For the average business owner, managing the technical and nitty-gritty details of website performance can be tedious and stressful. Given the many other things demanding for their attention, many business owners opt to hire an SEO expert or agency to manage the website and all related ventures.
If you are considering this option for your business, below are a few important qualities to ascertain prior to hiring anyone:
- Roundedness
Many SEO specialists focus on SEO, Ignoring other subjects that do not directly relate to search engines and rankings. To be successful in their job, SEOs need to have a deep and firm grasp of marketing principles and practices, social media environments, web design and development, web analytics, content, business and product models among many others. Disconnecting SEO from these critical subjects will result in ultimately ineffective strategies.
- Big picture outlook
The most important thing for an SEO is to know what goals should be accomplished by the strategy before settling down to outline actual techniques to get there. For instance, a goal might be to increase conversions, and improving rankings will be a means to that end. All SEO strategies should be goal oriented, and your SEO should have a clear picture of the end right from the start if you want to succeed.
- Fitting in
Your SEO will interact with many different people and operations within your business including marketing, IT, analytics, sales and customer service departments. It is therefore essential to have an SEO that works well with the rest of the team. In addition, their integrity, communication style and personality should fit in with the organizational culture; otherwise, progressing will be difficult.
- Communication
Building from the above, an SEO should be able to communicate clearly and effectively given that he/she will liaise with many different people to accomplish organizational objectives. No SEO can survive on their own, and hence they should be able to explain what they want, why it’s important and how it should be done. They should be able to speak in a way that is clearly understood depending on their specific audience at the time, whether techy or non-techy.
