How do SEO job requirements and priorities differ across industries?

SEO work differs across industries not just in keywords, but also in searchers’ needs, website goals, and what can be changed. In the observations about job responsibilities documented in a 2020 awoo article, e-commerce emphasized scale and revenue, while education emphasized content output and traffic. Agency roles focused more on client goals and strategy, whereas e-commerce product roles involved closer collaboration with engineering and design, along with experimentation. These observations reflect a particular period, not universal job specifications. Comparisons also need to distinguish between industry, website conditions, and job role.

First, distinguish whether searchers want to buy products, find suppliers, or look up information

Even within the same industry, different queries may call for different pages. A 2016 awoo article used security-related searches as an example: at the time, results for “security camera systems” leaned toward pages where users could shop, while results for “security systems” included a mix of shopping, supplier, and informational pages. This historical example should not be taken as a picture of today’s search results, but it illustrates why industry labels alone cannot determine content direction.

When planning work, first identify the intent behind the target queries, then decide whether to focus on product information, service descriptions, or informational content. The article also cautioned that observations about content length and rankings vary by industry, so a word count from a single study should not be treated as a universal standard.

E-commerce versus education is a comparison of goals; agency versus product work is a comparison of roles

Zac’s observations, compiled in a 2020 awoo article, covered both industries and job roles, which should not be conflated. Based on that account, the differences can be divided into four scenarios:

• E-commerce websites: Scale and revenue are priorities, and most changes require support from the product team. Intense competition and difficulty making product changes also constrain execution.
• Education websites: Content output and traffic are priorities, but the work involves more than continually publishing articles. Product or content changes may also need to meet specific needs, such as designing lookup tools.
• Agency roles: With less direct involvement in clients’ products, the work tends to focus on helping clients achieve their goals, redesigning content, and analyzing strategy.
• E-commerce product development roles: These roles involve supporting product changes, working with engineers and designers, and conducting experiments, research, and validation, making a technical background more important.

Even when both serve e-commerce businesses, agency content strategy work and in-house product experimentation may require different approaches to collaboration. When evaluating job listings, look beyond the industry label to establish whether the role involves product changes and which teams it requires working with.

Website structure and competition affect performance expectations

Industry differences cannot be translated directly into fixed returns. A 2023 article on Neil Patel’s website noted that well-executed SEO can deliver a high return on investment, but results depend on factors such as website structure, quality, and industry competition, making an average across businesses and industries difficult to establish.

When comparing two SEO jobs, therefore, check website conditions and performance goals as well as content and technical responsibilities. Other companies’ returns should not be treated as expectations for your own website, let alone as a guarantee that a particular industry will be easier to achieve results in.