10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Expert
The 10 Interview Questions I Now Like to Ask SEO Experts
1) What Search-related blogs/forums do you read and enjoy? This is my favorite and a way to casually start conversation. It will hopefully spark discussion and you will get a sense of whether or not they just do SEO because it’s their day job or whether or not they are truly interested in their profession. If they are having a lot of trouble with this (at the very least they should name a Search forum) it is highly possible they are going through the motions and don’t really have much passion. Side note: On the flipside, beware of the SEO enthusiast who is just a lot of talk and gives you the sense that all they do is read blogs all day long. They might be a lot of talk, and sadly, no action behind their words. Needless to say, this is bad too. See SEO question #4 to help eliminate this risk.
2) Can you tear this website apart? Best question to ask. Grab a laptop, pull up any website, hand it over to him or her. Ask the person to tell you what’s wrong with it and how can it be improved, right there. Make it a random site that has nothing to do with your own site. Does this person start looking at the code? Does he or she talk through the process? Does this person identify elements on the site’s pages that should be optimized? Does this person pull up search engines and do some link checks and page checks? Can they identify URL/domain issues, redirects or any technical problems right off the bat? Does this person stare at the screen like a deer frozen by some headlights?
3) How would you pursue links for your website? Linkbaiting, SMO, looking at competitor’s links, blogs, PR, directories, spam and bad link farms? Not everyone is a linking expert, but they should have a good clue on how to obtain them.
4) How do you track results to prove success? Is this person just going to name that they have achieved a #1 ranking for a brand name term? Or are they also going to talk about the importance of long-tail keyword traffic and how it can offer both relevant and higher converting search engine traffic? Are they going to discuss the increase in conversions for the website? Are they going to mention different ways they were able to substantially increase and generate new traffic to the website that was never there before?
5) Can you describe or produce a recent successful SEO campaign? If this person truly did succeed, they should have a good story to tell.
6) Do you have any technical skills you are confident about or any type of website programming/design experience? I think this is one of the things that many search marketers are often missing from their skillset. I am not saying it is the absolute most important skill to have to be a great SEO (because I’ve worked with some great non-technical SEO marketers and strategists that were phenomenal), but I think it can definitely put a candidate over the top and this person will probably identify and resolve triple the amount of issues that a non-technical SEO professional will. Do they know how and why they should use
7) Name tools that you use for SEO: for keyword research (if they name Overture Tool, I’d run)? Tracking keyword rankings? Tracking links? Identifying bad redirects and problematic JavaScript. Do they do it by hand? How and what do they use is important here.
How many SEO campaigns have you been involved with and what was your role? Was this person a strategist for some real important accounts? What were they? Did they get their hands real dirty and concentrate on identifying and resolving issues? Depends on what you want or need, preferably, you’d want both.
9) Do you own your own website or blog? Some employers would be scared off by this, especially since they would fear that their SEOs would optimize on their company time, but screw that. The fact is, the more exposure that an SEO has with websites (especially their own), the more tricks of the trade he or she will be able to develop and fire off as part of their arsenal. This will lead to them finding the latest that truly works real well for their own site to generate traffic, and then introducing it to your site with proven results.
10) What are the most important on-page elements for search engine performance and how would they rank it in order of importance? E.G. Is it Title tag first? Description tag? Headers? Text? Extra geek points if they can tell you exactly what each of the search engines like specifically.
I am certain some of you have your own good SEO questions and interview experiences with SEO candidates but these are just some of the ones that I’ve encountered. Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on these.
