I’m an SEO and have been growing my business lately so I’ve got to the point of looking to hire more SEOs. One thing that stands out in my mind is that the range of useful skills is large and diverse.

The best SEOs I’ve experienced have quite a strong engineering background - good at data analysis, problem solving and more complex technical issues like httpd setup and system maintenance. They usually grok UNIX and some scripting languages. The best are also very good at the “internet marketing” side - including branding, web usability and tying it altogether on the reporting end with metrics.

Passion is always the sign of someone good - I’ve asked candidates to list some relevant blogs they read, what websites and domains they’ve developed or bought for domaining purposes (if they’ll tell me). It’s very tough to find great SEOs at a point where they will work for someone else.

This is a fantastic read, thanks so much. I have always been in software and web development, but I now have a need for SEO knowledge. This was a perfect start.

Just going back to the subject of Analytics, I think this has become very important now, as I’ve found some companies who are a bit more clued up are actually asking that their SEO’s are being held accountable for what they’re doing, if you’ve not brought in the £££ then they want to know why, and clues as to what caused it, not some SEO going off on the defensive trying to justify their position.