How To Recruit an In-House SEO Manager


Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a tricky business and one that changes more than most. It's vitally important for your business to have employees that understand the ways in which search engines work, the way to use them and how to adapt to the constant updates. Our Digital Marketing Recruitment Guide aims to help you and your business as you look to recruit an in-house SEO manager with the help of contributors from all around the digital marketing sector.

In this section Colin Telford, Managing Partner here at The Candidate, discusses the needs and ways to hire an in-house SEO manager and how to make the process as painless as possible.

SEO Managers run your in-house team, they understand the industry and manage your digital marketing activates.

Our clients have told us that being in the hands of Google is similar to being in the lap of the Gods. If truth be told, the majority of our clients are firmly in Google's hands, with roughly 90% of all searches conducted on their search engine. Google's relentless desire to "improve the customer journey" through search has led to multiple changes in their T & C's and policies, the same policies that have made businesses as well as destroyed them. Therefore setting your stall out as a business to your customers via this platform must be done in the most considerate way to the behemoth that is Google.

The practices of some SEO "experts" as recent as 6-12 months ago would land you in a spot of bother if you adopted those today. Link building was the glue of the internet in recent times, but manipulating or being perceived to take advantage of this has some very serious consequences, which even high profile brands have felt the wrath of.

Your marketing activity will undoubtedly be addressing the new developments in SEO alongside a close alignment with social media platforms. Knowing the links between Google search and Google for example is vital. Additional overlaps will exist with other platforms, displaying these correctly in a bid for a call to action will help grow your online driven sales. If your business has multiple products, how are the pages structured so that they are optimised for SEO while appearing highly and accurately for shopping sites. If you operate in a B2B environment, how do you best adopt SEO to tackle the challenges that exist here in marketing to the decision makers?

Whether you use the channel for reputation management, acquisition activity or dovetailing with offline activity, you'll need a qualified and trusted SEO expert for your business.

We know that your business wasn't born around the ever changing world of SEO, so why on earth would you know the type of person and skill set to get the most from this rich vein of leads and sales from the internet? By knowing that The Candidate recruits a variety of level SEO specialists for clients, you can be assured that we'll offer a quality solution from start to finish. We work directly with clients as well as with agencies, as agency professionals are often at the cutting edge of SEO, so we know the latest trends in terms of recruitment. So if you're unsure of whether your company needs content generation or blogger outreach then have a word with us and we'll help with that decision.

The Candidate... So ask yourself, has the time come to bring your SEO in-house? Does the amount of activity around your online shop front warrant the salary of a manager level SEO expert? If so, we can help you devise the perfect brief and job specification to recruit the SEO manager that is perfect for your business needs. Not only that, we'll help effectively execute the brief, advising on a number of CVs, Candidates and interviews you should conduct. Our Digital Marketing Recruitment Guide should come in handy too. By taking advantage of the consultative approach we offer, you'll have made a long term investment in your next manager level SEO employee.

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