Today the question of whether a company needs a SEO Strategist no longer falls in the optional realm. It has become mandatory to hire one if the company wants to succeed in increasing its visibility in the online world. While the mandatory requirement cannot be denied, it is equally important not to make a bad hiring. This is especially important for small companies, for whom hiring a poor candidate can have a catastrophic impact.
This blog post will walk you through what factors a company needs to scrutinize and look into for hiring result-oriented SEO Strategist; the one that can bring lot of organic traffic and helps your brand or company’s product to dominate the Google’s SERP.
Who is SEO Strategist?
As the name or designation itself serves the hint, a person hired in this position prepares comprehensive strategies and is either partially or fully responsible for implementing these strategies for increasing your website’s visibility across search engines.
To increase your website’s online visibility, he or she will be responsible for discharging many important responsibilities, which have been duly listed below:
- Conducting through competitor analysis
- SERP analysis
- Doing keyword research
- Looking into on-page SEO
- Creating a backlink strategy
- Working with link building team or link building specialist
- Coordinating with content creation or content marketing team
SEO Strategist should not be confused with SEO analysts. Both perform different duties and responsibilities. The latter is primarily responsible for analyzing SEO data and offering deep insights.
It is equally important to mention that they should possess multi-tasking abilities. Depending on the situation, they may have to partially or completely take the role of a link building specialist or may even have to perform the role of a content marketer.
Key factors to be considered while hiring
Now let us directly jump into the main and central topic of the blog post, which will help in preventing companies from hiring a poor candidate for this designation.
Proven track record:
The most fundamental thing that the company should try to asses or examine is that whether the candidate has a practical experience of ranking highly competitive keywords in the competitive niche. This will help the company in getting the clarity about whether the person will be able to deliver results or not. Specific questions need to be asked about which different campaigns he or she has worked in, duration of the campaign and its actual success in driving the organic traffic.
The company should openly ask for references or testimonials from past clients or employers. This will make amply clear about whether the concern person will be able to deliver results and his or her work ethics.
Expertise SEO knowledge:
Since SEO strategist plays the most pivotal role in any SEO campaign, he or she not only have in-depth knowledge about search engine optimization but also the latest trends in the industry. Specifically, having comprehensive knowledge about the algorithm updates and how search engine basically works is immensely crucial.
Here is the list of other topics that equally needs in-depth understanding & knowledge:
- White hat & black hat techniques
- Google penalties
- On-page and off-page SEO
- Keyword research
- Technical SEO
Proficiency in working with tools:
Whomsoever the company or agency is planning to hire, he or she must know the complete know-how about how popular SEO tool’s function and work. From keyword research to analyzing competitors backlinks, these tools help in maximizing SEO results in the most efficient way. Hence having a comprehensive practical knowledge of these tools is an undeniable trait of a successful SEO strategist.
Some of the popular tools are as follows:
Understanding of link building strategies:
Since backlinks are widely considered amongst topmost ranking signals, the intrinsic understanding of link-building strategies and its almost flawless execution is again a mandatory skill set. They must possess solid experience with outreach campaign, procuring high quality backlinks, spying and analyzing competitors’ backlinks, guest posting and rank-tracking.
Team work ability and communication skills:
SEO is a complex process and therefore your campaign’s success is often dependent on excellent teamwork. Hence, without a doubt, they must have inherent skills to efficiently work with different team members (for instance, content writer & technical SEO specialist) as well as other departments (for instance, sales & marketing department). Equally important is the ability to communicate short-term and long-term goals with great clarity to respective team members and colleagues. They must be well versed with SEO jargons and terminologies as well as their meaning. In a nutshell, greater the experience in working and handling the team, the better are the chances of your campaign succeeding.
Data analysis ability:
SEO strategist must be proficient with analytic tools like Google Search Console and Google analytics, where you find goldmine of invaluable SEO data. This includes clicks, impressions, click-through-rate, bounce rate, number of referring domains, number of backlinks and more. Studying and understanding these data helps in knowing the performance of all the on-going campaign as well as gaps and inefficiencies that needs to be taken care off.
Strategic mindset:
They must have the ability to employ long-term strategies with ingenuity to solve problems with actionable plan. This helps in navigating the unpredictable terrains of SEO and achieving the desirable results amid all the uncertainties that come along with it. Whether it is lack of instant results or unpredictability surrounding algorithm updates, a strategic mindset with sight on achieving long-term goal and impeccable track record in executing strategies can overcome all sorts of challenges along the path to achieve growth in organic traffic.
Ethical practices:
They should have unwavering commitment to follow white hat techniques, which are techniques that comply with Google guidelines. Although some companies may choose to extract only verbal assurance, some might want to include a clause in the contract or job policy that following white hat techniques is mandatory part of their job profile. That said, companies should make every effort to onboard a person who has had a good track-record of following Google guidelines.
This allegiance to ethical practice is important because most companies and agencies will find it almost impossible to maintain constant supervision over their SEO strategist and their actions.
Conclusion:
A good SEO strategist is someone who has a complete theoretical understanding of SEO and also has the confidence as well as rich experience in transforming deep theoretical knowledge into practical success. Since they oversees your website’s organic traffic campaign, it is surely one of the most critical hirings. A good or bad hiring will eventually determine whether or not your company achieves good leads, increase sales and conversion and everything else that propels your company’s growth. Therefore, discerning and judicious approach is important while onboarding and filling up this important vacancy.