Search engine optimization is essential for the success of your business and the effectiveness of your website. Hence, you have to increase your search engine rank and for you to achieve it, you need a reliable SEO specialist. An SEO specialist can help improve your search engine page rank by analyzing, reviewing and implementing necessary changes to your website.
As the human resource manager, it is your job to screen all applicants who want to be a part of your organization, including the SEO specialist. If it is your first time to hire one, it can be a little confusing and demanding. To help you in the hiring process, here are some of the things you need to know while hiring an SEO specialist.
SEO Has The Biggest Impact on Lead Generation, According to B2B Marketers
There are many ways marketers can generate leads. However, some lead generation strategies such as cold calling can be less effective as it can be annoying for many prospects. Search engine optimization, on the one hand, can help you generate leads without hard selling or being too promotional. In fact, 575 of B2B marketers claim that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. Many of today’s B2B companies had gained a lot of benefits from their SEO rankings, so as a hiring manager, you should focus on hiring the best SEO specialist for your business.
SEO is a Build-In, Not An Add-On
Since search engine optimization has a great influence on consumers’ buying behaviors and decision-making process, organic search is essential to your modern ecommerce business. It helps drive traffic to your website but you have to remember that SEO is not just an add-on, but a built-in. All your SEO efforts should be integrated with your other marketing strategies such as paid search, content marketing, conversion rate optimization and branding and communication.
Google Penalizes a Website with Poor SEO
When hiring an SEO specialist, you have to be really scrupulous because if the person you hire is not really the “expert” he deems to be, you can be in big trouble. Why? This is because poor SEO has consequences and you have to pay for them. One of these is being penalized by Google for poor SEO practices. If you want to hire a reliable and efficient SEO specialist, you have to make sure he will not commit any poor SEO practices such as poor copy, scraped content and poor keyword placement.
Plug-ins Can’t Replace an SEO Specialist
Plug-ins can give you a lot of conveniences but remember that there are many things an SEO specialist can do that common plug-ins can’t. You can use them as you please but never disregard the benefits of hiring an SEO specialist. SEO experts can create a great SEO strategy and make your business stronger and help prevent expensive errors.
An SEO Specialist Should Understand the Levels of SEO
Basically, SEO has three tiers: technical, on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Technical SEO focuses on taking technical actions to improve search engine results. On-page optimization deals with different elements such as keywords and HTML tags while off-page optimization is all about link building. It is ideal if there are different people working on each part, so they won’t be confused with their tasks. If the SEO specialist you’re going to hire does not understand these tiers and their purposes, you are likely to pick the wrong candidate. This is why you have to ask a lot of questions and give them an actual test to see if the candidates really know what they are doing.
You Should Know What Tactics an SEO Specialist is Using
If you are a hiring manager, you probably don’t know a lot about search engine optimization and the different tactics SEO experts use. When hiring an SEO specialist, you should ask them if they are going to use white hat SEO or black hat SEO. Essentially, black hat SEO is a tactic that intentionally manipulates Google’s algorithms just so they can get results for their clients. White hat SEO is apparently the opposite, where SEO experts follow all the guidelines of Google. If the candidate uses black hat SEO as a strategy, you may need to move on to the next candidate as you don’t want poor SEO practices to compromise the success of your business.
