Editorial Staff
Anyone can set up an SEO agency company overnight and called themselves an “SEO expert”. However, that doesn’t mean that they know what they’re doing.
We’ve seen tons of “SEO experts that make a promise to their clients to increase their organic traffic, and when we checked their methodology, it’s seems off. And generally, we have no idea how they can make such promise.
With that to say, here are some criteria on determining a value of an SEO expert. This post will be useful for you if your company is currently looking for SEO experts or if you’re an individual that want to build your credibility around SEO.
1. An Understanding of All Three SEO Core Levels
Search engine optimization is a broad and huge strategies, but there are three main cores of it:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
A good SEO expert must have a in-depth understanding on all of these 3 core of SEO knowledge before claiming any “SEO expert” title.
2. Years of Experience
Being an SEO expert is not something that you can gain overnight.
It requires year and year of fail and success in practicing one.
There are dozen of little things that go into the bigger picture of doing SEO and it takes many years of experiencing what works and what doesn’t to truly do a good job.
An SEO expert with many years of experience will be able to look at any website and know exactly what needs to be done for it to gain more search engine traffic, while someone new at SEO will try the same things on every site, which will only have a limited effect, if any.
3. Proven Success Track Record
It’s easy to claim that you’re an SEO expert. In fact, anyone can claim themselves that title.
Having a successful achievement of SEO can be proven on your own portfolio or your client’s portfolio.
Show them the screenshot of the Google Analytics prior and after you’ve implemented the SEO strategy, and that would be your success track record.
Anyone who are looking for an SEO expert should definitely check their track record and should have at least three proven SEO track that they’ve done that make a significant difference.
4. A Well Rounded Knowledge and Perspective
Being an SEO expert is not about just focusing on SEO only.
On the other hand, one must have a deep understanding and knowledge about all marketing, the psychology of the visitors, business model and all.
This knowledge is indeed will help their optimization method to decide what are best for any website, instead of applying the same method for all the websites.
For example, an SEO expert should know that they can’t imply the content optimization for an E-commerce sites with product pages, while it only can be done with a blog site.
5. Excellent Communication Skills and Fit to The Team
Speaking of communication style, an SEO needs to be able to clearly communicate why a change must be made to your website in terms that everyone understands.
“There’s no way an SEO can do everything themselves. So they need to be able to communicate why a certain change needs to be made in terms that everyone understands. They should be able to talk to the IT team and the C-level team and get their point across.”
6. Passion and Curiosity
While knowledge is certainly important, curiosity is essential, too. Finding an SEO who can recite the IP addresses for all of Google’s crawlers is great, but one who’s deeply curious and constantly investigating how that crawler works is even better.
We’ve often met SEOs whose knowledge was fantastic, but at some point in their career, it ceased to grow. We’d rather have a fresh mind that’s hungry and growing than a grizzled vet whose thirst for new knowledge died.
Bottom Line
Great SEOs find ways to work around challenges and roadblocks. Of course, this means that your organization must enable progress and not impede it or you’ll break their spirit and desire to impact the company positively.
