That article talks about some of the things to consider before accepting a job and what to expect as an in-house SEO. Now that you’re through the door and in the house, lets talk about where to go and what to do next.

Starting Fresh Or Starting Over?

Fresh off of Clicker’s recent acquisition by CBS, I’m actually getting to go through the process of starting in-house all-over again. This is a good thing as I’m gaining a completely different perspective this time around. You see, despite Clicker and CBS both being TV companies, they’re just a wee-bit different.

Whether you’re a consultant or an employee, the same steps apply when starting the SEO for a site that’s new to you. You still have the same process of research, analysis, prioritization, planning, developing a strategy etc. But how you approach them and how you work with your new team to execute the strategy successfully will be different.

Before you can move forward, you’ll likely need to take a few steps back. Understanding where the company is coming from, their vision, and why they’ve made the decisions they have will help you figure out how SEO fits into the product vision, marketing plan, and overall business strategy.

Some of the questions you’ll want answered that directly relate to SEO will include:

• Was someone in-house before you?
• Have they worked with an agency/consultant? If so, who?
• Have there been any penalties on the site? You basically want a complete history of both the SEO and domain.

When I started at Clicker, the SEO strategy was complicated. Being that the founding team came from Ask.com, much of the team was indirectly connected to the SEO world. Because of this, they had already talked to and took advice from just about every single SEO on the planet.

As you can imagine, there was some serious conflicting advice and they were getting pushed in many different directions.

They did have some basic SEO in place, but overall, I was pretty much starting fresh and ready to move onto the following four areas.

Research & Analysis

Keyword research, competitive market analysis, and a full SEO analysis is in order here. Yes, all of the same things you would be doing as a consultant, only now it’s greatly magnified.

You’re not splitting your time between X number of clients or projects anymore, this is your full-time responsibility and that needs to be reflected in your quality of work. Expect to analyze things you’ve never thought of analyzing before.

Prioritization

Every site has a ton of things that could and should be fixed when it comes to SEO. Knowing where to start, picking the lowest hanging fruit, and deciding where best to focus efforts is critical at this stage, especially if you’re at a startup where timing is crucial and you need to be nimble and move fast or die. You simply cannot afford to waste time.

Develop The Strategy

Now that you understand the product vision, the site’s history, the overall business goals and the competitive landscape, you’re ready to develop a plan that fits into the business strategy. Once complete, you’ll present your plan to the executive team and sell them on it.

Implementation

You’re now ready to work with your team to best execute your strategy. Understanding the company’s org chart is a must here as you’ll need to know who can help you get things done correctly and efficiently. And be flexible with your plan. As you start implementing it, you’re going to quickly learn that some of the stuff just doesn’t work and some will work better than expected.

The size of the company you’re working for and the number of sites they have under their umbrella will determine the appropriate time spent before you start executing. In my case, this all took me about 2-3 weeks at Clicker before we were ready to move forward with the SEO efforts.

Other Aspects To Consider

If you’re joining a startup, expect that you’ll need to be frugal with budgets and probably won’t be able to hire or outsource all of the work – you’ll have to get your hands dirty. Don’t expect this to be a management position as time and resources are far too precious for you to be sitting comfortably pushing paper from one side of the desk to the other.

People at startups wear many different hats, so instead of hiring experienced SEOs to work under you, leverage existing talent and figure out the most efficient way to teach others to fish for themselves so you can spend your days in the trenches along side with them.

This will vary if you’re joining a large company. They can afford to invest time & resources that will make life more comfortable if that’s your style.

The best analogy I can think of is that working at a startup is like driving a speedboat, while working for a large corporation is akin to steering an oil tanker. Find out which driver’s seat you want to be in and grab the steering wheel.

Yet, here I am today, working as an in-house SEO, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the decision to try something that I never thought I would do again: work for someone else.

A little under a year ago, as I was on my way home from a surf trip in Mexico and had just crossed the US border, an email came through my phone. It was from the former CEO of Ask.com, Jim Lanzone. He briefly informed me of his startup, Clicker.com, and that he was in town and wanted to meet for coffee. Great, I thought to myself. Another job offer. Can’t wait.

Even though I had the mentality that I’d never say no to an opportunity without at least hearing it out, and being that I was running a successful lead generation company at the time, I was 99.9% sure it was just something I would simply chalk up as a good networking opp.

I didn’t need a job and I didn’t need money. And I haven’t answered to anyone else (unless you count clients) in 5 years. I loved my lifestyle and was very content on my own. But over the course of the next couple months, Jim slowly changed my mind and presented me with an opportunity that if I didn’t at least try, I’d be an absolute idiot.

It wasn’t the salary that attracted me (it is a start-up after all). It was the chance to join and put my fingerprint on what I felt would be a wild success. To have daily contact with an executive team that can groom me and polish the skills I’ll need to reach the next level in my career; to schmooze with and showcase my talents to an incredible roster of Venture Capitalists and Board of Directors.

Plus, I think Clicker is a brilliant idea and the pot of gold that awaits if I can help it reach its potential won’t be too bad either.

What To Expect As An In-House SEO

What you can expect being in-house is naturally going to vary from company to company. For sake of ease and only writing of what I know, I’m just going to reflect on my own experiences. It’s something I think a lot about, and truth be told, my lifestyle hasn’t been altered all that dramatically.

I suppose this has a lot to do with where you work, but I’m fortunate that Clicker is an accomplishment-based company and not a punch-the-clock one. I still surf (the ocean, not the Web) most days if only for an hour and have enough freedom to stay sane.

I manage my team remotely and only spend a handful of days in the office every month. This setup will likely remain intact, so long as my accomplishments reach and exceed expectations.

The main differences aren’t as noticeable as you might expect, but it is different in a lot of ways.

For one, you now have to take overall direction and answer to someone else. If you’re unlucky, you may have to answer to several people. If you’ve worked for yourself for any length of time, this could really suck.

It’s important that you have a strong respect for your superiors and believe in / want to reach the same end goals as they do. Even so, you’ll still have times when you curse them under your breath.

Secondly, there’s more responsibility and you now have only one project to which you place your complete and total focus. This can be good or bad. If you have ADD like I do, then this can get boring and tedious at times. One nice thing about working with clients is that they’re plural, and working on several projects at a time keeps things fresh.

There are a lot of positives as well. You don’t have to hear that all-too-familiar line of “check’s in the mail” every month. You’re not constantly hustling for new business. There’s no administration work and you have more resources available to you.

You get to be a part of something bigger than yourself. You get an SEO-focused team dedicated to executing on your strategy. You gain a new and valuable skillset. And it’s much easier to unplug at the end of the day.Still, it’s harder to take off to Central America at the drop off a hat when you see the swell charts light up. There’s something called vacation time, and it’s only available in small doses.

You can also expect that you’ll all of a sudden be more in demand. It’s like you have a target on your back. I swear, the amount of job offers I have received ever since announcing my arrival at Clicker has increased 10x. This can be a good or bad thing. For me, I’m happy where I’m at and have no plans of leaving.

What You’ll Want To Consider Before Going In-House

Don’t just take the first available gig you see on Craigslist. If you want a successful jump into being in-house, you need to make sure your priorities are in-line with the company you’re joining.

I joined a startup where life is going to differ quite a bit from that of a big corporation. Keep that in mind. And If the stars didn’t align perfectly for me, there was no way I would’ve given up working for myself. Here’s a checklist of sorts that you can use for a guide before making the jump.

SEO buy-in

If the CEO and the rest of the executive team doesn’t buy into SEO, then just forget about it. Life for you as an in-house SEO will not be very fun if you have to spend all your days trying to sell your ideas and get buy-in from upper management. If SEO isn’t a priority and well respected at the company, look elsewhere.

A firm belief in you

I’ll never forget when our CEO pulled me aside during my first couple weeks and told me I need to be more firm toward our executive team. I told him I felt I needed to prove myself before barking orders to the rest of upper management.

This was new territory for me and I was treading lightly. He then told me, “you’ve already proved yourself and that’s why we hired you.” That was a turning point for me and certainly made me realize and appreciate the value of your expertise being trusted 100%.

Fewest levels possible between you and the CEO

Just because upper management buys into SEO doesn’t mean the entire company does. Sometimes getting things implemented is a pain in the ass. Engineers might not understand your reasoning for changing something or perhaps the CFO doesn’t want to approve the expense you know is necessary for success. The more direct your route to the CEO, the easier you’re going to have getting over these obstacles. It’s awfully nice having the main decision-maker in your corner.

A strong team that suits your management style

Everyone has their own management style. And whether there’s already a team in place or you’ll be hiring a new one, you’ll want that to align with your style of making things happen. I’m very hands-off and don’t like to micro-manage.

I like working with smart, self motivated people who don’t require a lot of hand holding and can learn to fish on their own. I work remotely, so when I don’t hear from the people I manage, I need to trust that they’re doing what needs to be done. My team deserves a lot of credit.

Resources & tools available to successfully do your job

This one is pretty much self explanatory. There’s certain things you need in order to do your job and do it well. Make sure this is all negotiated beforehand and you know exactly what to expect.

Just like you should know what they expect of you, they should know what you expect from them. The last thing you want is get hired and then be denied the things you need to exceed. This will only make you look bad in the end.

While working in-house certainly isn’t for everyone, it does offer a fresh direction that has a lot of positives that you won’t find with client work or managing your own web properties.

I’m not here to try and convince you this is the path to take. But if you’ve been thinking about it and you’re still on the fence, go ahead and give it a try. It might just exceed your expectations.

If you’re using Digg as a linkbaiting tool, then you’re perceived as a villain. Everyone from Digg itself, to the community, to other self-proclaimed social media experts thinks you’re the bad guy. Even though good linkbait provides value to the community (because who doesn’t like remarkable content?), if they know you’re putting up the content in the hopes for links, then they’re automatically on defense. Because of this, Digg has become very hard for marketers over the last year. It’s hard, but not impossible, and here are 10 steps that will improve your chances for success.

1. Submit with a good account. You don’t have to use a power account, but you should definitely submit using an account with a positive track record for getting content to the homepage, actively participating, and not always trying to submit hooky linkbait from shady domains. The community likes digging stories from other users that are known and trusted.
2. Check your commercial domain at the door. Sorry payday-loan-company.com, you have no chance of making the Digg homepage with a domain like that. You’re better off setting up a new domain or forgetting Digg altogether. The community doesn’t like promoting stories from commercial domains. Set up a new domain if you have to because links from that are better than no links at all.
3. Write a good title and description . I can’t stress this one enough. Even though it’s already been said time and time again, this is one of a few suggestions I just can’t leave off this list. Put extra time and energy into this one and make sure your title and description are rock solid before you submit.
4. KISS your content. Keep it simple — you have a better chance of gaining extra diggs if people can browse over and grab the meaning in mere seconds. These people are reading through a lot of other stories and they will appreciate you formatting and writing your content in a way that is easy for them to enjoy.
5. Randomize your diggs. Emailing, IM’ing, tweeting, and even calling your friends is a great way to get extra diggs, but mix it up. Completely randomize who you’re asking to digg your stories. Any kind of pattern has the potential to set off the Digg algorithms and that’s not a good thing.
6. Use natural timing. This goes hand-in-hand with the above tip. When you’re asking all your friends for diggs, make sure you spread it out. If you don’t think Digg will notice when you get 50 diggs in the first hour and only 5 in the second hour then you’re crazy. Again, the algorithm will catch this.
7. Use Digg buttons wisely. You know those big Digg buttons that you sometimes see at the top of blog posts? Those can be a great way to collect a few extra diggs from your readers. At the same time, you shouldn’t be using these on all your posts. Your readers will become blind to them, and the ones that don’t get a lot of diggs give off the impression that your site is a ghost town. I love to use the buttons, but I will only put them on pages I am actively promoting on Digg. Once my story hits the homepage I take them off.
8. Comments are great. Ask your friends to seed your submissions with good comments, but make sure they are really thoughtful and not overly positive. I’ve seen a fair share of stories get buried simply because of negative comments. Sometimes when users will leave one the rest of the community blindly follows them.
9. Wear camouflage. If your story looks, smells, feels, or tastes like linkbait then you’re fighting an uphill battle. Take a few extra steps to hide your true intentions: getting links. This is an area where common sense can play a huge role. You can be honest with yourself and judge your own content or ask a friend’s opinion. Good linkbait doesn’t look like linkbait at all.
10. Karma: it’s something that you always want on your side. Simple things like always making sure that you’re digging friends’ stories in return can go a long way. Use Digg too; don’t just jump on for five minutes once a week right before you submit. Spend some time reading through, digging stories you like, and understanding the way it works.

Bonus: Don’t put all your eggs in the Digg basket. Other social news sites can provide tremendous results. If your linkbait fails on Digg, then move on and put in a solid effort on sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon. These sites have huge audiences and shouldn’t be ignored. Some of my most successful linkbait campaigns have failed on Digg, yet ended up with over 2000 solid links.

If you’ve been involved with social media at all lately, you’ve realized that getting your linkbait on Digg has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, especially if you’re trying from a commercial domain. This has left many social media marketers scrambling for ways to please their clients or find new ways to attract links virally for their own sites. While Digg is the big daddy of the social news sites and getting a frontpage Digg is certainly worth its weight in gold, by no means is it the end-all. You can still attract just as many links leveraging other popular sites like Reddit and Delicious.

The key is to step back and refocus on your content strategy. Just about all the linkbait articles from marketers that I’ve seen lately are the hooky, one-off type of stuff. It sticks out like a sore thumb. You know, things like ‘Top 10 Reasons Your Cat is like HTML’. This kind of content works great if you can hit the Digg homepage, but otherwise it’s just not good enough content to collect any significant amount of links.

Generally people don’t want to bookmark or link to this type of article because it provides no real value to them. It can make for a fun read, but otherwise it’s useless. With Digg, it was simply a numbers game — get in front of enough people and regardless of the quality of content, it will get links. For social media sites other than Digg, this isn’t the case. Your content needs to be 10x better because you’re not reaching quite as broad an audience. The numbers game still applies here. However, this time you’re reaching less people so you need to step up your game and give them a better reason to link to you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Great content alone is, in most cases, still not good enough to go popular on these social sites. You still need to have a solid promotion strategy, but that’s not the focus of this article. The focus on this article is stepping up your content game so you still build tons of links through social media marketing. The fun, hooky type of content needs to go. Instead, you should be focusing on creating valuable resources that will attract links and bookmarks and spread virally on its own from there. People should want to link to you because there is value for them. They want to give their readers links to resources that provide value to them too.

The keyword here is ‘resource’. Focus your energy on building out a great resource that genuinely helps people, and in turn it will help you by attracting links. People don’t want to waste their time reading an article about their cat and HTML. They won’t bookmark that, either. But give them a resource that helps them and not only will they read it, they’ll probably bookmark it too so they can refer to it at a later date.

I know this is all linkbaiting strategy 101. But somewhere along the way it seems like we’ve forgotten what really works. Maybe it’s because we got spoiled with easy Digg homepagers and that made us lazy. The bottom line is that you need to step back and focus on the fundamentals if you really want to have successful linkbait campaigns.

Even though mini-sites doesn’t always make sense from an SEO standpoint, it’s now getting to the point where they’re a must if you want to keep linkbaiting with your commercial domains. You see, commercial domains just won’t work on Digg anymore. Sure, you can fire off a successful linkbait piece or even two if you’re lucky, but try any more than that and you’ll see what happens. Your domain will be banned from any further submissions faster than you can say “Reddit.” Banning aside, a commercial domain itself throws up a red flag to social media users and will make it that much harder to get something popular.

Enter the mini-site. Setting up a mini-site is one great alternative for companies who suffer from the commercial domain plague. It will give you a new place to produce content in a non-commercial manner, which means you can now get back to your regularly scheduled linkbaiting. Just one problem, right? Why would you care about getting links to some other domain?

There are a number of different strategies you can implement here. The 301 redirect seems to be the most popular and most effective, especially if you’re looking to carry link juice. But it’s also a strategy that needs to be pulled off with finesse. For a while people were just using the 301 to mask the URL appearance on Digg and to get around a banned domain. Digg users are getting savvy, though, and seem to be picking up on that trick. A better approach is to set up 301 redirects to all the links a few weeks after the campaign is over.

I don’t want to get involved in the ethics of using 301s here. I’ll leave that up to your own judgement. The point is that you now have another reason to consider setting up that mini-site.

Cameron Olthuis is the Founder and CEO of Factive Media. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Contrary to popular belief, not every article that goes popular on social news sites gets good link volume. I’ve had campaigns that don’t even make the homepage for some reason or another, yet they gain a huge amount of links. I’ve also had campaigns that are hugely popular on Digg but didn’t collect many links at all.

This is why social media marketing and linkbait is hard to game and get good results. People can spam their crappy content to the homepage of Digg all they want, but that doesn’t mean it will generate links and work in the long run. Authority sites don’t link to stories just because they hit Digg’s home page. They link to them when they are solid resources and/or provide a real value to their readers. These hooky spam articles don’t. Therefore, they don’t collect good links. Sure, they get that golden link from Digg, but over time that’s not a very valuable link.

The point I’m trying to get across is that producing exceptional content is still the one and only way to go. And it really has to be exceptional, so be honest with yourself. It is also has to be presented in the proper way (but that’s a whole other article in itself). This can be very hard to do for a lot of sites. There are times where you really have to use that ace up your sleeve. But regardless, if you really want the long-term benefits of linkbait, excellent content is a must.

Social news sites are really nothing but a platform where you can expose content to very large audiences. It’s your hope that a small fraction of this audience will see your article as a valuable resource and link to it. If your article is spammy, people won’t link to it no matter how many times you put a “made by a Mac” button on the sidebar. Getting on the Digg homepage doesn’t impress me, but getting a thousand links to your incredible resource article does.

Cameron Olthuis is the Founder and CEO of Factive Media. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

By now you’ve probably heard most of the things to avoid with your linkbait campaigns. Yet nothing from your site ever makes the front page of Digg, no matter how good the content is, or what power user submitted it. Maybe it’s because your domain name (or sub-domain) reeks of spam.

Yes, it’s true: stories do get buried all the time because of the domain name alone. If you’re trying linkbait campaigns on paydays-loans-blog.com, just stop now. Save yourself the headache and wasted efforts and get yourself a domain name that doesn’t stink so bad. This goes for sub-domains too. These show up on your submissions and should be treated equally with regular domain names. I’m not saying you can’t use sub-domains for linkbait—just make sure they don’t trigger any red spam flags.

A good domain name goes a long way on Digg and other social news sites. Like many other factors, it can make or break a good piece of content. Use common sense when launching your linkbait campaigns and be brutally honest with yourself. If you think there’s even the slightest possibility your domain looks spammy, then don’t use it. Register a new domain name and you can always 301 redirect it to your main site a month or two down the road.

Cameron Olthuis is director of marketing and design for ACS and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

You see, users from social news sites have very short attention spans while browsing these sites. They’re generally there to read multiple news stories and articles, and they don’t want to spend an enormous amount of time on any one story. Thus, it’s important to keep content in a simple format so these users can digest the information as quickly and easily as possible.

Formatting linkbait in the proper way is one of the key ingredients of an overall successful campaign. You can have a great article that would otherwise provide an excellent resource, but if it reads like a novel you won’t be able to keep the attention of many of these readers long enough for them to finish it, let alone link back to it. Here are some useful tips for formatting your linkbait content.

Use paragraph headers. When possible, use headers for new paragraphs or topical changes (for example, this paragraph starts with a header). This allows people to easily scan the page for the information most useful to them, and most of the time readers can actually get the meat from the article by only reading the headings, if they choose.

Leverage lists. There’s a reason that top 10 lists work really well on social news sites. Even though some people have been predicting their demise for years, it’s a psychological thing that will never go away. People skim content online like never before. Lists make it easy for them to skim that content.

Say it in pictures. Pictures really do say a thousand words. When possible, use pictures in lieu of lengthy paragraphs. Pictures work very well on social news sites and I often see pictures go popular on their own.

Now, of course these tips don’t work in every situation. There is no one cookie-cutter approach to social media marketing, and all situations are different. There are times when in-depth articles can actually work better then simplifying information. The more time you spend on social news sites, the better you’ll understand when and how to format each linkbait article. However, you can usually never go wrong with keeping it simple…stupid.

Cameron Olthuis is the Founder and CEO of Factive Media and writes regularly on social media issues for a number of respected publications. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Enter Social Media for FireFox, a new browser extension that helps you easily find quality stories to submit. It saves you time by showing in your browser window if a story has already been submitted to Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. So as you’re out there looking for content you won’t be wasting valuable time trying to submit stories that have already been submitted. You will only be submitting fresh content.

That’s not all though; there’s one other super useful feature on this extension. When browsing Digg, Delicious, Reddit, or StumbleUpon you will see icons next to each submission. The little icons will actually show you if you that story has been submitted to the other social news sites as well. For example, you can visit the Reddit homepage and quickly scan all stories to see if they’ve been submitted to other social news sites. If they haven’t then you can be the first, because often what becomes popular on one social news site has a great chance of becoming popular on another. This isn’t always the case—each community has its own unique audience and they don’t always enjoy the same content. But it never hurts to try, and this tool makes it easy and painless.

If you’re having trouble finding good content to submit to social news sites then you should definitely check out this Firefox extension. Even if you already are a power user this will help you save time and easily find more good content to submit.

Cameron Olthuis is director of marketing and design for ACS and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Most of the basic social media marketing tactics apply to StumbleUpon. It’s important to be an active user in the community who provides value and discovers great sites. It also helps to have a lot of mutual friends and people that will see your stumbles. However, there are some lesser-known tactics that can also help your stumbles become popular.

Pick the right topic. When you discover a site and submit it to StumbleUpon it asks you to pick a topic that you’d like to submit it under. It’s important that you pick the right topic for submission as this can literally make or break your stumble. If you submit to the wrong topic then people who stumble across that page will be less likely to give the page a thumbs up, as it might not fit the kind of content they’re looking for. By submitting to the right topics you will increase the number of relevant eyeballs that see the page and this increases the likelihood that they will give it a thumbs up. For example, if you’re submitting a site about surfing then submit to the surfing topic and not the general sports topic.

Use relevant tags. Just as picking the right topic for submission is important it’s also important that you assign the proper tags to your stumbles. Not only does this increase relevant stumbles but users can also search either on StumbleUpon’s site or using its StumbleUpon toolbar. It’s more likely they’ll discover your site if you use proper tags that accurately describe the page.

Get a little help from your friends. StumbleUpon offers a feature where you can send your stumbles directly to your friends. They will see a little red number next to the “stumble” button on their toolbar. This lets them know that someone has sent them a stumble and the next time they hit the button they will see that page. You can even send them a little message and they can reply back. This is a feature that you have to be careful not to abuse, and it’s very tempting to do so. Only send recommended pages to friends when you’re reasonably sure they’ll like the page. If you send too many it will annoy your friends and you’ll so no longer be friends. Trust me, I know. I’ve had a few people abuse this feature with me and after awhile I just deleted them as a friend.

Leverage groups and forums. StumbleUpon has groups for just about every topic you can think of and you can join up to 63 groups. Within some of these groups you have the ability to post relevant links for others in the group to see and discover. This feature is not available for all groups and can depend on the settings that the moderator sets for that specific group. The forums within the groups usually allow anyone to post links. Don’t spam them, though, or you can be deleted from the group by the group owner or moderator.

Create your own StumbleUpon blog. Did you know that can post HTML and images on your StumbleUpon blog? You can, and these help make your stumbles stand out to people that are browsing or stumble upon your profile. Not only can this increase your stumbles on certain pages but it can also help increase your friend count as others often friend people based on favorable impression from blogs.

Sometimes the little things can make all the difference for whether or not the pages you submit go popular. By taking a couple extra minutes to make sure you submit pages properly it will give you that extra edge and help you get more traffic and links to your site. Just remember, the content still has to be good and interesting to the StumbleUpon community.

Cameron Olthuis is director of marketing and design for ACS and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.