The role we are trying to fill requires both front-end and back-end expertise in WordPress, with a strong technical SEO focus. This skill set is most accurately described as a WordPress Full-Stack Developer or WordPress Engineer with SEO expertise. Unfortunately, there is currently no title within the Marketing group that fully reflects this level of technical specialization.
The required expertise includes:
WordPress Development (Front-End & Back-End)
- Custom WordPress theme development (not limited to page builders)
- PHP (WordPress core, hooks, and filters)
- HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Custom plugins and third-party integrations
- Performance optimization (Core Web Vitals, caching, CDN usage)
SEO Expertise
- Technical SEO (site architecture, crawlability, indexing)
- On-page SEO (metadata, schema, internal linking)
- Page speed optimization (Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse)
- Schema markup / structured data
- SEO plugins
- Mobile optimization
- Redirects, canonicalization, and sitemap management
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics
Tools & Workflow Familiarity
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics / GA4
- Site crawlers
- Page Speed Insights / Lighthouse
- Git or other version control systems
- Staging vs. production environments
- Managed WordPress hosting platforms (e.g., WP Engine, Kinsta)
To properly evaluate experience, I would also like to review:
- Example WordPress sites the candidate personally built versus sites they inherited
- Whether those sites use custom themes or custom plugins
- Measurable results, including:
- SEO traffic growth (Google Search Console screenshots)
- Ranking improvements tied to technical changes
- Crawl or indexing issues they identified and resolved
This combination of technical WordPress development expertise and SEO experience is critical for meeting our current and future marketing and performance objectives.
