SEO Interview Questions To Ask
Most business leaders looking to hire an SEO manager, consultant or agency do not have the subject matter expertise needed to choose the right candidate. In this article, you will discover SEO questions to ask and answers to look for from the person you are interviewing. Irrespective of the SEO questions you ask, you also want to structure your interview into three broad categories:
- Attitude
- Skill
- Passion
Most business leaders are not trained in the art of interviewing and for this reason they always focus on the skill aspect of the candidate and ignore their passion, attitude and motivation. Skill can be acquired through on-the-job training and experience but attitude is more difficult to develop or change. This is the main reason why we end up with a lot of toxic behavior in the workplace. Listed below are the important SEO questions you ask and answers to look for from candidates in your next round of SEO recruitment.
What new SEO skills have you developed in the past six months?
You want to listen carefully to how the candidate answers this question because it will reveal the candidate's attitude towards personal development and their level of self-motivation. The SEO industry has a few notable blogs and experts that share regular updates about the new Google algorithms. As part of personal development in SEO, expect the candidate to mention one of the blogs listed below:
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Journal
The Moz Blog
Search Engine Watch
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Backlinko
The Ahrefs Blog
The SEO ranking factors are constantly being reviewed and updated by Google and it's certainly important that the candidate you are interviewing demonstrates that they keep updated by regularly reading the blogs mentioned above.
Tell me about your technical SEO experience with examples of workflow processes you executed and tools you used?
You are most likely going to find two types of SEO candidates in your interview pool: people with and without technical SEO skills and experience. Not all marketers and SEO executives will have the technical HTML, CSS, and Javascript skills required for technical SEO but these technical skill can be developed on the job relatively quickly if the candidate is interested in learning. This should not be a deal-breaker if your IT team or SEO agency can cover the technical SEO part of what you need. A candidate with technical SEO skills, however, will also be able to support your Google analytics audits and implementation, as well as CRO (conversion rate optimization).
The candidate should be able to walk you through the technical SEO process and you should look out for the mention of any of the following tools:
- Screaming frog
- Google Search Console
- Google Page Speed Insight
- DeepCrawl
- Ahref
- SEMrush
A skilled candidate should be able to explain how they used the technical SEO tools to identify technical SEO issues with websites they worked on in the past and also highlight what they did to fix them. It’s worth also asking questions around the impact of the technical SEO on Google ranking, website performance, and overall conversion rate.
Describe your approach to keyword research in previous roles. What tools did you use and how did you group and map keywords from an On-page and Off-page SEO perspective?
It is possible to rank number one on Google for the wrong keyword which would have zero impact on your revenue growth. You want to ask the candidate about keyword research in order to understand how they have optimized websites with the right keywords and the results that followed an increase in website traffic and conversion. A candidate should be able to show you how they structured keywords into the following categories:
Awareness keywords
Conversion keywords
Homepage keywords
Product page keywords
Blog keywords
YouTube video keywords
The candidate should also be able to explain how they used keyword research to optimize on-page elements of a website, as well as how this influenced their link-building strategies.
Walk me through your experience of SEO budget and KPIs tracked to measure ROI on money spent?
This question is for SEO candidates with over 5 years of experience. You want to probe into their experience and SEO budgeting and forecasting approach. Ask to see examples of SEO planning and forecasting documents they prepared in past roles.
Please describe your previous experience of SEO content production and distribution workflow process.
Content is the foundation of SEO and any candidate that does not have hands-on experience in writing a blog is less than ideal. Ask the candidate if they have a personal blog or have published their content in any other blog or podcast.
You want to also ask the candidate about their experience of creating a content marketing plan for SEO. How did they approach the building of a website blog section and landing page content in order to improve website ranking and conversion?
Tell me about your experience with YouTube video SEO?
YouTube SEO is less competitive and has a lot of long-tail keyword opportunities because most SEO practitioners focus on text and ignore video SEO. You need to find out if the candidate will be capable enough to support the creation and optimization of your YouTube channel and whether or not they will be able to drive the increases in your website traffic, conversion and brand awareness through video content.
