Hiring for Search Marketers

• by Dan Bailey

I’ve had several people ask me lately for tips on hiring search marketers in-house. Of course we provide these various expertise offerings to businesses all the time, and there are other good digital-focus agencies. But if you wish to hire in-house for a permanent position, here are some tips:

There are good search marketers & those who don’t know. I’ve met some company-side search marketers I’ve been impressed with. But most search marketing consultants & agency people would tell you that an outside firm is the only way. In our firm, I do SEO & I have someone who focuses on SEM in our firm. & that works well for us – he knows things I don’t know & vice-versa. But there are SEOs I respect who also do SEM. Like anything it depends. As an example of something we do, we provide search marketing competitive audits & strategies & training for clients. So that after we lay the groundwork, clients’ in-house social media marketers &/or writers have keywords we’ve supplied (or know how to research their own) & can apply some SEO thinking to blogging. SEO is 1 part tech, 1 part content. If you do a lot of in-house content (& your SEO tech foundation is set), you will get SEO results.

But also you should request applicants hands-on work during hiring process. Find some tests to give applicants. See if they have had any search/analytics reputable classes or software certifications. Ask them to set up a custom Google Analytics dashboard/report & send to you (from any website). Ask them to pull some reports from SEO Book tools. There are a lot of people who will say they know these things but don’t. 

And when you need help, we’re here.
Thanks, Jake Aull, Zen Fires Digital Marketing