Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Website Specialist

🎯 Role Definition

A Website Specialist is a cross-functional digital professional focused on the end-to-end health and effectiveness of an organization’s websites and web properties. This role blends content management, front-end troubleshooting, SEO and analytics to ensure sites are up-to-date, fast, accessible and optimized for discoverability and conversion. The Website Specialist partners with marketing, product, UX and IT to implement site updates, run experiments (A/B tests), monitor site performance and enforce web governance and accessibility standards.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Web Content Coordinator / Content Editor
Junior Web Developer / Front-End Developer
Digital Marketing Assistant / SEO Coordinator

Advancement To:

Web Manager / Web Lead
Digital Marketing Manager (Performance / SEO)
UX/Product Manager or E-commerce Manager

Lateral Moves:

SEO Specialist / Search Marketing Specialist
Content Strategist / Content Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Manage day-to-day updates and publishing across CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, Shopify), including page creation, templates, content migration, metadata and structured data implementation to maximize SEO and site quality.
Audit and implement on-page SEO best practices such as title tags, meta descriptions, header hierarchy (H1–H6), URL structure, canonical tags, schema markup (JSON-LD) and internal linking strategies to improve organic search performance.
Monitor, analyze and report website traffic, user behavior and conversion metrics using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Search Console, and other analytics tools; create actionable insights and regular dashboards for stakeholders.
Configure and manage Google Tag Manager (GTM) and tracking implementations for events, conversions, e-commerce tracking, form submissions and custom metrics to ensure accurate measurement of digital KPIs.
Execute site performance audits (Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights) and implement optimizations — image optimization, lazy loading, caching, minification, critical CSS, and CDN configuration — to improve load times and Core Web Vitals.
Maintain and enforce accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and inclusive design standards across web pages, perform accessibility testing (automated and manual), and coordinate remediation with design and development teams.
Troubleshoot front-end issues with HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript, coordinate fixes with engineering when necessary, and implement responsive design solutions to ensure consistent experiences across devices and browsers.
Lead content migrations and consolidation projects, including content inventories, URL mapping, 301 redirect planning, canonicalization and post-migration QA to prevent traffic loss and preserve SEO equity.
Plan and execute A/B or multivariate testing programs (Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize alternatives), including hypothesis definition, experiment setup, analysis and recommendation implementation to improve conversion rates and user engagement.
Maintain website governance practices: content standards, style guides, template management, publishing workflows, role-based permissions and release schedules to reduce errors and streamline updates.
Partner with product managers and UX designers to translate business goals into page designs, wireframes and prototypes that balance usability, accessibility and conversion optimization.
Implement and manage structured data and rich results strategies (product, FAQ, article, breadcrumb markup) to enhance SERP visibility and click-through rates.
Coordinate with legal, security and IT teams on privacy, cookie consent, SSL, data layer governance and compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA) as they relate to website tracking and user data collection.
Optimize e-commerce experiences (product pages, category pages, checkout flow) for discoverability, conversion and average order value through merchandising tactics, faceted search improvements and technical SEO.
Conduct regular site QA and regression testing across releases — checking links, forms, scripts, media, redirects and cross-platform compatibility — and maintain a documented issue log and resolution timeline.
Manage third-party integrations and vendor relationships (CDN providers, tag management, analytics, headless CMS vendors, payment gateways) and oversee implementation, SLAs and upgrades.
Create and maintain runbooks and standard operating procedures for common site tasks, incident response and emergency rollback processes to reduce downtime and recovery time.
Perform competitor and market audits to identify content gaps, technical SEO opportunities and UX improvements; recommend roadmap features and prioritization based on impact and effort.
Optimize content for discoverability and conversions by collaborating with content creators, providing content briefs, keyword research, metadata guidance and performance feedback based on analytics.
Implement URL redirect strategies and canonical rules to manage legacy content, campaigns and seasonal pages, minimizing crawl errors and preserving link equity.
Monitor site security and health (uptime, errors, crawl issues) using monitoring tools and coordinate urgent fixes for incidents such as broken pages, outages or high-severity SEO problems.
Provide training and documentation for content authors and business stakeholders on CMS best practices, SEO basics, accessibility checks and web governance to scale site operations.

Secondary Functions

Support marketing campaigns by building and QA’ing landing pages, applying tracking parameters (UTM), and ensuring fast load and proper attribution for paid channels.
Conduct ad-hoc data requests, run funnel analysis and prepare executive-facing reports to inform marketing and product decisions.
Work with customer support and sales teams to triage site-related user issues and implement content or UX fixes to reduce friction and support conversions.
Contribute to the website roadmap by estimating effort for technical debt, proposed features, performance improvements and SEO initiatives.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies; provide acceptance criteria, test cases and deployable assets for web releases.
Collaborate with creative teams to implement responsive images, modern HTML components and CSS utilities while maintaining brand integrity and accessibility.
Assist in A/B experiment analysis and share learnings cross-functionally to ensure continuous improvement in site performance and UX.
Maintain a prioritized backlog of web tasks, bugs and enhancements and coordinate cross-functional resources to meet release timelines.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Content Management Systems (WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, Shopify) — site authoring, templates, plugins/modules, and user permissions.
On-page and technical SEO — metadata, structured data (schema.org/JSON-LD), robots.txt, sitemap.xml, hreflang, canonicalization and crawl budget management.
Web analytics and reporting — Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, data visualization tools (Looker Studio/Data Studio), and KPI-driven reporting.
Tag management and tracking — Google Tag Manager, measurement planning, event and conversion tracking, and e-commerce tagging.
Front-end fundamentals — HTML5, CSS3, responsive design, basic JavaScript/jQuery troubleshooting and understanding of web component behavior.
Performance optimization — Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse, image optimization, caching, CDNs, and build-time optimization techniques.
Accessibility standards — WCAG 2.0/2.1 principles, ARIA roles, assistive technology considerations and remediation workflows.
A/B testing and experimentation platforms — Optimizely, VWO or other testing tools and statistical result interpretation.
SEO tools and competitive research — Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Screaming Frog, and site crawl analysis.
Version control and deployment basics — Git, staging/production workflows, CI/CD awareness and release management.
Basic SQL or data querying ability for extracting data from analytics or CMS exports (preferred).
Experience with e-commerce platforms and optimization (Shopify, Magento, or enterprise platforms) for transactional site improvements.

Soft Skills

Strong written and verbal communication — able to translate technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders and write clear content guidance.
Attention to detail and quality assurance mindset — prevention of broken links, content errors and design regressions.
Analytical and data-driven problem solving — uses data to prioritize work and measure impact.
Project and time management — manages concurrent requests, sets realistic timelines and meets deadlines.
Collaboration and stakeholder management — coordinates across marketing, product, engineering and legal teams.
Adaptability and continuous learning — stays current with SEO, analytics and web standards updates.
Prioritization and judgment — balances short-term fixes with long-term technical debt remediation.
Customer-focused mindset — optimizes for user journeys, accessibility and conversion.
Teaching and documentation — ability to create clear how-to guides, SOPs and training for content teams.
Initiative and ownership — leads small-to-medium projects independently and drives results.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in Marketing, Communications, Computer Science, Web Design, Information Technology, Digital Media or related field.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree with additional certifications in SEO, Google Analytics (GA4), Google Tag Manager, UX or accessibility (IAAP, ADA/WCAG training).
Professional development courses in front-end development, CMS administration or digital marketing.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Marketing, Digital Marketing
Computer Science, Web Development
Communications, Journalism, English
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), UX Design
Information Technology, Digital Media

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of hands-on experience managing websites, CMS administration, SEO and analytics.

Preferred:

3+ years performing technical SEO, CMS site management and analytics reporting for enterprise or mid-market websites.
Demonstrable experience with A/B testing, Core Web Vitals optimization and implementing structured data.
Prior work with e-commerce sites, complex CMS environments or multi-site architectures is a strong plus.