← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Key skill sets and roles to build your SEO team from the ground up
00:11:20
Loading summary
Transcript6 lines
- [00:00]
A
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
B
Last question we got. So this one we've actually, I mean, I feel like this is a good summary kind of question because it hits on some of the topics and points that we had earlier. And so this one's creating a game plan and the scenario is you're building an SEO team and program from the ground up so you're not inheriting any existing pieces or individuals, but everything's ground up. What are the key skill sets and roles that you would be targeting to build out your team?
- [01:15]
C
Oh, okay, first off, look, easy answer to this is I just wrote two articles in the last three weeks on exactly this. So you know, there's that, right? But let me get into some of this. First and foremost, you have to start with your job descriptions. You have to understand the work that exists today. So the things we've talked about, vector analysis, retrieval, tracking and auditing. So being able to go into the system, run the query, get the result, keep that in a report, see what that looks like over time, not particularly a big skill, but having a familiarity with it and being able to understand what a citation looks like in each of the major platforms so that you know if you have been cited or not. Figuring out how to tease out within an answer if you have been cited. Because it's one thing to see your URL there or your domain there in a link. It's something different for you to know that that phrase that was used in the answer is a phrase from your website. So like that requires a focus, right? Like an understanding of those systems. Get familiar with the concept of chunking because it will have a major impact on how you write and how you organize content on a page. I would absolutely become a master at structured data. I would be a master at structured data all up. Easy for me to say. I've spent my career getting on top of that. But at the very least, you have to know everything there is to know about whatever vertical you're in. And there is A vertical in there for you. So you have to dive deep on it to the point where what I'm looking for in the skills of a person is, is I don't want a traditional like SEO analyst or SEO manager job description. What I need is all of that plus these AI components. So when I go to scan for, and I'm looking at resumes for people I want to hire if they're not automatically aligned with this AI and with doing these things. And I don't mean they have a line in their resume saying I use AI, like congratulations. That's like saying you breathe oxygen. All right, good for you. You know, but, but if they're not calling those things out, then you're screened out. You're not, you're not going to get the interview to come and be a part of my team. I'm not delusional. I don't think people know how to do optimization for AI environments as a core competency at this point. I think that we're still very young. We've got people who understand parts of it, people who understand probably quite a bit of it, but they're relatively few. And so I'm looking for people that are flexible. I want people that have shown an aptitude for learning new skills. Okay, so kind of want like, I think of it as the drippy T shaped marketer. So you've got like, you're really deep in SEO. Okay, but you've got drips coming down in all these other areas, right? Social and paid and content and you know, technical. Like I need to see those things because that's the type of mind that I can then hand the AI problem to and say, now learn this and then that person will grow with me. Because something that I realized is going to be a very real problem for us. I took a look at, I want to say like 100, it might have been 200 actual job descriptions that are posted were posted live when I wrote the article. It's just a few weeks ago. So some of them are still live. It was a very low percentage single digits that actually even talk about AI in the job description. Now I'm going to assume that these people are going to hire someone and probably not fire them in six months. Want that person to still be with them in a year or two. If you're going to hire someone and you're going to hire a skill set that's still going to be working for you in two years, why would you hire a skill set for a person who doesn't know what's coming next. And I'm not saying the employee needs to be a soothsayer or a fortune teller. We know how things are evolving. You should be evolving your skills to match that evolution. So if you're hiring somebody without the skills, what is your plan to get them those skills? So something that is incredibly important for my team is training. I have to bring the training. I have to explicitly say, you're an expert level SEO. I need you to be an expert level AI SEO. And here's the differentiator, here's the delta. Let's close it. Here's the plan. We have a meeting every day. It's one hour. It's from two to three. It's mandatory. We're going to go over one thing a day for eight weeks until everyone has access. We're going to build a hub, a knowledge hub internally. Or you'll be able to look this stuff up on the fly as you need it, like something. But, but I, as the prod, the program owner, I have to have that there. You know, I am probably not looking for senior people at this stage, but I definitely want to identify people who can grow to be senior. I am going to need one, maybe two of those people. Because it can't just be me running around the company trying to explain to the executive why we're doing what we're doing or why it's important to do something that is important to do. We need more people. It's inevitable. So, you know, I think that there's, there's a lot of things, but I expect at this stage in the game, like, if you're coming and you're applying for a job, well, at least if it were a job description written by me, baseline SEO stuff. If you show up asking me about keyword research or asking you about internal link architecture or, you know, you're bragging about, you know, how using italics matters to search results. Like, I'm writing a job description to screen those people out. Just like right out of the gate. Right? Like, because I'm, I'm stepping higher. And that's, that's what I think is the key takeaway is everything is stepping higher because we're all moving so much faster. That vibrational frequency is at a much higher level. And you've, you've got to be able to step up. Like, that's, that's the critical part. Personally, I, I'm also like. And I've done this in the past. I've built teams. I lean away from wallflowers. I want people that are more open and direct and willing to have a conversation and willing to go research something in their own time and argue with me about it from an educated point of view. Because I don't know everything. I can't know everything. And if you pull on a thread that I don't know, but it sounds like something I know and I shoot it down and you come back two days later and you're like, I think you missed something. Here's what I understand. Look, that's on me to be a big enough manager to say, yeah, totally misunderstood. I don't know what you're talking about. Let's dive deep on it. Because I don't. Personally, I don't see that as a reflection of me as a manager. I think it's better to be able to say, no, I don't know that. What do you know? And let's go for it. Right? You build better team dynamic. You keep people longer, it creates a better atmosphere. But it's incredibly important to find those people because they have so much inherent and intrinsic value when it comes to learning new things and being able to bring them forward. That, that, that is, that. That just pays dividends over and over and over again, 100%.
- [08:40]
B
And it's, I think, a common piece throughout, like those examples is it's looking ahead. And it's not, you know, you're not aiming at just the immediate skill sets or like, capabilities of today, but it's who's going to grow with me in this direction.
- [08:59]
C
Yeah. And you know what, Tyson? I don't even care how right people are. It's not about that. Like, I'm. Because look, you can come in and you can have three, four years experience and be really good, right? Because maybe those three, four years, all you did was study traditional SEO. You can learn a lot in three to four years. And so you can be as, as well versed as any of us old timers with that kind of commitment to knowledge growth. And then you show up and I ask you about the future facing stuff, and you just start riffing ideas coming off your head, this and that, whatever. I don't even care if you're right. It doesn't matter. All of us could be right. All of us could be wrong. It's the future. What I'm exploring is how your mind works. It's how you assimilate information. It's how you say, well, if we start here and the linear path we've taken takes us to this point, what's a logical next step? Now you might get excited and go a little bit left or right of that so it doesn't quite line up. But that's not a fault. The fault is when you sit there and you say, oh, well, I would hope you would tell me what I need to learn next. That would be a fault moment. Because yes, I will give you training in things I think is important, but if what you're telling me is you will never yourself go learn and you will always wait for someone to bring you something to learn, that's not the team I'm building.
- [10:31]
B
Absolutely. Dwayne, this has been a pleasure. I feel like we can keep going on this for quite some time. Um, but in respect to your time, we're gonna have to to wind this one down. So that's gonna wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Duane Forrester from Unbound Answers for joining us. If you'd like to get in contact with Duane, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the Show Notes, or you can get more information about unbound answers@unboundanswers.com also be sure to check out his substack, which will be in the show Notes for some of these articles that have been referenced. And if you haven't subscribed yet and would like a daily stream of SEO content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button on your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed soon with that. That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by and we'll see you in the next episode. Sam.