Your article is very impressive. If more site owners understood what to ask, the impostors would be out of business. While these questions are basic I would say 90% of the small/medium business wouldn’t have any idea what to ask. About half of the head hunters and HR people that have contacted me would be stumped as well.

Yes, a lot of the questions could elicit different correct answers depending on the details of the job and the site. But you certainly give both employers and potential hires a good place to start.

I am glad to be introduced to your blog. Time never permits ready every blog so I keep a finite number of feeds active. I have added your RSS feed to my list and deleted one that has lost it’s relevance.

SEO Article Scribe – great to see you Look forward to your return!

I would love use your outline and write a guide to China SEO to highlight the differences.

Drop me a line if I can use your well thought out template….

Best from Canton…

While I agree that being a programmer can make you a better SEO, so can being an analyst, an economist, or a mathematician.

I use those examples because I’ve worked with, learned from, been mentored by, and greatly respect several SEO’s with those titles. I hold myself as a halfway decent web developer, but when it comes to SEO I’ve got a lot to learn from them.

The more you spread your self across industries that require you to be on top of your game, the more you dilute your skill set in any one of them.

There is something to be said for specialization.

Thank you for your excellent comments Doug, glad to have you as a reader.

~Mike

I’ll note that you usually only see FTP access on smaller sites, companies with competent developers use version control (like SVN or GIT).

Frankly an SEO should never have access to a live environment (ever), unless its a bloody small site and they have proven web development skills (in which case that would be a listed requirement in a job posting).

For organic SEO you can view source, use seo-browser.com, firebug, and live http headers to analyze any part of the code you could possibly want and create an implementation document for the client or their developers.

Cheers,
Mike

Example; 1. if they stated they use silly “rank report” software, I would say thanks but no thanks.

2. If they say “links” are most important, I’d say thanks but no thanks.

6. If they reciprocal links and/or paid links, I’d say thanks but no thanks.

Further; if they do not ever mention that the site owner should have his/her site totally redone from scratch; I’d say thanks but no thanks. Some sites CANnot be fixed and must be rebuilt. If the site owner does not want that, the potential employee says he would walk away.

That’s the kind of answers I would be looking for.

Also; if you cannot have FTP access for organic SEO, then you are simply giving the owner phone/email consultation only. Unless that owner implements ALL your suggestions, no way to do much with the site.

Also; most CMS systems out of the box need fixed totally. The potential hire should state they may have to install a custom built system that’s search engine friendly.

My 2 cents.