“Getting SEO employees properly trained is one of the greatest things you can do for your business if it relies on entry-level staff”
With so much new content being published online everyday, it can be difficult to find fresh and original content that will drive user engagement. To succeed in SEO you need a team with different skills and experience. When hiring SEO employees, it’s important to note that they are not just technical writers who create blog posts and articles.
They need specialized training to help them understand how search engines crawl websites, evaluate their structure and index pages using keywords.
Give your new hire some time to get adjusted to the company culture before you start assigning them more difficult keyword searches or launching projects that require more interaction than just reading instructions from their manager.
Here are some things you should consider when training entry-level SEO hires.
Assign Key Tasks to the Most Skilled Employees
When hiring new SEO employees, assign them tasks that require a high level of expertise. You can also assign them tasks that require collaboration with other employees who specialize in content marketing. If you hire an SEO who has prior experience in a specific industry, assign them tasks that require different strategies.
An SEO who worked at a petroleum-based company can be helpful to your company if you assign them to target keywords related to transportation and logistics. While assigning these high-level tasks, make sure to assign them to employees who are already familiar with the company culture, culture of the team and the current SEO strategy.
In some cases, you might want to assign a lower level task to an entry-level hire to help them understand the company culture, learn about the current SEO strategy and receive training from their manager, who is more experienced in the topic.
Assign Them Easy and Repetitive Tasks First
When you are assigning new SEO employees tasks that require a high level of expertise, assign them the easiest and the repetitive tasks first. This allows them to learn the tools and learn how to do the tasks without the pressure of meeting high expectations in the first weeks of their new job.
This will help you avoid making hiring mistakes and ensure that your new hires are well-equipped to deal with more complex tasks.
Seo Training Courses
Another way to get new SEO hires trained is to attend SEO training courses, either online or in-person, with your company or a third-party provider.
SEO training courses will help you get a clearer idea of SEO strategies and how to best implement them within your company’s content marketing strategy.
You can also use these courses to audit your current SEO strategies and see where you can make improvements.
Create Easy-To-Find Keywords
During the hiring process, keep in mind the importance of hiring SEO employees who have good keyword research skills.
If you are hiring entry-level SEO employees, you need to make sure that they are familiar with the keyword research process. Most SEO tools, including Google’s Keyword Planner, have various tools for keyword research.
Find out what your new hire knows about these tools and what they don’t know. This will help you understand their keyword research skills and see if they have researched any keywords that are relevant to your business.
Don’t Assign New Hires Too Much Right Away
New SEO employees need time to learn and get adjusted to the company culture. They don’t want to be expected to understand complex keyword research strategies while they are still getting accustomed to the company culture and current SEO strategy.
Assign your new hires simple and easy tasks that don’t require a lot of research first. Make sure that they feel comfortable with their role in the company before assigning them more difficult and challenging tasks.
Have a Structured Onboarding Process
During the hiring process, make sure you follow a structured onboarding process. A structured onboarding process will help you avoid hiring mistakes, assign new employees more challenging tasks and also give your new SEO hires time to get adjusted to the company culture before assigning them more difficult tasks.
A good onboarding process will include the following stages:
New Hire Preparation – In this stage, make sure you assign new hires easy and low-level tasks that don’t require a lot of research, don’t require a lot of collaboration with other employees and don’t require them to understand a lot about the company culture and current SEO strategy.
Training Stage – During this stage, make sure you have mandatory training for new hires, either online or in-person, on how to get adjusted to their role in the company culture, how to get adjusted to the company culture and on how to get adjusted to the current SEO strategy.
Peer Mentoring Stage – In this stage, make sure you assign new hires a mentor from inside or outside the company who can act as a mentor and a guide. A mentor can help new hires understand the company culture, understand the current SEO strategy and help them get adjusted to the company culture, if needed.
Hold Mandatory Training for New Employees
New SEO employees need time to understand how to do keyword research, how to understand the keywords that are relevant to their work and how to understand the various tools that can be used for keyword research.
Make sure that new hires understand the importance of these tools and what they mean before you assign them more difficult and challenging tasks.
Hold Off on Launching Highly Competitive Keywords
New SEO employees are not supposed to be launching highly competitive keywords, but they can help you understand how to do low-competition keyword research. For example, if you are hiring an SEO who has prior experience in the automotive industry, you can assign them keywords related to car repair or car maintenance. Read Other Useful Content: Local SEO Audit
If you are hiring a new SEO who has no experience in the industry, you can assign them keywords related to home improvement or home repair.
The best thing you can do is to assign your new hire an easy and low-level keyword research task, like finding some relevant and easy-to-rank keywords for your blog posts and articles.
Let New Hire Understands the Company Culture
New SEO hires need time to get adjusted to the company culture and current SEO strategy before you assign them more challenging tasks.
New SEO hires don’t have the experience to understand how to do keyword research for specific keywords that are highly relevant to your business.
For example, if you are hiring an SEO who has prior experience in the automotive industry and you are hiring an SEO who has no experience in the industry, you can assign them keywords related to car repair or car maintenance.
But, if you are hiring an SEO who has no experience in the industry, you can assign them keywords related to home renovation or home improvement.
Set Expectations at the Start
At the start, set expectations with new SEO hires, especially with regards to the amount of time they will need to become comfortable with the tools they will need to use and the amount of collaboration they will need to do with other employees.
If you are assigned with the task of hiring new SEO hires, set a hiring goal for yourself and for your manager.
A hiring goal can help you keep track of your progress towards hiring new SEO hires, assign them less challenging tasks and help you understand when you are not performing well in hiring new SEO hires.
Show Them How to Find Guest Posts
One of the best ways to educate new SEO employees is to show them how to find guest posts for your blog from authoritative bloggers. This can help you get guest posts from influencers in your industry who have a large following and get content ideas from these posts.
When you are assigned with the task of finding guest posts for your blog, you can use tools like BuzzSumo, Keyword Explorer or Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords.
Start with Blogging Basics
During their first few weeks at the company, new SEO employees need time to understand the tools they will need to use, the benefits of using these tools and the value of content marketing strategies.
You can use these new SEO hires to help you understand the content marketing strategies that work best for your company, help you understand the value of content marketing strategies and also help you improve your blogging strategies.
Don’t Assign Your Employee Unfinished Seo Tasks
As a hiring manager, you might want to train your new SEO employee to handle different SEO tasks like keyword research and writing content for your blog. However, the best SEO employees usually have experience in a different role before joining your company.
Their previous experience in another department might have taught them how to navigate different content structures and write clear and relevant content. It’s important not to assign SEO tasks that your SEO staff member has not yet learned to handle.
This can only cause confusion and frustration, as they will have to re-learn how to do their job. Hiring employees with SEO experience can be a good way to boost your SEO rankings, but you need to have a clear hiring strategy.
If you just want SEO employees to write blog posts, you might be better off hiring a freelancer than an SEO employee.
Talk Shop with New Hires
New SEO employees can be intimidated by the technical jargon used in SEO. You might want to start your training with a basic SEO tutorial, but first you need to create a culture where new hires feel comfortable enough to talk about SEO topics.
Read Other Useful Content: SEO Myths and Facts
If you try to hide SEO knowledge from your new hires, you might make them uncomfortable in their new role. As a hiring manager, you will have to make sure that new hires feel comfortable enough to talk about SEO topics like keyword research, how a blog structure looks like and their role in the content creation process.
You will also want to make sure that they are given enough information to be able to do their job well. Some ways to initiate such a conversation are to have open coaching sessions or format a meeting to talk shop.
For example, you can have an every Friday meeting where you discuss a specific SEO topic and invite your new SEO hire to join the conversation. Making your company culture a place where new employees feel comfortable talking about SEO topics is a great way to create a better culture for SEO employees. It also gives you an opportunity to explain the company’s SEO strategy or ask your new hire to share their SEO expertise.
Conduct Technical Interviews
Don’t be afraid to conduct technical interviews with your new hires. Many hiring managers shy away from technical interviews, but they are an important part of the hiring process. They help you judge whether your new hire is a good fit for your company and their role within the company.
You can conduct technical interviews with your new hires to find out more about their experience, skills and fit for the company. This can also give you an opportunity to coach your new hires and help them get adjusted to their new role.
Some questions you can ask during technical interviews are:
- What are the major differences between SEO and SEM and SMM?
- What are the major SEO concepts like anchor text, link structure and using relevant keywords?
- What are the main tools you will be using in SEO?
Don’t Be Afraid to Give Feedback and Training
Hiring employees who are specifically trained for SEO is important, but it’s just one step in the hiring process. Even experienced SEO employees need to receive feedback from managers and other team members. You can give your new SEO hire positive feedback by telling them how happy you are that they joined the company.
You can also give your new SEO hire some constructive criticism by pointing out what they did wrong and how it can be improved. It’s important to give your new SEO hire feedback and training even if they already have some experience in SEO.
This way, you can continue to help them improve their skills and make the transition to SEO job easier.
Train with Content Creation and Training Exercises
It’s important to keep the training of your new SEO hires ongoing. As your SEO team grows, you might not have time to train new hires on different SEO topics. However, you can use training exercises and content creation as training exercises.
You can create training exercises that help new SEO hire build their content creation skills. For example, you can assign them to create content for a specific topic, or create a training exercise for them to create content for a specific blog post.
Final Words: Hiring for Long-Term Success
It can be overwhelming for hiring managers to recruit and hire an SEO team, especially if you are hiring for long-term success. One way to make the process less overwhelming is to hire employees who already have experience in SEO.
This can help reduce recruitment costs, as you don’t have to go through the hiring process from scratch. Hiring employees with SEO experience might also help you boost your SEO rankings, but only if they have the right experience for your company.
Hiring employees who have experience in a specific niche is a better way to get specific expertise in a specific niche.
The best way to create a successful SEO team is to find experienced SEO employees and give them training. You can find experienced SEO employees in job boards, social media networks and on SEO forums. These employees can help your company rank better in search engines, but you have to provide training to help them improve their SEO skills.
If you find experienced SEO employees, make sure they are given the right training to hit their targets. This way, they can help your company achieve its SEO goals.
It can be overwhelming when hiring SEO employees, but making the effort can pay off in the long run. SEO teams with experienced employees can help your company rank better in search engines and generate more revenue from online traffic.