We all turn to Google when we are in trouble, uncertain, or confused. That’s the age that we live in.
Your clients likely found you via Google. Don’t expect less from your clients’ target audience.
It is difficult to maintain a strong presence in search results for your client’s company. SEO can be a difficult game especially when nearly every business, even your clients’ competitors, wants to succeed.
You need to be a master SEO specialist in order to turn the tide for your clients.
How do you find the best SEO professionals? Ask the right questions during an interview for SEO professionals.
We have collected a list expert-suggested questions for SEO interviews to help you find the right mix of skills and values for your agency.
You can also find a list with questions for marketing interviews that you can use to help you hire for different positions in marketing.
Let’s dive!
Interesting read: 9 SEO Strategies that Will Work Forever
Interview Questions for Behavioral and Cultural Assessments in SEO
An SEO expert is more than technical skills.
A good SEO expert should be able to communicate with clients frequently to explain site audits. They also need to keep in touch with their content and programming teams to implement various SEO strategies.
It is crucial to find someone with the communication and interpersonal skills necessary to keep teams in sync.
These are interview questions for SEO professionals that will help you assess the cultural and behavioral skills of candidates.
- What motivated you to become a SEO professional?
- What are your top 3 core values?
- Which SEO strategy do you prefer?
- Which areas of SEO would you consider your best?
- What can you do to invest in yourself?
- Why would you like to work at our agency/company
- What sets you apart from other candidates? How ambitious do you want to increase your success rate?
- How can you tell if you are going to add value to our product/services?
- What makes a place a great place to work?
- Which SEO book inspired you the most?
- What SEO blogs/influencers are most inspiring? Why?
- What are you going to do your first few months as an SEO specialist/manager?
- What would happen if your performance is below average?
- What does the definition of “world-class worker” look like to you? Do you think you fit this definition?
- What was the best part about being part of your team?
- Have you ever had to be creative with your resources when you didn’t have the right ones? Give examples.
- How can you manage multiple shifting priorities while juggling them?
- What would you do if it were possible to do everything you want?
- What qualities and skills would your team look for in potential candidates if you had the chance to build one?
- Please tell me how you develop relationships with your coworkers.
- Please tell me about a time you were in conflict with a colleague or team member. What happened?
Questions for SEO Interviews to Assess Skills and Experience
SEO is a constantly changing field. It is important to have someone skilled and experienced enough in SEO to keep up with the latest trends and techniques and use them for your clients.
You can learn a tool, but it is difficult to demonstrate problem-solving skills as well as industry knowledge and experience.
To understand the potential candidate’s capabilities, you must see past the technical jargon and smooth talk.
Once you have completed the behavioral assessment, take the following SEO interview questions to evaluate candidates’ experience and skills.
“I prefer attitude to aptitude in an interview situation.” Interviewees with less skills who are candid and willing to learn will always be better than candidates who come across as difficult to work with em>
Ben Major, Head Tech & Content SEO at Skale
- What was your greatest challenge in SEO? How did you overcome it
- Could you give me a high-level overview of your approach to keyword research?
- Let me know what gaps you have in your SEO knowledge. How can you help us fill the gaps if you join us?
- How has your SEO process changed over the past 12 months? How different do you expect them to be in three years?
- What are the dangers of a crawler trapping? What can you do to fix it?
“The vast majority of people interviewed for positions like SEO experts, analysts, or managers will use all the marketing terms that you are familiar with. This will make you feel comfortable throughout the interview process. This should not be taken as a sign of expertise or knowledge. Instead, make sure that your candidate has a good understanding of SEO. You should also look for experience in collaboration with developers em>
Jeff Mains, CEO, Champion Leadership Group
- What strategies are you using to predict organic search profits?
- What is the average time it takes for your strategies to work?
- Are you familiar with working with developers on optimization projects?
- How have you found link building to be successful?
- What data should you consider to assess the success of your SEO campaign?
“I look for the following four qualities in every candidate for SEO manager: work knowledge, relevant experience and ability to solve problems and think creatively. A visionary, with the ability to create strategies and oversee their execution em>
Kateryna Reshetilo Head Marketing, Greenice.net
- What are the keys to a successful SEO strategy for your website? What are the key ingredients of a successful SEO strategy?
- SEO strategies: What can you do to make them work?
- How can you create an SEO strategy that works for your company? Please explain each step.
- What problems do you see in our website? What would you do to solve them?
- What kind of people do you need to be part of an SEO team?
- How can you organize and plan SEO work?
- What KPIs are you tracking? Why?
- You can share your stories of how you helped grow traffic from zero; broke through the plateau; and helped to recover lost positions.
- Name the most recent Google updates and what they have done?
- What SEO budgets have you worked with? What are their differences to the SEO budgets of competitors in your niche?
“I want to know how invested the person in SEO is, what projects they have worked on and what their experiences were like. Ask questions to reveal their knowledge and curiosity .”
Filip Silobod, Founder, Honest Marketing
- In your previous job, what were you most focused on in SEO? On-page and off-page SEO, content, technical?
- How often do SEO news stories appear in your news feed? What SEO “gurus” or influencers are you following and why?
- Name some of your SEO success stories and explain how you got there.
- Name some of your SEO mistakes, explain why they happened, and what is the best way to learn from them.
- Describe keyword frequency, density and difficulty.
“I ask my candidates to create a strategy for the first month for an existing client (i.e. what would they do for the client if successful)” Then, questions about their technical skills, past experience, and the challenges they faced when working in SEO em> would follow.
Connor Hewson Director, Assured marketing
- What are the steps to take before, during and after a website transfer?
- What are the three most important areas of SEO?
- What are the most important Off-Page optimization factors?
- Which SEO tools do you like best?
- What can you do to optimize your site for search engines other then Google?
“I would like to see if the candidate has a good grasp of the dynamic SEO market. Is the candidate keeping up to date with all developments in their field and any news? Are they learning and growing every day? It is important to find a SEO company that is proactive and can solve optimization problems em>
David Farkas CEO, Theupperranks
- What are the most common SEO mistakes you have seen in other companies?
- What is RankBrain and why is it so important?
- What is PageRank and why is it so important?
- What is a Canonical URL Tag?
- How can content marketing be used to improve your SEO?
- How can you delete pages that have been accidentally indexed from Google’s search index?
Interesting read: SEO vs. SMM: What Makes Your Company More Searchable to Users?
Conclusion
Before you start the process of hiring SEO professionals, first define your needs. What are your requirements?
SEO’s role varies from one company to the next. SEO can be hired for technical reasons, PR and outreach, or for content marketing. Although all tasks can be done together, they do have their own distinct distinction.
Once you’re ready, use our expert-suggested interview questions for SEO to help you choose the right candidate from all the resumes in your inbox.
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SocialPilot’s first article, 50+ Must-ask Questions for SEO Interview Questions for Your Next Hire appeared on SocialPilot.
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