Hiring guide
How to Hire an SEO Expert
How to hire an SEO expert: technical, content and link skills to test, a hands-on task, red flags like link schemes, and how to onboard them in-house.
The short answer
Hiring an SEO Expert comes down to verifying technical seo: crawl analysis with screaming frog or sitebulb, indexing, canonicals, structured data, internal linking and core web vitals, keyword research and intent mapping with tools such as ahrefs or semrush and content briefs, on-page optimisation and pruning or merging weak pages before you commit interview time. The process below runs 5 stages, screens on evidence rather than résumé claims, and scores every candidate against the same criteria.
- Watch for: Promises guaranteed rankings or traffic numbers
- Watch for: Proposes buying links, private blog networks or mass-produced pages
- Score on: Correct prioritisation in the hands-on task
- Score on: Depth across technical, content and links, with clear strength in the area you need
Paste your SEO Expert job description; Cohesyve finds, contacts and tests candidates on the real work and ranks them. Ten candidates free, no card.
Applying for a role like this? Practise the assessment free →When you hire an SEO expert, you want someone who can do the work as well as plan it: fix technical problems, shape content around what people search for and earn links that hold up. The title covers a wide range, from technical specialists to content-led SEOs, so decide which problem is holding your site back before you write the job description. This guide covers where to find SEO experts, the skills to test, a hands-on task, red flags and how to give a new hire what they need to make progress.
Why this role matters
Organic search can become a steady source of qualified visitors, but only if the site is crawlable, the content matches intent and the domain earns trust. An SEO expert ties those together and works across developers, writers and product teams. The wrong hire can waste months on low-value tasks, publish thin pages at scale or use link tactics that lead to lost visibility.
Where to find candidates
- SEO communities such as Traffic Think Tank and Women in Tech SEO, which run job channels
- Search conferences such as brightonSEO and MozCon, and their speaker lists
- In-house SEOs at companies with a site type like yours, sourced on LinkedIn
- Specialists who publish audits, experiments or tool guides on their own sites
- Freelance marketplaces such as Upwork, for contract or trial work
- Referrals from agencies, where many SEOs build broad experience before moving in-house
Skills to look for
Red flags
- Promises guaranteed rankings or traffic numbers
- Proposes buying links, private blog networks or mass-produced pages
- Talks only about keywords and meta tags, with no technical or content depth
- Cannot explain a past traffic change using Search Console data
- Dismisses the need to work with developers or writers
- Reports success purely in rankings, with no link to traffic, leads or revenue
The interview process
- 1
Screening call
Ask what kinds of sites they have worked on, which part of SEO they are strongest in and one result they are proud of, with how it was measured.
- 2
Technical and strategy interview
Ask how they would diagnose a sudden drop in organic traffic, how they decide between creating and updating a page and how they handle a site migration.
- 3
Hands-on task
Share a crawl export or a few URLs from your site and ask for a prioritised list of fixes plus one content brief for a target query. A job simulation of the real SEO work is one option if you are comparing several candidates.
- 4
Cross-team conversation
Have them meet a developer and a content lead. Watch how they explain recommendations and handle push-back.
- 5
References
Ask past managers which recommendations were shipped, what changed afterwards and how the candidate reported results.
Cohesyve
Start the SEO Expert interviews from a ranked shortlist
Cohesyve takes your SEO Expert job description, finds and contacts candidates and tests each one on an AI job simulation of the job, so the stages above start with people who have already done the work. Ten candidates free, no card.
How to evaluate
- Correct prioritisation in the hands-on task
- Depth across technical, content and links, with clear strength in the area you need
- Data-led reasoning from Search Console and analytics
- Ability to turn findings into actionable tickets and briefs
- Commitment to tactics within Google's spam policies
- Collaboration with developers and writers
Onboarding
- 1Give them their own access to Search Console, Google Analytics 4, your CMS and your SEO tools in the first week
- 2Share the history: migrations, redesigns, penalties and past agency reports
- 3Agree a small number of priority page groups or templates to start with
- 4Set up a regular slot with engineering so SEO tickets get scheduled
- 5Agree which outcomes you will review each quarter, such as non-branded clicks or leads from organic
Common questions
Should I hire an SEO expert or an SEO consultant?
Hire an in-house SEO expert when you need ongoing hands-on work across your site. Hire a consultant when you need an outside audit, a strategy or help with a one-off project such as a migration.
What tools should an SEO expert know?
Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 are essential. Most also use a crawler such as Screaming Frog and a keyword and link tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Tools matter less than how they interpret the data.
How do I check an SEO expert's past results?
Ask for Search Console screenshots or anonymised reports, what they changed and when, and speak to a reference who can confirm it.
Do I need a technical SEO or a content SEO?
If your site has indexing, speed or rendering problems, start with technical strength. If the site is healthy but thin on useful pages, a content-led SEO will make more difference.
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