SEO Specialist – Test Project

About Carrot

Carrot (carrot.com) is a fast-growing SaaS company that helps real estate investors and agents generate leads online so they can close more deals and have more time for the things that matter in life. Click here to learn more about the Carrot team, who we serve, and our mission.

The Carrot platform has a set of core features that are the key to member success:

1. Lead capture through high converting websites
2. Tools and resources that result in high SEO ranking
3. Online authority building through superior content creation
4. Technology and automation that optimize the above on behalf of our members

You can find a more complete list of the features, plans, and positioning of Carrot here, and navigate through more specific feature details here.

SEO Specialist Project Overview

For this test project, you’ll be analyzing Carrot’s homepage (https://carrot.com). We’re looking to understand your thought process and how you approach and plan for search engine optimization.

Please don’t spend too much time on this! It shouldn’t take more than 90 minutes.

(We understand you might not have all the data and context to answer these questions perfectly. We care more about seeing your skillset in action than you giving the “correct” answer).

Challenge #1: Research

1. Browse our homepage. We want to understand your process for researching the page. To help guide you in your response:
   • What data would you look at?
   • What are your steps (or methods) for keyword research?
     • Would you keep the current primary keyword or recommend adjusting it? (current head title: Real Estate Investor Websites | Real Estate Agent Websites – Carrot)
   • What tools/software would you use?
   • Is there a specific metric that you look at to determine the overall performance of a page?
   • Do you have an SEO expert (guru or publication) that you like to mirror your SEO after? Please share examples of pages similar to the homepage you would like to model the page after.
   • Generally, are there any other SEO opportunities that you see to help improve ranking?

Challenge #2: On-Page SEO

1. What on-page content optimizations would you make to the page?
2. Identify how the content on carrot.com is organized. Are there any structural changes that should be made?
3. What technical SEO would you recommend?

Challenge #3: Off-Page SEO

1. What off-page optimizations would you make?
2. Describe your backlink strategy. To help guide you, here are a few prompts:
   1. How do you determine how many backlinks are recommended to rank and the quality of those backlinks?
   2. What types of websites would you target for backlink outreach? Describe your strategy in detail.
   3. Is there a type of backlink you recommend over another? Is there a service you like to use?

Project Deliverables

Timeline: Please email your test project answers to Ryan (ryancarlin@carrot.com), Brendan (brendan@carrot.com), and Danni (danni@carrot.com) within 3 business days of receiving this test project.

We’ll review your test project and then get back to you with the next steps. If we decide to move forward together in the interview process, you’ll be asked to present your test project deliverables in front of a panel during the next interview.

Feel free to write out your answers in a document (if you have a framework, use it!), present them in a slide deck, or shoot Loom videos.

Please reach out with any questions you might have – thank you!