When a digital marketing team of a company wants to hire an SEO expert, they would ask candidates questions, more than 10. These questions would test their knowledge about SEO in general, past experience, present knowledge about SEO trends and experience using SEO tools. Questions have to be developed carefully, because there are hiring costs involved, and no company would want to fire an incompetent SEO expert and then hold another recruitment session.

How Do You Optimize A Website?

The candidate cant be expected to list all the off-page and on-page optimization techniques with engine specialist. However, the candidate should give a methodical answer, mentioning important details. He should be able to clearly state the process of optimizing a website; for example, the candidate should talk about how the quality of a website is assessed, how a website is rank, and the strategies used for evaluating the campaigns success.

What Tools Can Be Used To Manage And Track A Campaign?

The candidate should know every free and premium tool that can be used to assess the marketing success and failure of a marketing campaign. In a good answer, the candidate would talk about his experience with the tools, how these tools are used to measure website traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, organic traffic and keyword ranking. The candidate should be able to use Google Analytics, as it is a very important tool to gain perspective about an SEO campaign.

SEO strategy That Went Wrong

Candidates should be asked about situations related to SEO that they have faced in their past jobs. SEO is all about trying new things and techniques, and candidates must have experienced challenging situations. They should give specific examples, about trying out different strategies, not getting the outcome they expected, and then changing their tactics. This question would tell the interviewer, how capable a candidate is, in terms of implementing strategies.

Does The Candidate Work With Developers?

Both CSS and HTML are used in SEO; not every SEO expert has technical knowledge, which is why they should have the experience of working with developers. Candidates should be honest about whether they know about CSS and HTML and if they dont, do they have basic web development knowledge or not. They should be questioned about their experience of working in teams and with other departments.

What Is The Most Effective Method Of Researching Keywords?

Keywords are used in SEO content, and every candidate should have the expertise of searching for keywords. However, the main question is how they look for keywords; candidates should talk about the tools that they use, like a Google Keyword Planner. They should be tested on their knowledge of ranking keywords, how to find out which keywords are the most effective and the difference between long tail keywords and other keywords.

Algorithm Changes

Google changes its algorithms every now and then, and candidates should be questioned about how these changes can be detected. In order to test the knowledge of candidates, they should be asked about the recent changes in Google algorithms, and what changes did they make in websites, to incorporate those changes. This would help the interviewer test the knowledge of the candidate and make an informed hiring decision.

What Is The Role Of Social Media?

Candidates should be tested on their knowledge about social media and how social media websites play a role in the SEO content development and promotion. Candidates should know about creating and managing social media accounts, and if necessary, the recruiter should ask them about the accounts they have managed, to assess them later.

Improvement In Search Engine Rankings

Candidates should be asked about how they can improve the search engine ranking of the companys website. This way, the interviewer would be able to assess the knowledge of candidates, and how they apply that knowledge. This question would give the interviewer an idea about the creativity, innovation and problem solving skills of the candidate.

Team Player

It is necessary to question candidates about their skills, like being a team player or a team leader, because this gives the interviewer an idea about how a candidate perceives themselves. If a candidate isnt able to describe himself, by mentioning his past achievements and examples, then he wont be able to form a good impression on the interviewer.

Payment Terms

The final questions should always be about the salary that a candidate expects from a website. The interviewer, before the interview, would have already analyzed the market fee that is paid to SEO experts.