Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Content Officer

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Content Officer is a hands‑on digital content professional who manages end‑to‑end website content lifecycle: planning, writing/editing, publishing in a CMS, tagging and optimizing for search engines, maintaining editorial standards and accessibility, and reporting on performance. This role works closely with marketing, UX, product, legal and IT teams to ensure on‑brand, discoverable and compliant content that meets business and user needs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Content Coordinator or Content Assistant
Digital Marketing Assistant
Communications Officer or Communications Coordinator

Advancement To:

Senior Web Content Officer
Content Manager / Digital Content Manager
Digital Content Strategist or Head of Content
UX Content Lead or Digital Marketing Manager

Lateral Moves:

SEO Specialist or SEO Manager
UX Writer or Product Content Designer
Content Architect or Information Architect

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Plan, write, edit and publish high‑quality website content (pages, landing pages, news, blogs, FAQs, program pages) using the organization's CMS, ensuring copy is accurate, brand‑aligned and optimized for target audiences.
Maintain and enforce the editorial style guide and content governance policies across all web properties; coach content owners and stakeholders on applying style, tone and governance rules.
Execute on‑page SEO for new and existing content: keyword research, meta titles and descriptions, URL structure, header tags, internal linking and image alt text to improve search visibility and organic traffic.
Conduct regular content audits and inventories to identify outdated, duplicate or low‑performing pages and recommend updates, consolidation or removal as part of content maintenance and migration projects.
Implement and manage structured metadata, taxonomy, tagging and schema markup (JSON‑LD) to improve discoverability, facilitate content filtering and enhance search engine results.
Publish and schedule content in the CMS, manage workflows and approvals, ensure version control, and coordinate with developers for complex page builds or templates.
Monitor site performance and user behavior using Google Analytics, Search Console and other analytics tools; produce regular content performance reports and actionable insights to improve engagement and conversion.
Lead or contribute to content migration and site redesign projects including mapping content, quality assurance, link checks and troubleshooting broken links or redirects.
Ensure web content meets accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA), including semantic HTML, alt text, captioning for multimedia and keyboard navigation; coordinate accessibility testing and remediation.
Optimize content for page speed and mobile performance by recommending image compression, lazy loading and efficient front‑end practices in collaboration with development teams.
Manage content release schedules and a central editorial calendar that aligns campaigns, product launches and communications across channels.
Create, edit and optimize multimedia content (basic image editing, captions for video, and structured transcripts) for web pages and social embeds to increase engagement.
Work with marketing and campaign teams to develop SEO‑driven landing pages, A/B test variants, and optimize conversion paths for lead generation or registrations.
Maintain redirection maps, canonical tags and link hygiene to protect search equity during site changes and prevent 404 errors.
Liaise with legal, compliance and privacy teams to ensure content meets regulatory requirements, privacy statements and appropriate disclaimers.
Provide CMS training, documentation and support to content authors and business stakeholders to improve content quality and efficiency.
Collaborate with UX designers and product teams to craft user‑centered content, microcopy, navigation labels and calls to action that reduce friction and improve task completion.
Execute content localization and translation workflows; coordinate with language leads or external vendors to publish regionally appropriate versions of key pages.
Audit and remediate technical SEO issues with support from engineering: crawlability, sitemaps, robots.txt, hreflang and indexability settings.
Conduct competitive content and keyword gap analysis to identify new content opportunities and shape the editorial plan.
Monitor and respond to content‑related incidents (broken content, incorrect information, urgent legal takedown requests) and support rapid remediation and stakeholder communication.
Develop and maintain page templates, components and content models in the CMS to promote reuse, consistency and editorial efficiency.
Produce summary reports and dashboards for senior stakeholders, translating analytics into business recommendations and measurable content KPIs.

Secondary Functions

Support ad‑hoc content and analytics requests from business units, providing rapid content changes, landing page builds and basic reporting.
Contribute to the organization's digital content strategy, roadmaps and governance frameworks that scale content operations.
Participate in agile ceremonies (sprint planning, demos, retrospectives) with product and development teams when executing content features and enhancements.
Assist with email content creation and integration of web content into email campaigns and marketing automation flows.
Help manage social media snippets and canonical web pages for campaigns to ensure consistent messaging and SEO value.
Run periodic training workshops and brown‑bag sessions to upskill colleagues on SEO basics, CMS best practices and accessibility.
Maintain documentation for content workflows, editorial checklists and CMS how‑tos to reduce onboarding time for new authors.
Collaborate with digital marketing on paid search landing page optimization and tracking to maximize ROI and maintain content consistency.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficient with enterprise CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, SharePoint or similar) including page building, templates, workflows and user permissions.
Strong on‑page SEO skills: keyword research, meta tags, URL structure, H1/H2 optimization, internal linking and canonicalization.
Experience with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and basic SEO tools (Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz) for content performance and technical audits.
Familiarity with HTML and CSS basics to troubleshoot content formatting, style inconsistencies and implement accessible markup.
Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.0/2.1 AA) and experience applying accessibility best practices to web content.
Experience with metadata, taxonomy, content modelling and structured data (Schema.org / JSON‑LD) to improve discoverability and rich results.
Content migration and publishing experience, including redirects, sitemap management and QA processes.
Basic image and multimedia editing skills (Photoshop, Canva, video captioning tools) to prepare assets for web delivery.
Experience with A/B testing and CRO tools (Optimizely, Google Optimize, VWO) to iterate on landing page content and calls to action.
Familiarity with localization workflows and working with translation vendors or language teams to publish multi‑language content.
Strong command of English, editing and proofreading skills with a track record of producing clear, concise web copy.
Experience using project management and collaboration tools (Jira, Trello, Asana, Confluence, Slack) to manage content workstreams.

Soft Skills

Exceptional editorial judgement and attention to detail with the ability to maintain quality at scale.
Strong stakeholder management and the ability to influence across marketing, product, legal and IT teams.
Clear written and verbal communication skills for training, documentation and executive reporting.
Problem‑solving mindset with an analytic approach to evaluate content performance and recommend improvements.
Time management and prioritization skills to balance reactive publishing needs with strategic content planning.
Collaborative team player who can work cross‑functionally and adapt to changing priorities.
Customer‑centric orientation with empathy for user needs and accessibility requirements.
Continuous learning attitude to stay current with SEO, analytics and web best practices.
Resilience under deadlines and ability to manage multiple content projects simultaneously.
Coaching and mentoring ability to lift the capability of content authors and business owners.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Communications, Journalism, Marketing, English, Media Studies, or a related discipline.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree plus certifications in SEO, Google Analytics, digital marketing or UX writing; postgraduate qualification in digital communications or marketing is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Communications
Journalism
Marketing
English / Creative Writing
Information Science / Library Science
Human‑Computer Interaction or UX

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of professional experience managing website content, CMS administration and digital publishing.

Preferred: 3–5+ years as a web content officer, content manager, digital editor or similar role with demonstrable experience in SEO, analytics, accessibility and CMS workflows. Experience in a public sector, enterprise or large multi‑site environment is advantageous.