A day in the life of an SEO specialist

One keyword at a time, SEO is a valuable and important part of keeping a website visible, relevant and healthy in the eyes of search engines. The demand for SEO is at an all-time high and this fast-paced, innovative, and ever-evolving sector shows no signs of ever slowing down.

Have you ever wondered what the day-to-day work includes for an SEO specialist? How they work their “magic” on the digital world? To shed some light we’ve decided to let you peek into a day in the life of Eliza here at Gravity who eats, sleeps and dreams of analytics, tools, graphs and keywords.

First Things First: What Is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation” and it is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in search engines.

In a digital first world, SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing and is the primary source for digital traffic for brands, supporting all other marketing efforts.

What Does a SEO Specialist Do?

Depending on the needs of our clients my role adapts and changes, but while not all SEO specialists do the exact same work, day in day out there are some general roles we play.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the pillar of SEO, it’s much more complex and technical that splashing popular keywords on a page and hoping to land on the first search page. For keywords to work their magic, we balance a lot of factors continually, like competitiveness and relevancy, making technical and on-page SEO changes to get the best outcomes.

Optimising the Site

A huge factor in the SEO jenga tower is managing and optimising high-quality content, clean HTML, fast load times, internal links, and solid metadata. Continually putting these factors through their paces helps to increase conversion rates.

Building Links

Link building is a fine art of building external and internal links to add value to readers and search engines, playing a crucial role in SEO success. In SEO we spend a lot of time identifying opportunities and monitoring existing links to create trustworthy link building strategies.

Analysing Data

A big part of my role in both SEO and PPC is analysing data, as we rely heavily on metrics to drive winning SEO campaigns forward. I’m a self-confessed data nerd, so there’s something about the way data trends and SEO work in unison that really drives my passion. We monitor a lot of channels including Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, as well as performing competitor audits and tracking trends and ever-changing algorithms.

What is a Standard Day Like?

I will say that no two days are the same in the world of SEO but this is how my day tends to look…

6:30am: Wake up to my soothing alarm clock that is a small dog called Dudley, he usually ends up waking me up before my alarm so we get plenty of cuddles in! I get up and then we go out for a long walk before work, this just helps my brain to kickstart and dust off the cobwebs (autumn walks are the best!)

7:30-8am: Depending on whether I’m commuting or sitting down at my desk with a coffee (lots of it!), my start time changes, but I like to beat the morning rush and get an early start.

If I’m commuting, I like to listen to podcasts on my journey (I get about 40 mins of listening time!), my favourite ones at the minute are The Digital Marketing Podcast or The Diary of a CEO. Just helps to get my brain kickstarted for the day!

8am-12pm: After checking my to-do list, I get cracking with urgent tasks that have cropped up overnight or prep for any meetings. I then check on the organic performance for the past 24 hours and report it to other members of the team if there’s significant fluctuations.

I run site crawls and identify any new issues that need to be fixed. Depending on if we’ve just launched a new site this changes as they need a lot of TLC to start with. During this time I also look at trends data to guide SEO tasks.

I tend to favour morning meetings to guide the day so team and client meetings tend to crop up.

12pm: Lunchtime! We’re an office of feeders (unfortunately not good on the waistline!) so when we’re in the office we walk into town for a bite to eat and to walk Dudley of course, who seems to be the Gravity office dog!

12:30-4pm: For the rest of the day, it’s always so different. It will usually be a task related to a specific client that could take me all day or more!

4-5pm: Home time! Because I get to work early and we have flexible working, I like to leave earlier than later and get on with one of my many odd extracurriculars.