Hey all, so a couple weeks back I made a post about how I messed up my SEO interview giving very bland/ambiguous answers so I spent the last 3 weeks really busting my ass off, brushing on my interview skills and practicing on how to give more in-depth and thoughtful answers for my next interview, which is actually next week for a specialist position. Basically, I practiced on giving better answers to the same exact questions that were asked at my last interview, which I messed up. I added a few other critical questions that may be asked on top of that. All the questions focus more on the "bigger picture" per say rather than actual tactical SEO. If the SEO pro's can give me some honest critique/thoughts/opinions, I would very much appreciate it. (I know it's a long read, I do apologize for the eye sore that it may bring). If you recommend any other questions that I should prepare (maybe those that you've encountered commonly). Hopefully, the outcome will be better this time around.
Q1: So Mike, tell me about yourself.
A) Hi. I’m currently a SEO Analyst at XX with 2+ years of SEO experience involved with different aspects of SEO for a diverse range of clients, including e-commerce, non-profit, and hospitality. I graduated with a bachelor’s in Psychology but changed my interest towards Digital Marketing and discovered SEO in 2016. I spent the last two years really focusing on the development of my skills as an SEO analyst, actually helping our longtime client XX succeed in their SEO answer box campaign, which resulted in a significant increase in visits and buy now conversions and being recognized by other members of the team as a strong team player, an effective communicator, and highly analytical, which are some of the essential traits I feel an SEO must have. Although I love my current role at XX, I feel like I’m now ready to take on a bigger challenge where I can apply what I’ve learned and expand my skills and grow further at XX and this position really excites me. Outside of the office, I enjoy learning more about the field of Digital Marketing, exploring new places, and watching sports.
Q2: What were your responsibilities at XX as an SEO Analyst?
A) My responsibilities basically included a variety of different tasks. This included running daily crawls to get an immediate up to date picture of what's on the clients' websites. I conducted keyword research and analysis. Competitive analysis as well, identifying keyword and content gaps among different competitors. A lot of the tasks were also content-heavy where I took the initiative to develop new content ideas and make strategic recommendations on how to revamp existing content where it appeared thin. Also, performing technical audits, link building, and putting together monthly KPI reports for every client.
Q3: What tools did you use?
A) So I use a number of different tools for different purposes. I use Screaming Frog to run crawls, identifying any missing meta titles and diagnosing possible technical issues. Ahrefs for specifically monitoring and analyzing backlink profiles. With this tool, I check to see if there’s any broken backlinks, removed backlinks, or new backlinks. I also like to use the “content explorer” a lot of which gives me opportunities to perform link outreach. SEM rush for ranking data and looking at competitors data, and Ubersuggest for keyword research and getting a list of different keyword variation ideas and latent semantic keywords.
Q4: Mike, walk me through on how you would start an SEO campaign.
A) Sure thing. The first part would be identifying what the client's goals are. Are they an increase in conversions? Just simply getting more traffic? Brand awareness? Then after that, I would look at the bigger picture and start out by identifying who our ideal audience is in terms of their demographics, interests, and how they consume information. After I'm done with that, I would conduct a site-wide audit and see how they can improve their search visibility from an on-page, off-page, and technical standpoint. After we see the areas of weakness of the website from all three of those areas, we'll begin the dirty work.
Q5: How do you make use of data?
A) I'm not sure which data you are exactly referring to but there's many different types of crucial data out there that can inform us with SEO-related decision making. There's paid search data, user behavioral data, traffic data, link data, etc. To give you some examples of how I made use of data, we actually had one hospitality client where their yearly organic traffic was down pretty significantly. This allowed us to look deep into the traffic data and realized that desktop traffic was almost cut in half over the last year and brought up the fact that more and more users were shifting devices from desktop to mobile for searches. This data helped us in deciding to craft a mobile first strategy that started with a re-design with strategically placed content to push rankings to the top of the SERPS and to help drive more clicks throughout different levels of the user journey. Another is user behavioral data, which we can leverage for decision making as well. For example, dwell time. This is a good indicator of relevance and user intent. Something like 2 seconds could indicate that the user most likely did not find what they wanted or expected. Then we'll take a look into the content and see if it's is strong enough and follows what I like to call the 3 E's: Entertaining, Educative, and Engaging. A range around 10-15 minutes could indicate that the user found the content to be very useful and was super invested in the content. Also, we can look for pages with strong traffic numbers but bad conversion rates. This data allows us to dive into conversion rate optimization, which is quite crucial as well. Overall, a data-driven approach in SEO will maximize efficiency and I feel that without leveraging sorts of data, it will be difficult to make the next move.
Q6: How do you measure SEO success?
A) So this all really depends on the client's objectives so there is no right or wrong answer. However, the key is knowing which KPIs to use and to tie them to the clients objectives. So I measure SEO success with key KPI's, which include organic traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rate from organic search traffic. On top of this, I think the ultimate measure is by the return on investment. Being ranked page 1 is part of it but if the site is not converting, there is no success.
Q7: What do you think are some things (traits) required to be a good SEO?
A) So I believe there's a number of important traits that are required to be a good SEO. One is definitely a strong understand of all the levels of SEO: On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical. You would definitely want someone who can approach the SEO strategy from all 3 angles. Asides from just the on-page level, you'd want someone who also understands all the technical issues that a website may have whether it's broken internal links or a messy URL structure. Another is being analytical. This kind of ties in with my response earlier regarding data. We look at an array of data and as SEO's, we love to make informed decisions based on different data points and by being analytical, we can definitely make the right choices. Another trait I want to mention is definitely strong communication skills. We can be in constant communication with clients, writers, designers, the tech team and more. So it's important we know how to work with all these people and learn to handle different demands and personalities. After all, it's a client facing industry and as SEO's, we want to explain the value that we're providing to clients and explain it in terms they will understand. Strong and effective communication will establish expertise and trust so it's definitely an important trait.
Q8: What part of SEO would you like to learn more about?
A) I would like to learn more about the aspects of Artificial Intelligence and its future impact on not just SEO but on all things marketing as a whole. I believe thinking about it can be both exciting and frightening and it really has me asking if AI will ultimately make search better or worse. So this a topic I definitely want to dig deeper in and study more on.
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