If you’re in the market for someone to handle your search engine optimization, consider the big picture. Skills and know-how are imperative. Potential employees need to have a strong knowledge of information architecture and HTML, but there’s more to consider. Since we’re dealing with people—not automatons—other intangible qualities become very important. Someone might have the best brains in the field, but if they are hard to work with or lack vision or ambition or simply don’t fit well with our team, they may not be able to tap your full SEO potential.
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Consider these important qualities when forming an SEO team:
- Collaborative – SEO work is a collective effort that involves different areas of expertise: technical, onsite and offsite factors, content marketing, analysis of target audience, online PR, social media, and more. A person can be a stellar performer in one area, but unskilled in others. Make sure to form a strong, collaborative team that works well together.
- Hungry – Look for someone who is never satisfied with their current success and who will always work to improve performance. A good SEO worker is someone who is hungry for continued knowledge, someone will stay current with the latest trends and keep your organization on the cutting edge.
- Agile – An SEO worker must be up for constant innovation and disruption. In SEO, the rules of the game are endlessly changing. Everybody is at Google’s mercy. Nobody knows when there will be another algorithm update to adjust to.
- Reliable – The SEO world needs workers who can be trusted, workers who will do things consistently right over time—even when nobody is watching. SEO workers should have a proven track record of being both responsible and reliable.
- Genuine – Nothing is guaranteed to work in this industry. Even the best ideas fail. A good worker will have the humility to own up to mistakes without playing the blame game. They will be candid about past failures and resilient about trying again.
- Effective – The measure of SEO effectiveness is the amount of traffic to a website. A good SEO worker must be results-oriented, always aiming for more and more traffic.
- Dedicated – SEO workers must be dedicated to their craft. Look for individuals who exceed the bare minimum and go above and beyond for the client.
A good SEO worker can not only drive up traffic to your website but also influence the culture of your business. Make sure they complement your current team and bring new qualities to motivate and inspire the people around them.
