SEO expert hiring: a practical skills test
Hiring an SEO expert on interviews alone is a gamble. A practical skills test with four tasks, a scoring rubric and the red flags to watch for.
By Roozbeh Nazari · CEO
Hiring an SEO expert is difficult for a simple reason: the person doing the hiring usually knows less about the subject than the candidate. Confident answers sound alike whether they come from real experience or from reading blog posts, and a CV full of tool names proves very little. A short, practical skills test solves much of this problem. It shows how a candidate thinks with real data in front of them, and it gives you something concrete to compare. This guide describes a four-task test, a scoring rubric and the warning signs to look for, whether you are hiring an employee, a freelancer or an agency lead.
Why interviews alone fail to identify SEO experts
Interviews reward fluency. Search optimisation has a large vocabulary, and anyone can learn to talk about crawl budget, topical authority or entity optimisation. What separates SEO experts from fluent talkers is judgement: knowing which of fifty possible issues matters on this site, being able to explain why, and being honest about what is uncertain. Judgement only shows when someone works on a real problem. Work samples are also fairer, because they put a quiet but capable candidate on equal footing with a charismatic one.
The four-task skills test
The test should take two to three hours and use real, anonymised material from your own site: a Search Console export, a crawl sample and two or three page URLs. Give every candidate the same pack and the same time limit.
- Task 1, diagnosis: "Organic clicks to this section fell over three months. Using the data provided, list the three most likely causes and say what you would check to confirm each." You are looking for hypotheses tied to evidence, not a generic checklist.
- Task 2, prioritisation: hand over a list of fifteen findings from an old audit and ask for the top five, in order, with a sentence of reasoning for each. This reveals whether the candidate weighs impact against effort.
- Task 3, content brief: choose one query that matters to you and ask for a one-page brief for a writer, covering search intent, structure, questions to answer and internal links. This tests understanding of users, not only of crawlers.
- Task 4, explanation: ask for a short note to a non-technical director explaining one recommendation, what it costs and how success will be measured. Specialists who cannot explain their work rarely get it implemented.
Set three ground rules. Allow any tool the candidate would normally use, because that is how the job is done. Share data as files or with read-only access, never with edit rights. And pay for the time if the test goes beyond an hour or produces something you could use; unpaid work samples put off exactly the experienced people you want to attract.
How to score: a simple rubric
Score each task from one to five on four criteria and agree on them before you read any answers. Evidence: does the answer refer to the data provided, or could it have been written without opening the files? Prioritisation: is there a clear order and a reason for it? Clarity: could a developer or writer act on the answer tomorrow? Honesty: does the candidate say what they do not know and what they would need to check?
Have two people score independently and then compare. If nobody in the company can judge the technical content, ask an external specialist to review the answers for an hour; it is a small cost compared with a wrong hire. It also helps to check the rubric against a neutral description of the role. The O*NET profile for search marketing strategists, for example, lists tracking and reporting, analysing web metrics and taking part in marketing strategy next to optimisation itself, which is a useful reminder that measurement and communication are part of the job.
What the best SEO professionals do differently
Strong candidates tend to behave in recognisable ways during the test. They ask questions before answering, such as how the business earns money and which pages matter commercially. They separate what the data shows from what they suspect. They propose fewer actions, not more, and connect each one to an outcome the business cares about. They mention constraints such as developer time or legal review. And they are comfortable saying that a result depends on factors outside their control, including competitors and changes in how search engines work.
Red flags during the test
Some signals should lower a score sharply. The first is a promise of a specific position: Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO is clear that no one can promise a number one position, and it advises caution with anyone who claims a special relationship with the search engine. The second is secrecy; a candidate who will not explain a method is asking you to accept risk you cannot assess. The third is a reliance on link schemes or bulk tactics that conflict with published spam policies. The fourth is a generic answer that ignores your data altogether.
After the test: references and a trial period
A test narrows the field; it does not replace references. Speak to at least two previous clients or managers and ask what was delivered, how problems were communicated and whether they would work with the person again. Then start with a defined trial, for example a ninety-day plan with agreed deliverables and a review at the end. This is the same logic we describe in our approach: written scope, visible work and decisions based on evidence.
If you decide that an external team suits you better than a single hire, the same test still applies: ask the people who would actually work on your account to complete it. Our services page shows the areas such a team should cover, from technical work to content and measurement.