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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE HIRING AN SEO SPECIALIST

In marketing, visibility is key. And to make sure your online marketing is optimized for maximum visibility in search engines, you need the services of an SEO Specialist.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

What is an SEO Specialist?

CHAPTER 2

Why is an SEO Specialist Important?

CHAPTER 3

Important Skills and Traits of an SEO Specialist

CHAPTER 4

Where to Hire SEO Specialists?

CHAPTER 5

Hiring Considerations

CHAPTER 6

C9 Staff SEO Specialists

What is an SEO Specialist?

SEO means search engine optimization. This is the process of deliberately engineering websites so they show up at the top of search engine results. This is done mostly by managing content and making sure the website contains text that customers usually search for (keywords).

An SEO Specialist is someone who applies SEO principles to your website in order to ensure it appears at the top of search engine results. This entails analysing and reviewing data and implementing changes to the website in order to achieve desired results.

Search engines have “crawlers” or “spiders” that quickly scan your website pages and rank them (along with other websites) in a search engine results page (SERP). Keywords and how they’re used by search engine users, combined with the search engine’s algorithm for serving up results are the basis of ranking.

The biggest challenge in the work of an SEO Specialist is keeping up with search engines’ ever-changing algorithms. It is a daunting task that requires plenty of analysis and critical thinking. That being said, a lot of global clients have at least one SEO Specialist from the Philippines in their teams because of their work ethic and innate tendency to be quite analytical and patient.

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Why is an SEO Specialist Important?

In marketing, optimum visibility results in greater traffic. And as we all know, high traffic, means high chances of conversion. An SEO Specialist facilitates this by making sure your website ranks high on search engine results, thereby generating greater traffic.

Think about it. When’s the last time you searched for something on Google and you checked out sites further than the fourth page? If your website is nowhere to be found within the first 3 pages for a particular keyword you’re optimizing for, chances are, no one is seeing your page result. Therefore, no one is going to your website.

With an SEO Specialist, you can be assured that when someone does a search and uses a keyword you’re optimizing for, you’re one of the top results they see. This increases your chances of generating traffic and converting that traffic. And the beauty of SEO is that once people are organically seeing your website and visiting it, your ranking also improves because of this.

Think of the SEO Specialist as the guy on the street handing out flyers to people so they can know about the delicious bowl of ramen you serve in your little store that’s tucked away in a small side street. He even goes as far as guiding people and walking them up to your store. Without that guy, you can have the world’s most delicious food but no one will know about it.

Important Skills and Traits of an SEO Specialist

In order to be effective, an SEO Specialist needs to possess a certain skill set and certain character traits:

Above Average Analytical Skills – SEO is all about analysis, making sense of data, and using that data to make adjustments continually until the goal is achieved.

Effective Communication – an SEO professional who can do their own keyword research and author content that includes it is definitely more valuable. More than that though, he should be able to explain why he’s doing this and that for a page, and for what.

Technical and Programming Skills – this is not necessary but it surely is useful. Since SEO Specialists make recommendations about page speed, rendering, lazy loading, server side redirects, microdata tagging, and basic HTML tags, he might as well know how to work these himself.

Critical Thinking – this is important because a good part of an SEO Specialist’s job is solving problems.
Ability to adapt quickly – an essential part of an SEO Specialist’s job is making changes and adjustments to running campaigns on the fly.

Being receptive to new things – SEO is an ever-changing discipline and search engine algorithms shift and change even more. An SEO Specialist needs to have an endless supply of curiosity and desire to learn – not to mention patience and a thick skin.

Where To Find an SEO Specialist

To find SEO Specialists, you need to generate a magic keyword that you’ll use to search for them on Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine. Without this magic keyword, you have no chance to finding them. How do you get this magic keyword, find an SEO Specialist.

Kidding aside, the first thing you need to decide when deciding to hire an SEO Specialist is whether you want to hire local or a remote.

The advantages of hiring locally include:

  • Ease of access and the ability to work with you personally – it’s always easier to work with someone face to face.

  • Less cultural and social adjustment needed you’re most probably living in the same city as your designer so you’re in the same time zone, speak the same language and share the same culture. This makes work so much smoother.

  • Better team-building opportunities being in the same place physically creates plenty of opportunity to train, collaborate, build rapport, and get feedback. 

On the other hand, hiring local talent can have the following disadvantages:

  • Specific skill sets can be harder to find if you’re limited to a particular geographical area, finding a rockstar will be challenging. 

  • Overhead expenses if you hire locally, you’ll be obligated to keep an office which means you have to pay rent, pay for supplies, pay for electricity and other utilities. If you already have an office, you’ll have to provide your new hire with a work space which translates to the same thing – increased overhead.

If you decide to hire a remote worker, you need to decide if you’re hiring a project-based SEO Specialist or a full-time one. In any case,

here are the advantages of hiring remotely

  • Access to a global pool of talents you’re not limited to who’s available in your city and what they know. Hiring remotely gives you access to talented SEO Specialists from different countries who may even charge relatively smaller fees than local recruits. This is true to both project-based freelancers and full-timers.

  • Little to no overhead most remote workers work from home so you don’t need to worry about providing them with work spaces. This is especially true for project-based freelancers. However, for full-time employees, you may be required to subsidize their internet connection, computer equipment etc. But these costs are still far less compared to local overhead expenses. 

  • Less contractual obligation you can hire SEO Specialists on a per-project basis. If you like their work, continue to give them projects to work on. If you don’t, just don’t give them any more tasks to perform and that’s that.

On the other hand,

here are the disadvantages of hiring remote workers:

  • Trial and error you can’t really gauge the level of expertise, experience and even work ethic of the remote worker until you take a leap of faith and hire them. The good news is, if you don’t like their performance on the first project, you can just part ways right then and there.

  • Time constraints if you hire a remote seo specialist, particularly a freelancer, you need to understand right off the bat that you’re probably sharing him with several other clients (some paying more than you). That means your project is at the mercy of the freelancer’s workload. This may not be the case, though, with full-time remote employees.

That being said, here are a few places where you can find SEO Specialists online. Note that in some of these websites, you’ll have the option to hire either locally or remotely. It’s all up to you, your needs and your budget:

Upwork (local and remote) – geared more towards the US market. You can post an SEO Specialist job, and available contractors can start lining up to apply. All you’d need to do is choose the best candidate. This is a good place to look for either part-timers or full-time SEO Specialists.

Fiverr (remote and local) – contractors already post their services and their fees upfront. However, there’s still room for negotiation once you’ve touched base with a contractor. This is your best choice for one-off projects.

People Per Hour (remote and local) – geared more towards the European market. Just like Upwork, you post a job and contractors will apply. You can choose the best candidate and go from there. This is also a good place to look for either part-timers or full-time SEO Specialists.

C9 Staff (remote) – specializes in providing remote staffing services from the Philippines. It is considered a concierge service where you don’t simply hire an SEO Specialist from the Philippines (or any other kind of remote worker for that matter), you hire an SEO Specialist with an entire management service behind him to keep him accountable and always on his toes. This is ideal for people looking to hire the best and expecting to get the best while keeping costs relatively competitive.

Hiring Considerations

When looking to hire SEO Specialists, whether it be local or remote, there are a few important considerations you have to keep in mind.

Do you already have an SEO operation running that you want to boost? Or is this your first venture into SEO? Do you already have a team in place such as a PPC Specialist, an SEO copywriter, a web designer and you just need a kickass SEO Specialist to complete it? Or are you planning to build a team around your SEO Specialist?

Is it going to be a one-off project or do you have a series of projects in your pipeline?

Next, what level of experience or proficiency would you like your SEO Specialist to have? Would you be okay with a mid-level specialist or are you looking for a senior level one?

Finally, how much do you have to spend? Do you have just enough for a one-off deal? Is your pocket deep enough for a part-time or even a full-time recruit? Are you ready to spend good money on a senior-level SEO Specialist salary or is your budget pointing towards a mid-level one?

Why C9 Staff SEO Specialists Rock

Here at C9 Staff, we have SEO Specialists in all levels of proficiency. Whether you need mid-level specialists (with 1-3 years experience) or senior level specialists (with 4 years experience or more), we have one that fits your needs.