November 17th, 2009 by Richard Lee
In-House SEO – PubCon 2009
If you have a do-it-yourself attitude, then you’re probably relying on your own skills for your site SEO. Our panelists are veteran in-house search engine optimizers, and will reveal the best tips, tools and techniques for doing SEO in house. Learn all about the challenges and complications that might arise and the best way to deal with them in order to meet your SEO goals.
Moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Speakers:
Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Yellow Pages, Sensis Pty Ltd, @ashnallawalla
Chris Hooley, Owner, MCP Media, @ChrisHooley
Alex Bennert, In-house SEO, Wall Street Journal, @seosylph
Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com, @jessicabowman
Chris Hooley, Owner, MCP Media, @ChrisHooley
Key Areas for Scheduling Work Flow:
- Content generation schedules
- Content distrubtion schedules
- Time link acquisition goals
- Room for “emergencies”
- Getting SEO involved in inter-department duties
- Approval Processes
- Incentives
Key Takeaways:
- Almost every piece of content your company produces is a link opportunity!
- Find the right talent, don’t rush it
- People and jobs can be optimized
Listening to Alex Bennert, In-house SEO, Wall Street Journal
Keys to In-House SEO
- Always “Train Often”. There are multiple departments in your organization (IT, Content Developers (Bloggers, Journalists, Features Writers, Editors, Video), Management, Design, Business Development). So there is plenty of opportunity for training.
- Maintain a regularly scheduled SEO workshop session (20 minutes max)
- Use examples relevant to your audience
- Even if only one person shows up, do the presentation
- Include industry trends and changes
- Develop a presentation specific to each department, only tell them what they need to know
For IT it may include:
- Google webmaster tools, duplicate content, etc., Use 301s vs 302s, if it’s something we can’t do don’t harp on it.
SEO for Biz Dev & Marketing may include:
- Vendor review, site search, link equity syndication of content
- Evaluate vendor product (site search, power listings)
- Integration (cnames, iframes)
- Assessing SEO value and link equity of potential partner sites or acquisitions
- Microsites
SEO for Content Development may include:
- Title Tag, Meta Description headers
- Linking, anchor text, nofollows
- Writers (features – Keyword research, Google Insight for recurring events
- Bloggers (QDF, trends, adjacent subjects for competitive terms)
- Journalists (basic headlines, on-the-fly KW research)
- Analytics (What’s there, how to use it, alternatives)
Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Australian Yellow Pages, Sensis Pty Ltd (senis.au)
Key Points:
- Size of website matters
- Budget matters ($20K consulting is a lot, but not compared to a full time employee)
- The economy matters
- Structure, Processes and Politics matter
SEO skill set
What skills should the in-house SEO have?
- Marketing
- On-page SEO (basic web design implied)
- Off-page SEO (linking)
- Web server knowledge (at least one platform) (i.e. apache)
Bonus skills:
- PHP/mysql (or msft)
- Javascript
- Java (rop. evn)
- Graphics
Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com
Common Misconceptions:
- SEO is just code tweaks
- SEO is about keywords in text
- It’s about links
- I don’t need to worry about SEO
Reality Check:
- SEO is unlike any other function in your company
- SEO is both a highly technical and a highly marketing function
- You can’t easily predict SEO like other marketing channels
- One conversation with SEO doesn’t cut it
- SEO isn’t always high enough in the org chart to get what they need
- 2-6 months = honeymoon stage
- Most in-house SEOs get disappointed in reality stage
You Need to Start with a Scope Doc (project charter)
- SEO success facors, SEO traffic, etc.
- Requirements Gathering – Meetings
- Project Plan
- Back End dev on as needed only
- QA Testing
- SEO pubic relations plan (12 mont)
- SEO checklist (give bizcard)
Other Key Points:
- Distribute the SEO duties / work load and give accountability through out the organization
- Create SEO Champions/ Ambassadors
- Everyone Needs to Make SEO a Success: The Execs, Prod Mgr, Project Mgr, Usability, Progammers, QA Testers, etc.