What is SEO grading and why you should have incorporated it yesterday?

How do you evaluate the level of an SEO specialist at hiring objectively? How do you understand that an employee has stepped at a new level and has earned a promotion? How can you be sure that your SEO specialist is getting fair compensation? We are sure that each and every team lead and HR manager who have faced the issue of hiring and developing SEO specialists at least once are concerned with these questions. And what is aimed at providing answers to these questions is the SEO grading system.

What is grading

Grading is the system of evaluation that allows one to objectively define a skill level of a specialist and assign it to one of the grades (junior, middle, senior) due to the clearly set criteria.

Grading is widely spread in IT companies. This is particularly relevant for the developers as most of the time, their grade is determined in their job title, and the grading criteria are relatively similar within the entire market.

However, for other positions, various complications arise. In particular, Boosta has faced the fact that approaches to the SEO specialists’ evaluation significantly vary in different companies. Sometimes, a candidate who has the “Middle SEO specialist” level of job experience defined in their resume may not make it even to the Junior level in our understanding. At the same time, a person who considers themselves as a Junior specialist can easily claim to the Middle level.

The reason for that is the lack of a universal understanding of what skills and on what level should an SEO specialist of a certain grade possess at the market. What can we tell about all companies if the opinions varied even among our internal representatives of 10 SEO teams? At a certain moment, we’ve come to the understanding that the further development and growth are impossible without the averaging and systematization of SEO processes. All specialists should have a similar understanding of every process, even the smallest one, starting with writing a technical inquiry for content and tending with the implementation of a strategy for the product entry into new markets. Otherwise, too much time and effort will be wasted on reaching this understanding in each individual case.

What is the value of grading for SEO specialists

Grading is the educational system that will help specialists in improving their skills, help managers to see the picture in a more complex way, and help the company to have a more transparent scheme of interaction with employees.

SEO grading will help to solve these tasks:

• Define the job description of different levels

The specifics of the different teams’ work and their subjective perception of the professional duties create a number of complications not only within the working process but also at the hiring stage. With the help of grading, you will build a shared understanding of the job description.

• Shape stages for career development

There are cases when an employee comes to you and says that he or she already knows everything about their current level and is curious about when he or she can get to the next one. Grading will provide answers to such questions.

• Improve the compensation structure

Grading will allow you to reach greater fairness in the compensation-related issues. You’ll be able to avoid situations when one of your specialists feels demotivated due to the fact that, having a greater knowledge and skill level, he or she receives lower compensation than a specialist with a lower qualification.

• Create a base for fair compensation review decisions

Imagine a situation where your Senior SEO specialist is asking you to raise their compensation. That would be fair is their qualification is higher than the one of their colleagues at the same position. But how can you evaluate it without having universal standards?

• Increase the transparency of processes for managers and specialists

It is much easier for an individual to work within the existing rules and policies that describe the processes that are taking place and provide answers on how does one behave in certain situations.

Benefits for employees:

• Increased motivation
• Clear perspectives of a career and professional development, together with the compensation increase
• Individual development plan
• The decrease in the ‘burnout’ effect among employees who stay in the same position for a long time
• The transparency of the evaluation

Benefits for a company:

• Simplification of the selection procedure
• The shaping of the employees’ development strategy
• Getting a method for recognizing talents талантов
• Provision of the effective compensation scheme

How to start and introduce SEO grading

The process of the grading introduction can be divided into the following stages:

• shaping the competencies and criteria;
• checking out how realistic the criteria are and developing the attestation process;
• working with feedback from the project participants and analyzing the experience gained;
• specifying criteria and the attestation process;
• conducting a second attestation.

In Boosta, the realization and the rollout of the project took 10 months. The work started with describing a portrait of a perfect SEO specialist for every level: Trainee, Junior, Middle, and Senior.

Basing on the discussion results, we’ve received the following list of the evaluation criteria (all possible SEO competencies):

We have defined the minimal level of coverage of each point for every grade. The higher the level of an employee is, the bigger is the amount of skills he or she has to possess, and the deeper their expertise is to be.

The next stage is the development of practical cases for evaluating the level of specialists.

Together with the questions and tasks, we have also developed the lists of sources that can be used for studying the theoretical aspect of every block that includes articles, books, videos, and even online courses. This way, the grading was transformed from the list of requirements into a wholesome knowledge base and made into a system of not just evaluation but also development.

The evaluation experience and practical advice

During the preparation, it may seem that after the mutual approval of the list of skills and criteria for the evaluation, the job of the SEO grading incorporation is done. However, in practice, it appears to be only the first stage.

It is necessary to develop and tune a wholesome business process since otherwise, the list of criteria is risking staying just a theory in the general knowledge base of the company.

In Boosta, it was decided to conduct the evaluation once per quarter by assessing all the SEO specialists who have expressed their desire for that and assigned during that period.   

Just like for any new process, the rollout was conducted via the test launch.

The team leads who were involved in the development of the competencies and criteria selected each one SEO specialist from their teams. This is how the first 4 candidates appeared. During the pilot, we wanted to check if it is possible to evaluate employees based on the prepared criteria at all and to make sure that these requirements are not too perfect and are relevant in practice.

Each of the grading participants has received a table with a list of competencies that he or she had to prepare a presentation about their skills and results on. They have put on slides examples of their real work tasks, and this approach made it possible to make sure that a person does not only know the theory but is also able to apply it in practice.

Apart from the examples that were prepared in advance, the specialists were getting small tasks right during the evaluation process. For example, they had to open a site and analyze its semantic core. In the cases when specialists succeeded, the skill was proven.

As a result, even within such a small group, the test grading has shown completely different outcomes: 2 specialists have passed the exam and proven or increased their levels, and 2 others have received individual development plans (the description of skills that should be improved, the criteria that the progress will be checked basing on, and the deadline) and have started the preparation to the next assessment.

The pilot has shown some limitations to the developed system. In the case of Boosta, these are the issues that were found:

• Not all SEO specialists had experience in public performance, and the commission that they were facing consisted of numerous people, including the company owners. That creates rather stressful conditions, and this fact has to be taken into consideration.  From now on, the commission is to consist only of 3 people.
• The direct manager of one of the examined specialists wasn’t present at the evaluation. It appeared to be a disadvantage because it is the manager who shoulders responsibility for the development of an employee. Also, it is the manager who should be evaluating the skills of their subordinate in the first place, while other team leads or top-level managers can join afterward.
• The conduction of the evaluation appeared to be more time consuming than expected. Basing on that, it was concluded that the analysis of the wrong answers of each person and the shaping of their development plan should take place not on the exam but after it, at the specialist’s and their manager’s 1-on-1.

This way, the first experience let us make certain conclusions and introduce changes to the process before putting it on a large scale.

The outcomes of incorporating grading in Boosta

As of today, grading has already solved a number of issues and brought positive changes to the company. Recruiters got to develop and analyze vacancies faster since, due to grading, it has become easier to define if a candidate corresponds to the internal requirements at the beginning. SEO specialists have got an opportunity to introduce roadmap requests for their development and master new competencies. Team leads have got a tool for the effective evaluation of their teams and further strategic planning.

The experience has shown that grading in IT companies is a necessity not only for developers but for other positions as well, and SEO specialists are at the top of that list.