What is the most important skill for an SEO? Technical, content, analytics, project management?

Use google search to start - really look at results, what’s being displayed, what Google is automatically serving up => your job here is to intuit what Google thinks your users want.

SEO is extremely competitive. I remember back when we worked together our competitors seemed to be running your playbook at the same time, and it made things tough. What’s your advice for competitive SEO?

Look at the structure of the top few results on Google — What on-page elements are they using? What can you glean from the information architecture?

I know you’ve tried or used most of the tools out there. For our listeners on a shoestring budget -- what do you recommend for analytics and reporting?

Google Search Console and Google Analytics => This is a great feature and I’m shocked at how few people actually take the time to set this up. 
So many quick tips -

Set a filter to see things on second page. Sort to see top converting pages (tsk tsk set up goal tracking). Sort to see CTRs. Drill down into pages to see keywords.

What about technical SEO? Everyone talks about it, but it’s I don’t think many people know how to improve this area of SEO.

Google Page insights. Enter your site and see how it performs on mobile device. It gives a great print out of action items - such as sizing images, painting content before things load up.

Lighthouse: Chrome developer tools and gives you a super technical review of your site.

How do SEOs on a budget prepare for the future of search?

Voice Search and Voice Utility.

Mobile is king of SEO, and Voice is the next generation of search (still up for debate). 

If you ask Alexa or Siri or Google for an answer, voice search is at play. Structure your content for voice and you’ll be rewarded.

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Intro music by Wowa via Unminus