, make sure that it resonates and works for you (because, again, personal branding is about being genuine to who you are).
“At the start of my career, I thought that being knowledgeable about and skilled in all areas of SEO and beyond, (e.g., coding), would be absolutely necessary for progression, however with time I realized that an understanding is of course needed but it is better to find your strengths and focus on that. Whether that leads you to specializing in tech SEO, following a leadership route, or one of the newer paths (maybe becoming an SEO product manager). Whatever you choose, one thing is clear: purely having hard skills will not be enough. You need to work on your soft skills too.” — Vanda Pokecz, SEO Lead, Global Savings Group
Use your interpersonal skills to invest in relationships
Finding it hard to learn something new? A supportive community (or just a friend) cheering you on can make a huge difference. Trying to get recommendations implemented for a technical project? You’ll need the trust and support of your stakeholders and decision-makers. Want to get promoted? Start by assessing the impact you currently make on the people around you. At the end of the day (or quarter), when it comes to your promotion it’s still going to be people making those decisions—not algorithms.
“Human connections matter just as much as technical skills. Initially, I prioritized expertise, thinking it was the key. However, I've come to see that people want to work with those they genuinely enjoy being around—not just someone competent. The skills get you in the door for the interview; how you relate to others determines if you will thrive or not. SEO is a highly collaborative discipline requiring close coordination across teams. No matter how bright someone is, if coworkers find them difficult or demotivating, it influences how the project is going to go.” — Myriam Jessier, Co-founder of Neurospicy Agency
Interpersonal skills, often also referred to as ‘soft skills,’ are an essential part of any role.
The main goal of soft skills is to improve your connections. So it’s no surprise that it’s one of the crucial things to focus on when thinking about career progression. Are you considering becoming a team lead in the future? Make sure to start emphasizing the people element of the role, because being a successful leader means you’re able to empower your team and help them grow.
“Initially, I did not place enough value on my soft skills. I was focused on developing my technical skills, I even contemplated learning to code (massive lol). In the end, it was my soft skills that really highlighted my value as a manager. My ability to coach and mentor others, instilling confidence and fostering growth, proved invaluable. Additionally, skills such as driving commercial outcomes, educating stakeholders on the value of SEO, and upselling were also key to career progression.” — Miracle Inameti-Archibong, Head of Organic Search, John Lewis Finance
Soft skills also come in handy when securing buy-in. While data might convince your stakeholders about your project, I’m going to bet that you won’t get the buy-in you need if you haven’t built respect and credibility through connections. When I asked Travis Tallent, VP of SEO at Brainlabs about his biggest surprise learning in SEO, he said:
“Getting buy-in from colleagues. My first agency experience was quite competitive (in a friendly way), and it built a ‘me vs. them’ mentality. This led to me avoiding folks who I didn't enjoy working with. In my subsequent career moves, I realized that winning influence ultimately means building close relationships—even with folks who aren't natural fits for you—and understanding what motivates them. I've found that when I can align their goals with my goals, it's a win-win for everyone. Beyond, being kind is always the nicest thing to do in any situation and that’s an easy way to eventually win people over.” — Travis Tallent, VP of SEO, Brainlabs
Connections impact you, your projects, and your career progression. We all know professional achievements are great for career progression, but it’s often overlooked that in order to do the work that gets you to an achievement, your colleagues need to at least respect you enough to want you to succeed.
Don’t try to fix people problems with technology
“As a tech SEO, working directly with engineering means more work may be implemented, resulting in more trust, more wins, more revenue. But also: working with amazing engineers likely means you are learning to work through their process. Having a functional framework for logical problem solving, testing, iterating… that can be transformative in terms of what work you do and how impactful it is!” — Tory Gray, CEO of Gray Dot
Your greatest ideas are worth nothing if they cannot (or simply just won’t) get implemented. Execution through smooth and successful implementation is crucial to success and you want to approach this as a process rather than something you have to ad-hoc fight for every time you need to get something across the finish line.
You have to understand that no matter how much data you have to back something up, if there’s a people-problem in the process, issues won’t go away with technical solutions. They can only get fixed through human connections.
Do you have site changes going live without sign-off, negatively impacting your SEO? Are devs not following the process you advocated for? No matter how much more money you throw at fancy tools or creating decks on how things are supposed to work, unless you go and talk to the development team and work on those relationships, initiatives will continue to fail.
Avoid siloing and make sure to develop relationships with your stakeholders. Listen and learn with the purpose of understanding others’ perspectives, goals and motivations.
Reflect on your progress and reinforce what works
We are at the end of an extensive list of advice you should consider testing and implementing in your day-to-day. And while testing implies that you should be taking feedback, I couldn’t leave you without emphasizing how important it is to reflect on your progress and use the feedback as an opportunity to reinforce what works (and reevaluate what doesn’t).
This step can be so easy to overlook, especially when you are in high-stress or fast-paced environments. As SEOs, we often try new things and move on to the next without taking the necessary time to reflect. But if you remember that learning is a process that you optimize through self-efficacy, you can also learn to take a critical eye to your progress. This will help you build that authentic personal brand that’s so helpful in forging meaningful connections and cultivating a mindset that is always ready to adapt to whatever the industry throws at you.
Petra is an SEO consultant with a background of working in-house for B2C & B2B brands, TUI, Jack Wills, as well as enterprise software brands, Yext, and Botify. She is also an international conference speaker.