SEO specialists in 2020-2021 formed a group of professionals, the demand for which, against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis, not only did not fall, but increased. This is due to the growing interest in online commerce and brand promotion on the Internet.
During this period, the number of offers on the labor market remained stable or increased. At the same time, the level of salaries decreased over the past year, which fits into the general trend of the salary market: quarantine restrictions and the difficult situation in which Russian business found itself had a negative impact on salaries.
Demand and wage statistics
According to Trud.com, in the first half of 2020, the demand for SEO specialists remained stable, in the summer there was a seasonal decline, and in the fall the number of vacancies exceeded the figures for the first half of the year.
In the first two months of this year, demand was also stable.
Number of vacancies for SEO specialists in Russia
The average level of wages in the industry decreased by 37%: from 54,548 rubles. in January 2020 up to 34162 rubles. in February 2021.
Average salary for SEO specialists in Russia
Link managers lost the most in salaries: their income for the year decreased by 46%. The most stable were the salaries of SEO analysts – with a peak value of 70,000 rubles. in October, to December last year, and their salaries fell by 33%.
In March, among the most in-demand professions in the direction of SEO-optimization (the number of published vacancies):
- SEO-optimizer – 5.6 thousand,
- sales manager for SEO services – 435,
- SEO-optimizer assistant – 2.1 thousand
By the number of vacancies, the TOP-5 leading regions were:
- Moscow region – 1.4 thous.
- Leningrad Region – 1.1 thousand people
- Novosibirsk region – 0.9 thous.
- Krasnodar Territory – 0.6 thous.
- Republic of Tatarstan – 897.
The highest salaries in SEO in March were offered in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District (60,000 rubles for SEO-promotion specialists), in the Smolensk region (50,000 rubles for SEO sales managers), in the Magadan region (47,500 rubles for SMM specialists).
Basic SEO qualifications
Experts – participants in the SEO services market – highlight not only knowledge, but also personal qualities necessary for a specialist to effectively complete tasks as the key ones.
So, attention is focused on personal qualities Dmitry Shevtsov, founder of the company Semantist.ru.
According to Dmitry, the TOP personal qualities of an SEO specialist are:
- learnability,
- logical thinking,
- socialization for teamwork,
- responsibility (taking on the task and solving it within the deadline),
- benevolence,
- relevant educational level and literacy,
- energy.
TOP professional skills of an SEO specialist, according to Dmitry:
- knowledge of the basics of SEO. The logic and general understanding of the work of search engines;
- collection of semantics and distribution of queries into the structure, SILO;
- knowledge of up-to-date SEO tools;
- analytics of competitors manually and using SEO services;
- the ability to find technical errors on the site;
- removal of positions and traffic monitoring;
- Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics;
- Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console;
- external website promotion, methods and strategy;
- knowledge of the basics of HTML.
SEO specialist competencies by version Marina Zapolskaya, CEO of Talentgrator
Knowledge:
- English,
- technical optimization skills (HTML, CSS),
- knowledge of the history of search engines,
- knowledge of ON-PAGE / OFF-PAGE SEO optimization,
- work with software (Ahfers, SemRush, collections of keywords),
- ability to work with Google tools and their analogues.
Skills:
- selection and clustering of the semantic core;
- further work with semantics (definition of traffic, commercial, geo-dependent and other queries, depending on the niche);
- setting TK copywriters for writing texts;
- analysis of competitors, their statistics, anchor list, backlinks, promotion strategies;
- site audit, error detection, planning and implementation of adjustments;
- building the link mass of the site in various ways;
- management of freelancers, copywriters, designers, layout designers;
- work with PBN;
- work with behavioral factors;
- work with SERM;
- work with SMM sources;
- analysis of search results;
- search and restoration of drops for different purposes.
Skills of both white, gray and black (blackhat) SEO optimization are desirable.
Personal qualities:
- constant development and training, since data changes very quickly;
- experience in various fields, “thematic flexibility”;
- desire to constantly draw information from all possible sources (especially free ones);
- the ability to be in trend, at least roughly know the TOP in the field, and it is desirable to also communicate with them.
Thus, the competencies of an SEO specialist are not limited to a set of specific tools, and one of the key strengths of a sought-after specialist is the ability to continuously improve their qualifications, experience in working with different topics, and even the skills of “black” optimization.