It’s hiring time again. Interviewing candidates always gets me thinking about what traits make for a top SEO practitioner, or someone who could become a top SEO practitioner, given several hundred sites to work on.
This is a really brief list, relative to what’s in my head:
- Ability to understand human behavior and psychology — both from an optimization perspective, and to be a usability guru
- Knowledge of domain set-up and domain issues
- HTML skills
- CSS skills/knowledge enough to work with design gurus
- Ability to multitask
- Strategic orientation to balance short-term and long-term factors
- Voracious reader (education)
- A strong liver (for conference attendance, a must have!)
- A strong problem-solving orientation
I think there are several nice-to-haves, such as the ability to explain what you’re doing to the ‘normals,’ which can include business sponsors and people with checkbooks. While, in theory, if you’re in an agency where Account Reps are the external facing staff and you’re an SEO-in-the-closet, you’ll still have to educate the Account Reps.
Also, these days I think people who come from a content perspective have something of an advantage on those from other disciplines. Local Search, Public Relations, and Social Media all work best when someone has a strong command of branding and content strategy. However, that’s certainly not mandatory… yet.