This morning, I was talking to a prospective client looking to hire their first in-house SEO to complement some external resources. They had come across an old article I had written, Employee Traits Necessary For Hiring the SEO of Tomorrow, and asked me if these were still true. I agree they are still very much true, but following some recent rants, I think I need to add a few more.
Critical Reasoning Skills
Yes, this was on the list of skills to have, but it seems many SEOs lack critical reasoning skills, so I am reiterating it. As search engines and AI continue to evolve, critical reasoning skills are essential for SEOs to sift through the hype and align changes to client workflows and business requirements. SEO, especially in the enterprise, will increasingly need to be integrated with broader digital marketing and business objectives. Critical reasoning helps SEOs communicate the “why” behind their strategies, align with cross-functional teams, and advocate for approaches that drive long-term value, not just short-term rankings.
There are a few ways to test for this skillset. The easiest is to give them a recent SEO article and ask them to apply it to your company. I often found one with an approach for a smaller site that would not work at an enterprise. Present candidates with hypothetical workplace scenarios or complex data sets and ask them to identify key issues or inconsistencies. A good one is to have them explain why Google’s crawling and indexing process works the way it does or have them convert the broad concept of E-E-A-T to a set of actions for your company.
Business Category Experience
I am not talking about having done SEO on a bank website if you are a bank. I mean the type of SEO you need to do. I have seen too many small site experts move into a senior enterprise role only to fail because of how little time they spend on SEO and the glacial pace of implementation. Jessica Bowman once explained at a conference that SEO implementation was only about 5% of her typical work week. The rest of the time was spent on educating, begging, budgeting, and reporting.
To test this skill, I would give them scenarios relative to the vertical or level of the organization. If it is a global role, understand how well they can navigate language or cultural differences. For enterprise roles, a key test is asking them to adapt SEO recommendations to corporate standards, create actionable Jira tickets, or approach cross-team requirements for generating external links from PR teams or channel partners.
Reading Comprehension Skills
Too many people in Search today lack serious reading comprehension skills. With social media, many people only skim content for tidbits, don’t think about the full complexity of the announcement, don’t consider the details, and blindly implement changes. I have seen how people respond to things I have written and the number of people who have told me the articles are too long or too complex.
To test this skill, I would give them an article on a new Google change and ask them to explain what it means and the potential implementation implications on the site.
Data Analyst
SEO is no longer just about intuition or following trends; it requires making decisions based on concrete data. Data analyst skills enable SEOs to interpret website analytics, user behavior, and performance metrics to determine what’s working and needs improvement. This approach ensures that SEO strategies are aligned with actual business goals and not just vanity metrics like traffic or rankings. When my son interviewed for several senior SEO positions, he would often have to demonstrate his ability to do SQL queries to pull data or apply statistical analysis because these businesses were so data-driven that you needed the data to make the business case.
To test for this skill, use existing datasets from GSC or analytics and ask candidates to identify trends or anomalies in the data and make recommendations based on their findings. This tests their ability to apply data skills to SEO-specific challenges and generate actionable insights.
Story Teller & Motivational Speaker
No, they don’t have to be the next Tony Robbins, but they do need to be able to motivate people to take action. This comes from passion, topical knowledge, and an ability to blend data into storytelling. There is an interesting course at the Univerity of Chicago on Strategic Data Storytelling. The apparent value of storytelling is to make the data and insights more memorable and engaging by connecting to business goals or user experiences. By bridging the gap between boring technical context and broader business outcomes, you can connect with all levels of the organization to gain buy-in and support for SEO initiatives.
To test for this skill, you can use the data from the analyst test and have them adapt to specific scenarios and audiences. This will allow you to assess their skills for presenting to different audiences, aligning with business objectives, and interpreting data. The ability to change the narrative for different audiences is critical, so you need to understand how well candidates can turn raw data into actionable stories
