Today, SEO is one of the most crucial aspects of your whole marketing strategy and activities. Any online marketing process must be SEO-led and requires adequate attention. This means that you should have a long-term relationship with an SEO expert that will lead your marketing activity. You can do that by establishing a relationship with a company such as the Link Department that will handle the job professionally. Or, you can hire an in-house SEO expert. Since you have a lot riding on this you should know just what profile of the person to hire. There are some top skills to look for when hiring your next in-house SEO. Here you can find out just what they are.
SEO professional – crucial skills and knowledge
As SEO specialists are crucial for your online marketing, hiring one is not a simple task. You have to make sure that the person meets the needed requirements. Having a qualified person is essential for your ranking on google. So it’s important to know just what skills and traits he has to master. Basically, although an expert may specialize in a certain area he also must have knowledge of these three SEO subtopics:
- ON-page SEO
- OFF-page SEO and
- Technical SEO
ON-page SEO
ON-page has to do with all of the content on your website. It is directly connected to not only the quality of your content, but also it deals with keywords, anchors, internal links, and all of the elements you can control. Meta descriptions, categories, URL structure, tags, and other elements are included here. Handling the ON-page SEO aspect is however just the start. An expert must also deal with the other two SEO aspects.
OFF-page SEO
Off-page has to do with the popularity of your page. If more sites link to yours and your content that shows that your website is popular. This will increase your chances of ranking highly in search engines. Aside from these backlinks also your domain name, and social network links to your website will influence your rank.
Technical SEO
Besides off and on-page SEO there is also a technical SEO aspect that is well, much more technical and complex. It deals with all of the technical aspects of a webpage that allows and influences just how a page is crawled by spiders to rank the site more efficiently. This part of an SEO effort deals with mobile compatibility, XML sitemap, loading times, and other aspects that increase the probability of ranking high.
Top skills of modern SEO
Aside from these crucial SEO aspects that an expert should know there are other skills to poses and master. In reality, logic and emotional intelligence are personal traits that any SEO expert must poses. In addition, to have any success you also must find the balance between:
- Empathy,
- Critical thinking,
- Data analysis,
- T-shaped marketing,
- Strategic planning and
- Technology skills.
Empathy
Empathy in the context of SEO means simply have a feel for your audience. It is important for an expert to have a grasp of what its customers need and react to. Putting yourself in their shoes means a greater power to anticipate what may evoke action in your customer. In turn, that leads to tweaking your content, copy, and message in a way that can have a maximum positive effect on your business success and results. As such, empathy seems to be one of the top skills to look for when hiring your next in-house SEO.
Critical thinking
Rather than following templates a good SEO expert must take a holistic look at the business. This is critical in order to take adequate action and lead it in the right direction. This in turn means that an in-house expert must take a critical look at the efficiency of the marketing effort to take action. In a changing industry and marketing, the ability to think critically is key to making corrections and finding solutions that will increase efficiency.
Data analysis
In all business aspects, data and its understanding is key to taking action. Making sound business decisions and optimizing your SEO effort in a changing environment is crucial. However, understanding in which direction changes should be made demands understanding the current situation. So, analyzing data today is a crucial skill needed to make sound business decisions and SEO strategies. SEO experts learn from trial and error every day and make corrections based and data gathered and the conclusions made from the thorough analysis.
T-shaped marketing
This means that your SEO expert must have competencies in many marketing fields and one or two niches. Broad knowledge can lead to more connections and better results. So, your potential expert must work on improving their marketing skills in different fields and also cultivate more connections. Knowing about copywriting, or social media marketing can yield better results if they are enhanced with the proper SEO knowledge and insights.
Strategic planning
Strategizing is one of the most important aspects of your SEO effort. Gathering knowledge and using it to take action and strategically lead your business is crucial. So, Strategic thinking means that you have to gather and also asses data and use it to better understand your goals and make detailed and efficient plans to achieve them. However, your strategy should be short-term as well as long-term and your in-house SEO should be able to make distinctions and handle both. Thus managing and prioritizing key aspects and factors to achieve the goals and have an effective SEO.
Technology skills
Your in-house SEO expert should be what’s known as tech-savvy. This means that he must possess the critical tech knowledge to utilize when making strategic decisions and directing actions. Knowledge of Google Docs, Facebook, etc is not enough anymore. Understanding resources and tools like Google Search Console as well as Moz, Ahrefs, and others is critical for making sound strategic decisions. make sure that your experts do not lack this aspect of technical knowledge.
It is clear that hiring your in-house SEO expert is a complex process that requires a lot of analysis and insight. Knowing just what these top skills to look for when hiring your next in-house SEO are is the first step. After that, it takes interviews, assessments, and tests to find the right person for the job.