[Build Backlinks Online] 9 Experts and a Summary: What Makes an Ideal SEO Employee?

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '9 Experts and a Summary: What
Makes an Ideal SEO Employee?'


Posted by aaj_14
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

In 2012, the SEO industry in the UK was worth over 500 million annually,
growing 18% from 2011 figures. The US SEO industry is even bigger, topping $16
billion in 2010. In a time of general malaise about the economy, this industry
is growing rapidly, and the good times look set to continue.


This is great news for any SEO business looking to expand along with
companies' search marketing budgets, as there is plenty of work to be done.
There is so much, in fact, that most SEO departments, consultancies and agencies
are looking to hire new employees to keep up with the demand. This does raise
the question, however, of what to look for when hiring new SEOs.


So what do the best and brightest SEOs in the US and the UK look for when they
are hiring? Read on to find out. Take note: Their answers may surprise you.


Eric Ward â EricWard.com





What makes the ideal SEO employee?


Not joking. A bit OCD, a bit ADD, and experience in marketing, public
relations, and library science. When presented with a long page of source code,
do they faint or confidently explain the good, bad, and ugly in it without
having to see the page in a browser? Do they spend time online when they are not
working? Do they have their own individual presence established online? If they
saw Matt Cutts at a conference, would they hide?


Bruce Clay â Bruce Clay.com





What makes the ideal SEO employee?


Someone that has not learned bad habits, and that will be a leader on their
projects. They must be a great written and spoken communicator, they need to
know what they do not know and endeavor to fix that, and they have to be excited
about problem solving. They need to stick to the methodology while seeing
opportunities to surpass the competition. Our ideal candidate is fantastic at
time management and organization, is service focused, and lives for internet
marketing. Their technical background should be (entry-level) basic, and they
need to be a quick and accurate student. At a senior level they need a solid
foundation across many markets and technologies, without the baggage of learned
spam techniques. They should be able to teach, lead, and communicate as the
expert on a complex project. Historically we have found great success in
training our employees from an intern to expert level (10 years with our firm).
And, yes, we have many technical staff that have been with us that long.


Paddy Moogan â Distilled











What makes the ideal SEO employee?


There are two things we look for in all hires at Distilled: smart and gets
stuff done. Other stuff is a bonus but if they have these two qualities, we can
often teach them the rest! Personally, I also look for someone who actively
learns new stuff in their spare time and seems to have a genuine passion for
something. For example, I like SEOs who may have set up their own blog or
website and have spent a bit of time knowing how it feels to get it ranking and
the challenges that can present. It shows initiative and a passion that is hard
to teach.


Julie Joyce - Link Fish Media











What makes the ideal SEO employee?


The ideal SEO employee is someone without a huge ego who realizes that he or
she is never done learning, will often be wrong, and isn't afraid to try
something new and forego old methods that no longer work. It's someone with a
brain that's logical and creative, someone with the communication skills to
write well or come up with amazing ideas. It's also someone with an obvious
passion for the work, as if you don't give a damn about what you're doing, I
doubt you'll ever be brilliant at it.











Dave Peiris â SharkSEO








What makes the ideal SEO employee?


This is actually quite a tough question because there's a lot of different
types of people who could all be incredible SEOs. SEOs that are analytical often
produce great work, especially if they enjoy digging into the data and focus on
the story rather than just the numbers to work out why things are how they are.
Some of the best SEOs I've ever worked with have been highly technical. They've
got a great understanding for how to structure sites so they're ideally suited
for search as well as users, and knowing how to code helps them talk to
developers better. Having said that, there are other skill sets outside of
coding that can lead to an excellent SEO employee, like being able to build
relationships with site owners with ease. A great SEO employee is also a good
communicator, and can easily explain complex technical issues in ways that
non-technical people can understand. But overall I think the best SEOs are the
ones who are naturally curious and, when they find a problem, can't help but try
to solve it.











Wil Reynolds â Seer Interactive








What makes the ideal SEO employee?


Curiosity, competitiveness, and compassion. Curious because I want to work
with people who have that curiosity of "how does this work" to always be there,
the desire to seek out answers is key too. Competitiveness because I want to
work with people who push me to get better, who want to win, and when they lose
it stings!! Those are the folks who leave when the job is done, and it
personally messes up their day when something goes bad. Compassion means that
they don't let their competitiveness overrun their ability to have compassion
for others and to have empathy for other folks.








Oliver Archibald - SEOGadget





What makes the ideal SEO employee?


For any calibre of SEO, whether junior or senior, there couldn't be a better
way to learn about this industry than by maintaining your own site. It's all
very well reading about SEO (and that's certainly a good thing), but actually
doing it enables you to fully understand what you're recommending to clients or
your team. This brings me on to my next point, which is creativity and
initiative. These attributes in the ideal candidate shouldn't just be applied to
cool content ideas, but also to how they handle the technical side of SEO. As
many of us know, every site is different, and the correct solution to one site's
problem might be vastly different from a similar issue on another site.








Patrick Altoft â Branded3





What makes the ideal SEO employee?


We don't subscribe to the theory that SEO employees have to be good
all-rounders because it's actually very useful to have specialist technical
people and specialist creative people working on the account. How many great
creative people also have great technical skills? Very few. We are a 50-person
agency, so we have the resources to have specialist teams working on the
individual campaign components rather than trying to have generalists who don't
have the detailed skills. We use experienced strategists to run our clients'
accounts, and they are the primary point of contact, so they need great SEO
skills and great account management skills. Those are probably the key criteria
we look at for this role.








Kelvin Newman â Sitevisibility








What makes the ideal SEO employee?


A while back I wrote a free book about Link Building called "How to Become a
Clockwork Pirate," and while a lot of that advice was pre-Penguin, there's one
area I think I was on the right page: The ideal SEO has two different skills
sets, the creative and the methodical. People are going to sit at different
places on the spectrum, but the most successful SEOs I've worked with sit
somewhere in the middle. They're people prepared to come up with good ideas but
accept that a great idea without hard work is useless. Equally, they understand
sometimes it's about putting in the hours and follow-up; that's the difference
between success and failure. I think Seth Godin summed it up really well: "Real
Artists Ship."













Image credit Wordle.net

Conclusion

Each expert answered a single question â What makes the ideal SEO
employee? â in incredibly different ways. Some wanted specialists, and
some preferred all-rounders. Some liked to build the new employee's knowledge
almost from scratch, while others were looking for people with solid knowledge
of the industry. Still, time and again the same qualities popped up.


The ideal SEO employee should:


Be smart.
Be motivated to learn â even off the clock.
Be a problem solver.
Maintain their own site in their off-time.
Be both logical and creative.
Be an excellent communicator who is able to build relationships.
Have a passion for technology and the internet.
Be willing to try new things.
Constantly push to improve themselves, their approach to SEO problems, and
others.


At the end of the day, few of these qualities have much to do with HTML or
information architecture. Instead, they seem to focus on personality traits like
leadership, tenacity, curiosity, and self-motivation.


The next time you find yourself searching for the ideal SEO employee, just
remember that the ideal SEO employee is someone with the right personality. The
technical know-how can be taught.

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