Regardless of the size of your company, if web traffic is a major factor in your marketing and sales results, you either need to learn the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO), or hire a really good SEO expert to drive that so very important part of the business for you if you want to stay afloat. Let's take a look at some of the crucial characteristics that a great SEO professional needs to possess in order to be able to help make your website thrive.

Strong SEO Background And Experience

Virtually anyone can take an online marketing course, set up an agency in a day and start calling themselves an SEO guru. Unfortunately, that doesn't guarantee they know what they are doing at all. There is plenty of small stuff that goes into the bigger picture when it comes to search engine optimization, and only years of working in the field can bring that expertise of knowing what works and what doesn't.

An important remark to make is that one size definitely doesn't fit all, and every website will have its unique needs and requirements for successful strategy implementation. A real SEO professional can quickly figure out exactly what needs to be done in each individual case to improve site traffic and web presence. A novice in the field will try to implement a standard set of procedures every time. This is going to yield auspicious results if any.  

Complete Understanding Of All Three Tiers

SEO is built upon a foundation of three components or so-called tiers. The first one involves the technical tier, which looks at the structure of a site in order to determine how accessible it is for the search engines to crawl and index the content on its pages. Next comes on-site optimization, which focuses on the use of HTML tags and keywords that generate inbound traffic. And last but not least, the off-page optimization, which involves the process of link-building. If you are not sure how to judge the depth of someone's knowledge on the topic, you can find an awesome list of SEO questions to ask on the entrepreneur.

Tackling only one of the three aspects of SEO sets you up for not more than 30 percent success in your optimization efforts. You need to hire somebody who will look at and approach the matter from all three angles in order to maximize results. If not all content on a website is accessible by web crawlers or just buried too deep, anything else done in an attempt to improve traffic will be useless. That means that SEO professionals should be familiar enough with all issues and limitations that search engines have, and lead website work towards the direction of overcoming and avoiding them. 

Knowledgeable And Marketing Savvy

Ignoring all subjects outside the strict topic of SEO nowadays is quite foolish and wrong. In order to be a good SEO specialist today, you not only need a firm grasp on marketing principles but also a decent knowledge about the specifics of the human race, its psychology traits, the culture to which a certain target audience belongs, the social component, user experience, design and development of the product in question, and many other topics. Becoming disconnected from these vital aspects of the whole picture is not only bad but also dangerous because we risk-taking measures that might hurt more than help.

Why marketing savvy? Because, once we look beyond all the technical stuff, SEO can be likened a lot to traditional marketing in terms of introducing useful content that gently but firmly leads the person exposed to conversion into a customer. And all that needs to be done in a manner that appeals to the people behind the search engines and their algorithms for usefulness and relevance.

Communicative, Passionate And Curious

Since an SEO expert cannot single-handedly execute all technical measures related to optimizing a website, they need to be able to communicate in an easy and straightforward manner why certain changes need to be implemented. It is of utmost importance that they are able to put their ideas across to developers, designers, business owners, etc. And, just like it is true for any occupation or sphere of work, passion and curiosity are the main driving force behind a successful and knowledgeable SEO expert or SEO professional. They should be effective at getting things done, not scared of roadblocks or challenges, and possess a constant desire to learn in the rapidly changing medium of online marketing and search engine specifics.