How to Showcase SEO Skills on Your Resume

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Looking to pursue a career in SEO? A well-written resume is your passport for landing a high-powered, high-paying digital marketing job.

Make your application stand out and score more interviews by showcasing your SEO skills and expertise throughout your resume. Here’s how:

1. Fit skills into your resume’s introduction

Start your resume off strong with a well-written introduction targeted at the job you’re applying for. If you can quickly convey your SEO expertise and interest in the position early on, the reader will be much more likely to proceed with your resume.

If you’re a fresh graduate or in the midst of switching to a new career in SEO, fitting relevant skills into your introduction might not be possible. If this is you, try focusing more on your desire to work for a specific employer rather than your qualifications (but mention any skills that may be transferable if you have them).

Here’s an example of a professional resume objective for a recent college graduate:

“Energetic marketing graduate passionate about digital marketing as well as technical SEO. Skilled in project management, with strong foundations in data analysis and research. Keen to leverage skills in data analysis as an SEO specialist at ABC company.”

For more senior SEO positions, summarizing your relevant skill-set, experience, and achievements in your introduction will help you establish early on that you’re more than capable of doing the work.

Here’s an example of an effective SEO-focused resume summary:

“Results-driven SEO specialist with 3+ years experience. Improved organic search rankings from page 5 to Top 10 for several high-competition keywords for a leading e-commerce brand, increasing organic traffic by 27%. Seeking to leverage experience in project management, data analysis, and broad technical SEO knowledge as an SEO Analyst at XYZ company.”

This summary showcases the candidate’s value by highlighting their total years of experience and several significant achievements backed by statistics.

SEO work is deeply connected to quantifiable metrics. So when you begin to write your resume, make sure you include numbers in your summary and anywhere else you can fit them to prove to an employer you’re skilled at handling the finer details of SEO.

2. Create an SEO-centric skills section

Although hiring managers will keep an eye out for transferable skills when reviewing applications, they ultimately want to see if candidates have the SEO-specific skills necessary to do the job. Therefore, highlight your skill-set in the easiest place to fit skills on a resume — the skills section.

When writing your skills section, include as many SEO tools and related abilities as you can. Only once you’ve listed all of your SEO-centric skills should you include soft skills like communication and teamwork.

And if you plan on listing “Microsoft Excel,” make sure you’re good at it — many agencies require their SEO specialists to comb through spreadsheets regularly, and they might test you during the interview.

Here are some SEO skills and tools that will most definitely add value to your resume (assuming you’re familiar with them):

  • Ryte
  • Screaming Frog
  • Ahrefs
  • Searchmetrics
  • Semrush
  • Google Search Console
  • Content ideation
  • Creating content calendars
  • Google Analytics
  • Moz
  • Page Optimizer Pro
  • Surfer SEO
  • Spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets)
  • Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

3. Tailor your resume to the exact agency or company you’re applying to

Read through the job posting thoroughly. Write down any skills-related keywords that seem important in the job description, and tailor your resume to those keywords to best meet the employer’s expectations.

For instance, if the job posting is looking for someone with “experience in creating SEO campaigns,” take this key phrase and elaborate on it based on your own experience.

Here’s an example work experience bullet point for an SEO specialist applying for such a job:

“Created 50+ SEO campaigns for company’s website, driving CTR for 20 transactional keywords from 17% to 35%.”

If you can include relevant experience specific to the job description and back it up with numbers highlighting the impact of your SEO skills, your resume will make much more of an impression on recruiters and employers. 

How to Showcase SEO Skills on Your Resume

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