SEO is Misunderstood

Background

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term that was coined in July 1997, where it was used publicly in what was perceived to be a spam message, hardly an auspicious beginning. Over the years, the term ‘search engine optimization’ has become synonymous in the eyes of the general public with spamming techniques, and with the deliberate manipulation of the SERPs (search engine results pages) to reflect less than optimal results via ‘black-hat’  or spamdexing techniques.

Regardless, the SEO industry has grown and continues to grow as many marketers, web developers and planners have realized that SEO can legitimately - effectively and efficiently - assist their online brand exposure, sales and other marketing objectives.

So What is SEO?

It’s a multifaceted discipline and is the practice of the following 4 summary points, and more:

·         Understanding a website’s primary online objective and how that fits in with the businesses overarching marketing objective, which in turn should be supportive of the business model and corporate strategy. How? By understanding the client, and the economic and industry landscape at a bare minimum.

·         Conducting online competitive and market research on behalf of the client. This is not simply limited to keyword research; this is about understanding the search query language and intent of the online target market, their search patterns and behaviors, their demographics and personality types (grouped averages), how they interact with the web, where their sticky and stumbling points are (what your users like, and what they will leave) and much more.

·         Analyzing the client web site’s onpage elements in terms of the research findings and best practice SEO. The objective being to assess how usable and navigable the site is to human uses and spiders, as well as how well the site answers the interest and likely search behavior intent of the client’s target market.

This is analyzed in terms of onpage content relevance and includes a remit of other variables that require some nifty foot-work; there are usually some brand or legal requirements, some usability issues to contend with, friction with creatives and marketing, difficulties with CMS or other backend database limitations, unclear expectations, unreasonable goals, and on-and-on so the wheel turns.

·         Understanding the importance of effective backlinking strategy, integrated social media strategy and the ability to work effectively with public relations and social via innovative and best practice strategy to boost buzz in the blogosphere via the social networks. This in turn is all about creating or enhancing the Trust and PageRank of a site via efficient backlinking from trusted, related, authority resources.

The Challenge?

Personally, I’m really, really tired of the uninformed or the simply ignorantly arrogant stating with utter conviction that SEO is a ‘waste of time’ and that it is conducted only by ‘snake-oil salesmen’.

Actually, effective SEO is pretty hard work, it’s not that easy, and it is a big deal. In my books, SEO remains misunderstood by the masses and I’m fast turning into Ms. Cranky-Pants when it comes to answering these detractors.

SEO is Under-utilized

Background

Search engine optimization has never really had a home. SEOs float between being considered web developers, content writers and online marketers; a jack-of all trades but master-of-none apart from the mystical ability to ‘work’ the search engines.

So Where Should SEO be Aligned?

To be honest, it depends entirely on the seniority of the position and the requirements of the role – much as with most other jobs. But my summary take will consider an SEO lead/management position, and it is this; an SEO lead should be able to:

·         effectively project manage a team of SEM folks (both organics and PPC)

·         work hand in glove with IA, design, copy/content writers and development

·         understand as much as we know we can about search engine optimization without hands-on the actual algorithms themselves

·         have a good understanding of client/in-house brand integrity, design philosophy, content methodology and legal requirements

·         be able to hand code html and have a sound understanding of most web development techniques, and popular CMS and analytics programs

·         train best practice SEO based on discipline functions from a very high level down (that’s not as easy as it sounds)

·         work with other online and offline marketing leads to ensure that SEO is aware of – and if necessary included in –  all marketing initiatives to ensure that there are targeted pages created for tag-lines used in billboards or TV ads (e.g.)

·         ensure full integration with public relations to contribute to all online press releases as well as to have a heads-up on all offline releases to facilitate on-site answer and speak to targeted search query follow up

·         work with social, R&D and XD (experience design) when social and keyword research provides insights to new opportunities or threats, or identifies competitive strengths or weaknesses.

The Challenge?

Being an effective SEO manager or lead requires patience, dedication, tenacity, humility, credibility, diplomacy and so much more that that topic alone deserves a post of its own.

Hopefully I’ve covered some points worthy of highlighting here, but I’d love to hear what you have to say!

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The issues of ensuring that SEO is involved from the concept stage, or at the least IA stage was repeatedly emphasized. One of Marshall’s anecdotes to this point relates to the recent Hudson plane crash. The article title and header went out within minutes of the disaster; unfortunately the title and header said ‘Plan Ditches in Hudson’ (I may have that a little mixed up, but you get the point), and no-one was searching for ‘plane ditches’. However a competitor utilized the prime search phrase ‘plane crash’, and scooped the NYT. Marshall’s team was on it as soon as they realized (which was to all accounts and purposes pretty much immediately it went live), but despite their best efforts, the fact that they were not involved from the beginning meant that the time lag in the exceptionally fast-paced industry of online news was just too great.

Two salient points following on directly from this were (1) to ensure you own the templates and (2) to ensure that you are on the global email list.

There was some discussion about the amount of time being on the global-email list would inevitably require in terms of monitoring and follow-up. The consensus appeared to be that evangelizing related supportive cross-disciplines to encourage SEO inclusion would be optimal. However, it was noted that getting a full team of inter-related cross disciplines who work indirectly to become SEO evangelists can take quite some time. If it is possible to find a happy medium between being the SEO baby-sitter, and waiting to be spoon-fed information on new initiatives, then that would be a good place to start.

Apart from owning templates and CSS from a process point of view, it was also proposed that whether you baby-sit or strive to gain enough credence and respect via effective benchmarking and reporting on success metrics; if you don’t have upper management support, things are going to be tricky.

And it’s not only upper-management you need to convince. Sometimes, you really need to train or educate information architects, experience designers, copy writers, web developers, QA as well as project and account managers on what you can achieve, what support you need, and how you need to be able to work with every team as a cohesive whole to achieve the best result from a usability, marketing and SEO perspective.

If you can educate each discipline on your wish-list and how they fit into achieving the best in terms of SERP exposure and organic click-throughs, and how their input actually affects bottom line based on clearly pre-defined KPI, you can not only share this information with them, but involve them in discussing lost opportunities, competitor inroads, new initiatives and more. The more FACE time you get with each team, the more they will trust your ability and your judgment – especially if you back up your discussion with data; your argument with analytics; your talk with telling-points.

The 4Es were mentioned regarding gaining cross-discipline support and ensuring SEO inclusion:

1. Educate – training, lunch-and learns, whatever works best
2. Excite – show them what you do, they may not be aware of what it is, tell them a primary goal and explain how you want to achieve it, and why and how you need their support to do so
3. Empower – provide them with clear KPI and benchmark data followed by result based data on the same set of KPI
4. Evangelize – inform them, thank them, support them and request their input or new initiatives

It was also mentioned that SEO needs to be involved not only from the concept or IA stage, but through every stage of the process. Reactive SEO implementation results in a re-do of many elements of the initial web task; design may be affected, copy will be affected, web dev time will be required, as will QA and release time. It may even require a rethink of the navigation and additional pages, thus IA time; your analytics team may be required to create new SEO based dashboards for stake and share-holder reporting purposes… and so on.

Conversely, proactive SEO ensure that SEO is part of the initial budgeted charter in terms of resourcing and cost factors. Being proactive means less time being reactive; which in turn means more time for strategic development and discovery, tactical refinement, personnel development and training, and less frustration all around. Jessica had some great points on this, and her experience speaks to early involvement as a prerequisite for the most effective implementation of SEO resources and experience.

Apart from SEO being involved in the actual web development process, the concept of being a friendly FACE (Facilitate communication, Apply insights and learning, Create processes and Establish relationships) was touched on from the perspective of ensuring that SEO is integrated in all marketing discussions and initiatives. This involvement ensures that new tag lines used in banner ads, PPC, social marketing as well as print, radio and TV are incorporated into landing pages, and that landing pages are optimized prior to release to ensure a holistic presentation of the marketing message across the marketing mix.

It was also noted that SEO is a piece of the overall pie, and may in some cases have to curb its enthusiasm due to brand or legal constraints especially where the bigger brands are concerned; but not without push-back where warranted.

In closing, it was a true pleasure to be on this panel. I knew I was holding the short straw being on a panel with two true icons of in-house SEO. I can only thank both Jessica and Marshall for their support and generosity, especially Jessica’s as I ran over time. Nonetheless, being the commensurate professional she is, she still wowed the audience with her presentation despite my stealing some of her time, and ensured more than enough Q&A time at the end for session attendees.

If you ever get a chance to listen to either Jessica or Marshall speak at a conference, I strongly recommend you attend. Their individual and collective experience is formidable, yet they are two extremely approachable professionals. It was an honor to speak with them, and my privilege to meet them both.

Speaking Across Disciplines – Get their FULL attention, and their MAXIMUM contribution

Many people involved in IT are first born children or only kids. If you are a third child of 5, but are the first born son or daughter, then you are also likely to have traditional first-born traits (fascinating long-term study by Dr. Kevin Leman). I’ll include a list of some identified common traits just below.

Apparently, people who make the best account managers (sales folks of all levels) are last born children. There are again exceptions – if your parents had 3 children (within 8 to 10 years) and you were the youngest, and then they had another child (or children) 5 or more years later, you would also exhibit youngest child traits – assuming you fit the generalized model, which is amazingly accurate in most cases.

Middle children (second born sons, daughters – all with exceptions, provided preceding and following sibling came along within a maximum of 3-4 years either side) are the hardest to pin-point, but are creative, easy-going folks – again in general.

Some common traits of first borns according to Dr Leman

·  Perfectionist and organized

·  Reliable & conscientious

·  Hard-driving natural leader

·  Critical and mostly serious

·  Reader

·  Logical

·  Does not like suspense or surprises

Some common traits of middle-children

·  Mediator

·  Compromising and loyal

·  Diplomatic

·  Hates conflict

·  Very sociable (real life)

·  Maverick but secretive

·  Unspoiled

Some common traits of last kids

·  Charming

·  Loves attention

·  Tenacious

·  Manipulative and shirks blame

·  People person

·  Engaging & affectionate

·  Loves surprises

And for the Onlies

·  Little adult by age 7

·  Very thorough

·  Cautious

·  Voracious reader

·  Can’t stand to fail with very high expectations of self

·  Low high tolerance for others

·  More comfortable with older or younger people

·  Uses ‘very’, ‘absolutely’, ‘exactly’, ‘totally’, ‘extremely’ a lot in conversation

(if any of this strikes a chord, I really recommend you get his book.)

What on earth does this have to do with SEO?

SEO’s need to make things happen. They need to:

·  Sell their offering

·  Convince stake and shareholder (inhouse)

·  Engage and manage clients and stakeholders

·  Engage and manage a team

·  Co-ordinate, delegate, coerce, wangle and be devoted to the team

·  Do the work on time and to budget

·  Check everything

·  Research and share

·  Encourage and facilitate

·  Strategize and organize

·  Be creative, critical and logical

… and more

Obviously, any one person cannot possibly fulfill each of these tasks as effectively as a small team might. This post is therefore more concerned with big in-house SEO resourcing than small, but the insights can be applied across the board.

Also, this is not a book J and therefore it needs to be short. I could have fun with this, but the ideas are not my own; application to our industry may be a first, but Dr Leman deserves full credit either way.

I am not saying only hire people for open recs according to their birth-order. What I am saying that perhaps hiring a dynamic Lead SEO Account Manager whose responsibility it is to be client facing, diplomatic and prepared to take clients at face value without judgement might not best fit a first born or only child.

A first born or only qualified SEO with experience may, however, be your perfect match to a more driven, pressurized, bottom-line dedicated, highly organized logical position requiring tactics and refined managerial skill.

Let’s see how all this might work to give you the in-house SEO dream team you want that not only sells your SEO initiatives to in-house peeps and stakeholders, gets it organized, and is on the cusp of what’s happening, but gets it done on time and under budget!

A. Oversight team manager who does the charts, deals with the money factor and the reporting,organizing and overall management

- First born or Only (bearing in mind exceptions due to time lapse in birth order and gender).

B. Team manager who deals with cross-disciplines, and handles the social media aspect

- Middle children (again considering exceptions to the rule)

C. Client facing or stakeholder-facing manager and facilitator to sell, get approval and pursue set monetary objectives tenaciously to ensure team gets the best deal they can, while getting the majority of praise themselves

- Last borns (also considering exceptions)

So the next question begs…

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH PERSONALITY TO ENGAGE THEM MOST EFFECTIVELY

A. Give your first born managers

Data, facts, figures, expectations, clear real and desired goals, autonomy to proceed without extensive oversight and red-tape, minimize time-tracking requirements with over-arching categories, trust them to deliver the best they can. Give them performance based bonuses. Encouragement will be taken more seriously than less tangible ‘praise’. E.g:

‘You’re wonderful! I love that you headed this!’ (praise)

v.s.

‘I really like how you put this together, the program is performing well due to your leadership. Keep it going!’ (encouragement)

Back this with the performance based bonuses on a quarterly basis, and you have an employee for life. Watch they don’t burn themselves out, so make sure the maximum bonus is both realistic and achievable, and that you let them know weekly how they are performing in relation to achieving it with clear guidelines on where they need to brush-up. And give them a break. These guys will burn their bottoms for you if you treat them right. Lose them, and you have to start again. It’s not easy to get these guys, and bear in mind they are more likely to get head-hunted than most for in-house delivery… Not sales. Try to get them to sell and see them leave within 3 months.

B. Give your second born managers

Clear requirements. Ensure that they have full support of the first born managers to enable them to escalate issues without fear of conflict with team members below or above.  Request regular (weekly) debriefing on work done, their expectations and their understanding of what they have achieved. Give them the ability to lead and run social media campaigns once they have worked out their clear reporting and objectives for that campaign (in conjunction with reporting manager – 1st born or only).

Let them message informally on twitter, facebook etc (or manage a team that does) once you have set a limited number of specific guidelines (e.g. never comment on competitors, don’t get too ‘friendly’ but be approachable for the brand etc) Encouragement is better than praise, but praise is good for these guys. Better in some cases than encouragement – read on….

C. Give your third born managers

Clear requirements on client objectives, business objectives, and what you want to achieve via SEO – or SEM (more holistically). Then let them run. Don’t expect emails and reporting from them, so make sure they have a personal assistant to do their paper work, or you might not get it, and if you do it may be unclear and a bit of a mess. Ensure they know that their PA is not accountable for what they provide, they will be accountable. Remove the ability to shift blame – which last borns can do with exceptional alacrity, goodwill and innocence. They must read and sign everything, with the clear understanding that while they don’t do the paperwork, they must read it before they sign it as their signature ‘makes it so’. Frequent phone or face-to-face meeting (preferably) are required to ingrain protocols and bottom-line expectations, but need to be brief and targeted at humour and appreciation for what has been achieved versus what you want to achieve. Make them realize that you won’t let them off the hook, but you will let them play.

Again, I strongly recommend Dr Leman’s books about birth order, stress management, child management and more. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but what he does say makes sense to me, and has – in a personal vein – made an enormous difference in my life. This post is based on the reading I have done to date (fascinating books), and I wanted to share what I had learned that might make a difference NOW to SEOs everywhere, and managers everywhere.

Chances are you’re already in the right place, but if you aren’t, and if you’re unhappy, overstressed, under utilized or under appreciated, this might speak to you. Again, these are generalizations, and the economy is tough right now. Regardless, I hope this was of interest.

Happy SEO-ing, and come see me at SMX next week!