How To Hire An Enterprise SEO Expert For Your Marketing Team

This article isn’t going to explain what SEO is because you probably already know that. You’re here because you already know just how important search engine optimisation is to generating long-term, cost-effective online leads for a business in the 21^st century. You’re here because it makes sense to hire an SEO & Web Analytics fundi as a permanent member of your organisation. The question is this: what do you look for in an enterprise SEO expert?

– Qualified Or Experienced?

The first thing to decide when looking for an SEO hire is this: are you hiring for the experience or qualification? Everyone knows now that a degree doesn’t necessarily mean that you know what you’re talking about. Likewise, years of experience working with other brands in other industries might mean nothing when applied to your brand. The best bet here is to ask for previous SEO results and try to get in touch with previous employers (who know about SEO) who can speak to the potential hire’s efficacy.

– One Brand To Rule Them All

Search engine optimisation pros largely cut their teeth in agency environments. While this gives them a nice and rounded experience, as they are often required to manage SEO for multiple clients from multiple industries, this might be detrimental for your brand. What you ideally want is an SEO pro who is willing to dedicate the sum total of their efforts to optimising one brand – your brand. In other words, hire someone that is passionate about your industry and the work you do.

– Core SEO Competencies

Which core skills should your search engine optimisation hire have? This is a very important part of the hiring process, and can only really be assessed effectively by someone who understands how SEO works and what all it involves. A search engine optimisation practitioner should be able to facilitate keyword research, identify “golden keywords”, assess an existing SEO strategy for holes or opportunities to expand, and have the technical website management skills necessary to facilitate SEO changes on the website themselves.

– Establish Deliverables

Finally, before putting pen to paper and bringing your new SEO on board, work with your digital marketing team to establish concrete deliverables. For example, your SEO should be expected to grow to improve the SERP ranking of X pages, by X positions, within 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, etc. This way, the SEO knows what work is cut out for them BEFORE they take on the role, and you have a goalpost to measure their effectiveness by. This also gives you enough time within the 3-month probationary period to assess whether or not the employment is going to work out or not.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Thinking about perhaps promoting an existing member of your team to a role that includes SEO? They’ll need some formal training first, which is why our accredited SEO & Web Analytics course is an excellent idea. It covers from fundamentals to in-depth technical content and will prepare anyone with the tools to effectively optimise websites.