HR Managers Guide - How to Hire an SEO Expert in 2026 - Navigating the New AI Era

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The HR Managers Guide on How to Hire an SEO Expert in 2026 - Navigating the New AI Era

If you’re hiring an SEO right now, you’re entering one of the fastest-changing areas in digital marketing - transformed by both artificial intelligence and automation. Some of this podcast episode may sound a bit technical, but stay with me here, and maybe even listen twice.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to identify real expertise in a crowded field, apart from just namedropping new acronyms like GEO, AEO, and AIO alone. We’ll cover the shift from keywords to context, the rise of AI-driven workflows, and why hands-on experience still matters more than ever.

You’ll discover how to evaluate different roles, spot genuine thought leadership through a candidate’s digital footprint, and understand when specialization is an asset - or a blind spot.

We’ll also talk about the importance of language fluency, staying current with industry updates, and how the best search pros connect optimization directly to business goals and revenue.

By the end, you’ll know more about what to look for, what to avoid, and how to find an expert who can help your organization thrive.

Artificial intelligence has changed the game for search pros - from how search engines interpret information to how content gets created, optimized, and distributed. Yet, most hiring managers are still using outdated criteria when evaluating search talent. It is important to note that while many things have changed, it is all still largely based on the core principles of SEO. But search pros of the past must have new perspectives and experience to succeed, and this perspective is not only critical - it is imperative.

This outlines the main function of a good human resource professional tasked with filling an SEO position: Understanding the core need, understanding a candidates core skill set and experience, and making the right choice for the job at hand.

There are many objective and subjective considerations for hiring an expert, literally too many to cover in a single podcast episode. But let’s start with understanding the conceptual shift from keywords to context, which can quickly shed a great light on how prepared a search professional is for future challenges. This concept is at the crux of understanding the new age of AI-based retrieval, and will help you qualify the best candidates. A candidate speaking in these terms can help you understand if they are on top of current trends, and thinking toward the future.

A decade ago, search revolved around ranking for the right phrases. But now, search systems - powered by massive AI models—understand meaning, entities, relationships, and user intent.

So while many newcomers are still chasing keywords, true professionals are shaping context - using structured data, embeddings, content entities, engaging topics, and brand signals to train search engines on what their business represents. This does not negate the fact that keywords and keyphrases are still considerations in modern search, it is just that the way we work with them has changed.

And that’s where real experience becomes irreplaceable.

Someone who’s lived through multiple Google updates, seen the impact of automation done right and wrong, and understands how content, links, and user signals interplay over time - has instincts you can’t learn from a quick course or prompt.

Large language models can speed things up, but it can’t replace judgment. Ultimately, they are prediction engines that set the stage for human judgment, and that is not going-to change in the near future. And that again is where experience is critical.

Let’s break down some of the fundamental modern SEO roles you’ll encounter.

The Technical SEO is now part developer, and part data analyst, managing everything from structured data to automation scripts and large-language-model assisted indexing.

The Content SEO might act as the editor-in-chief of machine-generated, but brand focused and personalized digital assets - ensuring that what AI produces is not only accurate, but aligns with brand voice, compliance, and user trust, and builds to the scale needed for growth

The SEO Strategist is the conductor - designing the workflow that ties it all together. They know which steps to automate, which to keep human, and how to ensure that all of it feeds into measurable business growth.

That’s why strategic optimizers, particularly those with specific hands-on strategy experience, are more valuable than ever.

They’ve built workflows manually before automation existed. They understand how long tasks should take, what dependencies matter, and what goes wrong when you automate blindly. That experience lets them build smarter, more reliable systems - where automation accelerates - not replaces, strategic thinking.

Now, let’s talk about agency versus in-house experience.

Agencies deal with multiple clients, and can have a first hand view of search performance across multiple industries. That makes them a great place to find people who know what’s working right now.

But experienced in-house SEOs bring something equally valuable: depth. They understand the company’s tech stack, culture, approval workflows, and long-term goals.

Both of these experience scenarios can bring a different level of perspective to your own organization, and it is important to understand the differences before you hire.

Also ask your candidates about their side projects, big or small. While many companies view side projects or work as a potential distraction, having a little bit of side experience can be a good thing for you. You don't want experimentations to happen on your main site - that level of testing is for other projects without the same level of risk tolerance.

Do they manage their own test sites?

Have they built automation tools for keyword clustering or content briefs?

Do they test AI-generated content pipelines?

The best SEOs have sandbox projects where they break things on purpose to learn faster. That’s how they stay ahead. Again, it is not required, but it can bring a different level of insight to meet your expectations and needs.

So, what should you ask during an interview?

Here are some additional questions that reveal whether a candidate truly understands search in the AI era:

How has AI changed your approach to SEO in the past year?

Can you walk me through a workflow you’ve automated - and what parts you still do manually?

What data do you rely on most when measuring success today?

What’s an example of something you chose not to automate, and why?

How do you see SEO evolving as LLM answers continue to reshape discovery?

Each of these questions exposes a candidate’s depth - not just their familiarity with tools, but their reasoning process.

Another critical part of hiring the right search pro, is finding someone who understands that search isn’t just about discovery and visibility. It’s about business outcomes.

The best candidates don’t just report on impressions or traffic alone. They know how to connect search visibility to revenue, lead generation, and overall company growth. They can draw a clear line between optimization efforts and real-world results - whether that’s increasing e-commerce conversions, driving qualified calls, forecasting, lowering acquisition costs through organic visibility, or generating bottom-line revenue.

That alignment with business goals separates tactical operators from strategic partners.

A strong SEO candidate should be able to sit at the same table as the CMO, CEO, or client, and translate data into business terms. They should know how to prioritize initiatives based on ROI, not vanity metrics.

And there’s another layer to this - education.

Search often touches every department: marketing, IT, design, sales, public relations and corporate communications, even customer service. Yet many of those teams don’t fully understand how their work affects search visibility.

A great search pro knows how to bridge that gap - not by lecturing, but by educating diplomatically, and when appropriate. They bring others along for the journey, showing designers how UX decisions affect indexing, or helping writers understand how to structure content for AI-driven discovery. Does your candidate explain concepts clearly, and confidently, in a way that a person with no other search knowledge can understand? Can they boil a complex technical tactic down into clear business goals and outcomes? Can they summarize and give direct answers to questions in a way that doesn't take five minutes to explain?

The ability to teach, collaborate, and inspire understanding across departments is just as important as technical skill. Because when everyone in an organization understands how search connects to the bottom line, optimization stops being a checklist—and becomes a growth engine.

Another powerful way to evaluate an SEO candidate is by reviewing their digital footprint.

Search is a field built on visibility. Look at how they show up online. Have they written about search publicly? Have they spoken at conferences, contributed to podcasts, or shared thoughtful posts that demonstrate real understanding?

Peer validation also matters. The SEO community is vocal and interconnected, and experienced professionals tend to have some form of recognition - whether it’s thought leadership articles, LinkedIn engagement from other experts, or past collaboration with respected brands or agencies.

In a crowded space where anyone can claim to “do SEO,” seeing a track record of public insight can help you separate the truly experienced from those who might only have surface-level familiarity.

It’s not about fame or quantity of followers. It’s about seeing proof that the person you’re considering is genuinely engaged in the craft, contributing to the conversation, and staying current with where the industry is heading.

Another factor to look at when hiring an SEO expert is specialization.

Many SEOs develop deep expertise in a particular vertical or discipline. Some come from local search backgrounds - masters of Google Business Profiles, citations, and even reputation management. Others may have specialized in technical SEO, with deep knowledge of site architecture, schema, and crawling systems. You’ll also find experts in enterprise SEO, e-commerce optimization, international targeting, content strategy, link acquisition, and even AI workflow automation.

That specialization can be incredibly valuable - especially if your company’s needs align perfectly with the candidate’s skill set. A local business hiring someone who’s scaled multi-location listings will immediately benefit from that focus. Likewise, a large e-commerce site can gain an edge from someone who’s lived inside complex CMS systems and product feeds.

But specialization can also be a double-edged sword.

Sometimes, being too narrowly focused can distort broader judgment. A brilliant local SEO might struggle with enterprise analytics. A technical optimizer might undervalue storytelling and brand. A content strategist might ignore data engineering or automation opportunities.

That’s why it’s important to understand not just what a candidate knows deeply - but how adaptable they are outside that lane. Ask how they’d approach a challenge slightly beyond their comfort zone.

In the age of large language models, the most valuable SEOs are those who can connect multiple disciplines - technical, creative, analytical, and strategic -and translate them into results that serve the business as a whole.

Another thing to consider: measuring impact has changed.

You can’t rely solely on keyword visibility or traffic anymore. Ask your candidate how they measure authority. If they can explain visibility across multiple discovery channels, they just might understand some things about the future of search.

Here’s another key point: hiring an SEO strategist with real experience is like hiring an engineer who knows both the machinery and the software that runs it.

They’ve lived through the manual phase, which means they know which parts of the process can safely be automated - and which parts must remain human.

They understand that good SEO automation doesn’t start with prompts - it starts with clean data, disciplined workflows, and human oversight.

And that’s why experience isn’t just nice to have, it’s the difference between scaling wisely and breaking everything.

Another quality that’s becoming absolutely essential in modern SEO is a keen understanding of the written language.

Search is now driven as much by linguistics as by links and brand citations. Large Language Models interpret semantics, tone, syntax, meaning, context, and entities - not just keywords. That means your SEO needs more than technical skill -they need a deep sensitivity to how language actually works.

This matters on two levels.

First, in the creation of your digital content. The ability to craft sentences that are both natural and machine-readable - clear enough for AI models to understand, but nuanced enough to engage humans - is a rare and valuable skill. The best SEOs know how to balance those two worlds.

Second, it matters in prompting.

Every AI-assisted workflow begins with a prompt, and a single misplaced word can completely alter the output trajectory of a large language model. If your SEO doesn’t understand how language shapes interpretation, their automation pipelines will produce inconsistent or even misleading results.

That’s why SEOs with strong writing backgrounds, editorial experience, or linguistic awareness often outperform their technically minded peers. They instinctively grasp how small changes in phrasing can lead to massive changes in meaning - and ultimately, in search performance.

In short, words still matter. Maybe more than ever. Consider giving your SEO candidates an impromptu and timed on-the-spot writing test, and see how they do, screen sharing live in a Google Meet, or Zoom call as proof they are humans who can write as good as they say they do.

Another key factor when interviewing search candidates is how they stay current.

Search and AI evolve at a breathtaking pace. Algorithms update quietly in the background, search-engine-results-page layouts shift overnight, and new AI-driven search experiences roll out without warning. The SEO who isn’t plugged into these developments will always be reacting instead of leading.

So when you’re evaluating a candidate, ask how they keep up with changes.

Do they follow trusted industry publications like Barry Schwartz's Search Engine Roundtable, or Search Engine Land, or Search Engine Journal? Do they read Marie Haynes’ newsletter, or Google’s Search Central Blog? Do they dive in deep with Duane Forrester's Substack, Mike King's various detailed analyses, Roger Montti's posts, or Bill Hartzer's blog? Are they active in online communities like X, or do they follow people like Brittany Muller or Melissa Fach on LinkedIn, where real-time discussions among experts often reveal shifts before they hit the headlines?

You can learn a lot by asking who they listen to and engage with. Don't know who-is-who in the SEO industry? Ask AI to give you a list of top voices to be on the lookout for, but also be open to hearing about other influential voices that you can validate later.

The right SEO should also be able to explain how they track updates, evaluate credibility, and translate what they learn into practical adjustments for your business.

The best SEOs make that knowledge operational. They turn insight into strategy.

One other important point - don’t overlook veteran SEOs.

In the rush to find the next generation of “AI-savvy” talent, many organizations make the mistake of passing over professionals with 15 to 30 years of experience. But those are often the people who understand search at its deepest level.

These are the practitioners who were there when SEO was first taking shape between 1995 and 2010 - when there were fewer tools compared to today, and no AI tools to lean on. They helped build the very processes that younger marketers now learn from.

They’ve lived through every major shift in search - from meta tags and manual submissions, to link analysis, semantic indexing, and now large language models. That means they don’t just react to change - they recognize patterns, anticipate where algorithms are heading, and adapt faster because they’ve done it before.

And in today’s fast-moving landscape, that adaptability is pure gold.

Experienced pros bring strategic maturity, stability, and a rare sense of perspective. They know how to separate hype from reality, how to evaluate new tools, and how to tie search strategy directly to long-term business growth.

So while it’s tempting to chase novelty, never underestimate the value of a professional who’s already navigated multiple eras of change - and emerged smarter every time.

Another great way to evaluate a candidate is through a test project.

A well-designed test can reveal more about a person’s thinking, communication, and practical skills than any interview ever could. It lets you see how they approach real-world challenges - how they assess opportunities, identify weaknesses, and communicate strategy.

Most experienced SEOs are open to doing a test project, as long as the process is transparent and fair. Unfortunately, many have also encountered bad actors - companies fishing for free ideas with no intention of hiring. It’s an unfortunate reality that’s made many top professionals cautious.

The best organizations handle this with respect. If the project requires several hours of work, offer to pay the candidate at an hourly consulting rate. It shows professionalism, builds trust, and helps you attract serious talent.

A good test doesn’t need to be long or elaborate. It could be something like:

Reviewing and auditing a sample website and outlining a strategy for improvement.

Diagnosing a visibility issue based on limited analytics data.

Designing a simple workflow for scaling content with automation.

You’re not testing whether they know every ranking factor - you’re testing how they think, how they prioritize, and how they explain their decisions.

You’ll see their strategic mindset, their problem-solving skills, their communication style, and their ability to balance creativity with data.

You’ll also quickly spot red flags - candidates who rely on buzzwords, skip over data, or can’t clearly articulate their reasoning.

The benefits go both ways. The candidate also learns how your team communicates and what kind of challenges they’d face day-to-day. It’s a chance to confirm cultural fit as much as technical skill.

Handled correctly, test projects are one of the most reliable and fair ways to evaluate SEO talent - rooted not in theory, but in how someone actually performs when presented with a real-world problem.

Another important thing to understand about SEO in 2026 is that it has always been a mix of art and science - but with AI, that balance is shifting in powerful new ways.

In the early years of search, and even now, there was only a small scientific foundation, meaning accepted practices and standards accepted publicly by the major search engines. This included things like robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, schema markup, and canonical tags. These were structured, rule-based systems that SEOs followed to help machines interpret and index content.

But the art of SEO came from everything that couldn’t be measured or standardized - the connecting of dots, the storytelling, the reverse engineering, the creative content process, the linguistic and keyphrase research process, the timing, and the constant iterative process of finding out how search engines reacted to optimization events, and how to continue to tweak performance through a variety of tactics.

Now, with artificial intelligence, SEO has entered a new phase - art plus deeper science.

AI brings advanced data modeling, contextual and entity understanding, and algorithmic prediction into the mix. It is about how you technically format your content in a way that is contextually machine readable.

This is also why you’ll often get different answers from different candidates - and that’s okay. Even leading search publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and Search Engine Roundtable occasionally report conflicting takes on what’s working. That doesn’t make one right and the other wrong; it simply reflects the complexity and fluidity of how search works.

When you’re interviewing candidates, don’t discount someone just because their view doesn’t align with what you’ve read online. They might be ahead of the curve, speaking in newer terms or describing emerging concepts that the industry is only starting to understand. But take good notes, and validate from multiple sources.

You may be talking with someone who thinks differently - someone who helped define best practices in past eras and is already adapting to the next one.

So, keep an open mind. Ask them to explain their reasoning, and listen for logic, not buzzwords.

And sometimes, the person who sounds unconventional today is the one who’s already building the playbook for tomorrow.

So, if you’re hiring an SEO expert to meet modern demands, look beyond the buzzwords.

Ask about logic, testing, and decision-making.

Look for curiosity, adaptability, communication effectiveness, and hands-on proof of what they’ve built.

Because in a world where anyone can generate an “SEO strategy” with a prompt, the professionals who truly understand the workflows behind it are the ones leading the future of search.

And that’s who you want on your team.