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The Personal Skills You Want To Have On Your SEO Team

The Personal Skills You Want To Have On Your SEO Team

What skills should the team at an SEO company have to make your campaign successful?

When you’re thinking about hiring a digital marketing agency to boost your SEO strategy there are some very important skills that the people you’re working with should have.  SEO is such a quickly changing environment that requires everything from a sense of humor to business sense, social skills, and a passion for the industry.

One of the things that I enjoy about the SEO world is the fact that it is quickly changing – it’s almost like a game to keep up with what’s going on with Google and around the industry. Knowing where the work that you complete for clients fit into their overall marketing plan is important too – as you can either leverage other marketing strategies for SEO or your SEO strategies may provide cost saving opportunities for areas like paid search ad spend.

When I was working at the Director of Search (SEO & PPC) at a startup company, we did a lot of hiring for SEO strategists and these were some of my favorite questions to ask:

  • What do you tell a client that has just built a new website and is now ready to ‘start seo’?
  • How do you organize your SEO on page optimization strategies on a weekly basis?
  • What are the interactive and engagement metrics that are important for a website?
  • Can you give me a quick breakdown of an SEO report that a CEO might want to see versus a marketing manager or content creator?
  • Tell me about a time that you conducted an SEO Audit, what did you learn?

From these questions you can learn a lot about how someone thinks and more importantly you can gauge the scope of their understanding for technical, strategy and larger picture items in a digital marketing campaign.

Speaking, Writing and Critical Thinking

I pride myself in being able to understand what is happening in the big picture of an SEO campaign and distill that down to something that can be understood by someone that isn’t living and breathing SEO on a daily basis.  Being able to think on your feet is important and being able to make decisions that you’re not sure what the impact will be takes some courage.  When working with clients we are mindful that you may not know what I a 301 Redirect is, or what Schema markup means, but you definitely will see the impact of those strategies and that’s the important part to communicate.

Technical & Analytics Skills

Technical SEO has changed quite a bit in the last 10 years – moving from needing to understand very technical coding to a need to understanding a lot of little strategies that can be employed on a website to add as much traffic as possible.  Many CMS platforms like WordPress are now filled with plugins and add-ons that help out SEO strategies, knowing which ones to use and how to use them is important.   Google’s mobile first index is a good example of an SEO industry update that needs deep understanding. On the analytics side, knowing the type of data that is important to look at is critical.  It’s easy to get lost in the world of Google Analytics – looking through the pretty graphs and charts of traffic and conversion data.   Having an understanding around the type of data that matters in the lens that you are looking through is the difference between looking at a metric and panicking versus being gleeful!  For example: Exit Rate is a common metrics that we are asked about a lot and it may be OK for a page to have a high exit rate if the visitor to that page is receiving the information that they need and are simply moving along.

Drive & Passion Create Success

Wouldn’t you much rather work with someone that is driven to learn more and passionate about the work that they are producing?  Us too!  We love to work with startup companies, local companies, non profit organizations and companies that have a passion for creating change and producing a great product or service for customers. Our passion to continue learning and pushing the envelope for clients is apparent. Our own drive to excel and make a difference for clients shows through in our work and the results that we produce.  We love to share wins with clients, and we love to share updates about the industry.  Drive & passion are important for anyone working on an SEO project.

The Personal Skills That Make a Great SEO Partner

Ultimately the person that can have an impact for your company with SEO strategies will have technical knowledge, be driven & passionate, and be able to understand data while being able to share the important elements with you.

 

 

Scott Fish

At 32° Digital we help brands find, cultivate, and understand the best digital channels to forge meaningful relationships with customers. Impactful digital brand representation and conversation happens when you understand and engage with the consumer in clear and creative ways.