What kind of a profession is SEO specialist? Can you give some specific (not general) tasks that are involved?

some skills required are:

1) link building (link exchange, one-way link creation, link bait ideas)

2) keyword research

3) competitive analysis

4) on-page optimization

5) press release submissions

6) article submissions

7) web analytics/reporting

and much more

I would recommend getting a program called
SEO Elite and Keyword Elite. You will have all
the training and tools you need to become an
SEO Specialist. you can get them both here:

Vikas nailed it. Pick the answer and close

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is specifically to do with optimising a website for the search engines, whilst SEM (Search Engine Marketing) also incorporates the bigger picture and thus includes SEO, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising etc.

SEO includes covering any oneof the 100 factors which are included in the search engines algorithms and these factors include optimsing your own website in the Meta Tags, the image names, the font style and use of header types, the keyword density on EACH web page, increasing the number internal, external and inbound links and many more areas.