We’ve all been there. Heck, many of us are still there right now. We come to work every day, game to do whatever it takes to “move the needle”. You know the importance of your SEO work to your company’s bottom line, so your head is constantly down to get things done.

This often means pumping out seemingly endless emails to co-workers advising on one thing or another, asking for this or that, and offering non-requested advice on projects you heard about at the water cooler. No one doubts your desire to see SEO succeed, but maybe it’s time to stick you head up and take a look around. Time to take a breath and inject some reality into your world around where you sit.  No, I don’t mean where your office is situated – I’m talking about knowing your place in the larger ecosystem of your company’s efforts.

Have you ever had a conversation that included someone suggesting you didn’t understand the larger picture or what you were asking for wasn’t going to fly in the face of other considerations? What I’m really getting at is positioning. It’s critical to know where your SEO work stands in the larger sphere of work going on at your company.

Sure, the executive might have said “SEO is important” at some point, but in reality, such sound bites are often not strong enough to hang your tin-foil hat on. Worse, such commentary usually leads to folks ratcheting up interest on the topic, only to realize there is no magic bullet, and thus losing interest faster than a failing bank.

Which all means the need to determine where your program fits in lands solidly in your lap, like a wet salmon. Full of yummy potential, if only the right ingredients are on hand and applied in the correct fashion. It’s critical you either ask for assignation or push for it yourself. Your program might bring 7X ROI figures for low investment, but the PPC program can crow about huge Click Through Rates (CTRs) and the email program can run out conversion figures that would embarrass Billy Mays (RIP). Not to mention the banner advertising folks (no, seriously, not worth mentioning)… unless they engage in anything related to branding and stock the fridge full of cold, hard cash to ensure broad reach, long run-times and fresh ads every few weeks. Then they can have an effect.

The point here isn’t to find ways to compete with the various efforts your company might have in play either. The goal should be to understand where SEO fits in. In fact, you might be better served in ramping down any Ra-Ra-Ra about SEO and quietly working to seed SEO work into other programs, feeding off them and contributing to their successes.  Use the data from the PPC campaigns to help you zone in on keywords that convert – they get cracking on optimizing content for them, too.

Watch your email campaigns and note which calls to action produce the best results, then get cracking on backing those products with optimization goodness plucked from the verbiage of your emails. Are any of the websites those banner ads appear on driving traffic? If so, start looking at demographics from those sites and start building targeted keyword lists to get optimized content targeted at.

Now, lest you’re ready to start with the hate mail because I missed social, relax. Social is probably one of the least understood, least planned and biggest missed-opportunities areas in most companies. If your company doesn’t have a dedicated plan, create one. Sure, it might be outside your normal area of operation, but if no one else there is managing it, get in front of that thing and start ensuring the outreach your company does is headed in the right direction. There is plenty of opportunity via social to build links by engaging your audience – this alone should make it worth your while.

While you’re doing all this poking around and soul searching, take a long hard look at how you are stack ranking the work you ask others to do. Does the return on what you are asking for really outweigh other items in the queue? By taking a seriously honest look at this question, you will begin to see that many SEO-related work items just don’t stack up to enabling a new photo gallery capable of adding 10,000 page views a week and spinning more ads – will editing those ALT tags deliver the same results?

That’s the real point here – knowing your place in the company. Each time you ask someone to complete an SEO-related work item, that’s an investment of time. For sure your goal is to run SEO and run it well, but by being aware of your impact on others and by being thoughtful around where you ask for others to invest time, you not only stand to bring in positive results, you’ll find yourself getting support from the most unlikely places and programs around your company.

I was once told, “Marketing is a support function; we lead nothing.”  Guess what? SEO is a support function, we rarely ever lead.

The goal here today is not to cover every single point in an internal SEO plan, but to provide you a reasonable framework to work from. Using these points and fine tuning to your unique situation, will help you create a detailed plan which will be successful.

Domain expertise

No program will function without domain expertise. There, I said it. You need the talent. You cannot trust this to outsourcing. Allowing the entire SEO program for your online business to rest in the hands of a third party is akin to hitching a ride home from the party when you don’t know who the driver is and if they are drunk or sober. Sure, there are some obvious cues you can watch for, but in the end, is this a risk you are willing to run? The stakes are a bit high for my taste.

If you do nothing else internally, ensure the domain expertise around SEO resides in your organization.  This will allow you to ensure all downstream items reach the correct levels to meet your own corporate goals. While you might hire an agency to do the work, and they have a contract to meet – even with specific goals – the agency’s first loyalty is to its own existence. Being profitable ensures continual existence. Thus, it’s clear their first goals will be to maximize their profits.

Lest the agency world feel like ripping off hate mail to me, calm down. This is not meant to imply that agencies don’t care about their clients. Today, I think, most established agencies do genuinely care. They simply need to keep in mind the reality that they, too, run a business. For your own plans, this means their focus is often split. An internal group’s focus in on one thing – the company’s goals above all else.

Having internal domain expertise also ensures any work suggested by an agency passes the smoke test.  Some agencies simply recycle work (or common items) between jobs. Internal expertise can keep on top of changes and trends to ensure the work suggested is realistic. And if all that aren’t reason enough to develop this expertise internally, consider that someone will at least need to manage the agency relationship, and that someone better be able to speak the language the agency uses, or your money is lost.

SEO integration plan

Consider the last time you had a truly blank slate to work from. A clearly defined plan was easy to come by back in those days, right? From theory to execution, you could map each step of the plan, integrate all facets cleanly and from there, you simply build to plan.

Now think of your daily slog. Optimization requires resources. Resources require justification. “How much is the ROI if we implement the H1 tags?” While tools exist today to help you track such minute details, it’s doubtful many actually are.

With more teams tasked with bringing optimization best practices to an already-existing product, it’s critical to have a well thought out integration plan. There will always be a level of pain, but minimizing this pain is in everyone’s best interest. If you take the time to carefully plan and explain the work items and their expected impacts, you can more easily sell the plan. Be ready to slice and dice to fit other requirements and plans, but if you show up with a plan, you’ll be taken seriously. Remember, this is an “integration” plan, not an “seo at all cost” plan. Know your place, plan the work, work the audience, drive for results.

Metrics

Speaking of results, what are you tracking today? Given the advances in our ability to deeply track pretty much anything around search optimization (or any other discipline), there is no reason at all to skip this.  Don’t be content with toeing the company line on baseline metrics, either. Sure, the company is really only concerned about conversions. Great KPI. Vital, even.

Just keep in mind that other things should matter such as time on site, pages consumed, internal path mapping, cross-overs with other disciplines (think paid search conversion data & keyword research) and so on. Internal to your own program, you should be concerned with many factors which will help you build the entire picture of the ecosystem you live in. While you may not share this data outside your own group, it’s vital to your ability to make the right decisions. Metrics matter; dig deep.

Optimization tactics

I’m not going to cover this in detail. This is the SEO 101, 201 and 301 stuff. Sure, you’ve got the plan down to cover the basic on page items, but how have you integrated social media into the equation? Do you have a defined internal link building strategy? Is your business development group on board and signing contracts that help, rather than hinder, further success around SEO? Do your content creators understand how to integrate keyword research into the content planning cycle?

If you start looking around, you’ll quickly discover there are very few areas in today’s business environment that do not influence SEO in some manner. Make a list specific to your situation and start filling in the groups with actual names. Ensure those people are in on the key conversations and that they sign off on and support your efforts within their own groups.

Editorial

Repeat this with me:  A website is not a newspaper.

How users consume online is very different compared to how they consume content in printed formats.  Too many times businesses try to adhere to outdated methods and practices when creating content. You should have editorial guidelines, don’t get me wrong. These guidelines help form the basis of many products online, thus impacting credibility. But be careful to update them and review these guidelines frequently.

You might discover new problems and issues to tackle. For example, how does the world of 140 character limits work with grammatically correct best practices?

Make sure you ask these questions and come to some level of agreement around an answer. I’m not suggesting you’ll reach a consensus here, but you’ll at least have the right folks talking about the right things. After that, well, that’s what the Executives are there for – to help settle the big questions.

CMS – Content Management System

Get this right or go home. Well, not quite. You can be successful with a less-than-optimized CMS, but having a well executed, search friendly CMS will help form the basis of your program. Having a usable system enables all kinds of upstream benefits to exist. Content creation and management becomes easier.  When needed, redirects can be easily implemented, preserving past value.

While most off-the-shelf CMS have limits, there are some good starting points to work from. Wordpress might not scale for some. Windows vs. Linux is another question. Regardless, be sure when the time comes to purchase, modify or upgrade a CMS, you have a seat at the table. Your input doesn’t need to solve every problem, but you should lend guidance around what the final product should look like. The final website, that is. By clearly defining the scenarios, you enable your CMS team to build or modify in the right direction.

Templates, rich media and more

Now we’re getting to the nuts and bolts of things. Making sure your templates are properly optimized – or individual pages if you operate at that level – is critical to checking of the SEO 101 items. Titles, descriptions, keywords, H-tags, alt-tags, content placement, navigational elements and more need to be accounted for. Create the check list with best practices and have the designers/developers confirm each item is accounted for. Then go check it yourself. This does not mean you don’t trust your teammates, but their job isn’t SEO, yours is.

When using rich media, be thoughtful. Keep it well integrated, but keep the best content out of the rich elements. Follow the usual best practices and don’t fall into the trap of trying to make things too slick. A good user experience isn’t just about movies and video. A good UI takes into consideration more than the latest whiz-bang, slick-looking interfaces. There is a place for this experience, but it’s not as a content wrapper.

Cover the other usual suspects like sitemaps and robots.txt management as well. Don’t take these for granted or it’ll bite you hard in the future.

If you create an roadmap based on these 7 items, you’ll cover most of the ground needed to build and implement a sound SEO strategy.

It’s no secret that SEO is but one tactic which can be used to drive traffic to your site.  Anyone who has managed SEO and paid search campaigns can easily point out the advantages of both.  The trick, in larger companies, is to ensure they exist side by side.  Too many times these core traffic driving programs are split up and managed by different groups.  Because SEO tends to have a technical flavor, and PPC tends to deal in larger volumes of dollars, more often than not SEO resides in the engineering or operations side of the house, while paid search sits firmly in marketing.

Short of going to war with management and getting this changed, how can you create synergies between the groups?  How do you use the information one search marketing team gathers to help the other?

Paid helping organic

Paid search lives in a world of intense tracking.  Not a single cent is spent without knowing the exact ROI brought back by that penny.  Should a campaign slip below a desired limit, it is swiftly sent to the gallows.  This intense trackability can provide direct benefits in the world of organic search. 

Because paid search lives in a world where each transaction is monitored, landing pages (and more importantly, the language and messaging on the pages) is constantly refined; the organic side can quickly learn what type of content converts.  The conversion can vary, but if you have a paid campaign driving traffic to dedicated, refined landing pages, and that traffic is converting, start capturing this data.  It tracks back to keywords.  Use these keywords to cross reference with your organic lists to see if you are missing areas for exposure.  In many cases there will be overlap, the differences in conversion typically being due to where in the “conversion funnel” a user is at the time they search & find you.  Regardless, this data holds clues to what some of those users are taking action on.  By targeting them in your SEO efforts, alongside your paid campaigns, you effectively increase your exposure footprint.

Organic helping paid

Paid search has evolved to such a level where dedicated landing pages for individual ads are pretty much the defacto state of the union.  These pages are highly refined to be laser-focused, using very specific calls to action to elicit the desired purchase or transaction.  Too many times companies set aside millions for monthly PPC ad spend, only to be left penniless when it comes time to designing dedicated landing pages.  There is a hard cost in terms of time to develop and tweak these pages.  In larger companies, the resources to manage these page-level changes don’t often reside in the group spending the money and managing the campaigns, so they need to collaborate cross-group.

In the world of organic search, we live and breathe topical relevance.  There’s an opportunity here to blend your organic page content with a dedicated call to action.  By integrating the messaging, a single page can do double duty for both organic rankings, and as a landing page.

Both sides of the search equation require pages that are highly relevant and focused on targeted keywords. You can take advantage of this requirement to guide your content development.  In other words, you can create economies of scale by developing content that satisfies the needs of both your organic and paid search campaigns. And in this economy, that’s a message that resonates at the C-level.  While this focus may not be possible for everyone, nor applicable in every instance, many companies find that it works well.  By combining stats and looking through the data from both sides of the coin, you’ll uncover nuggets of value.  As with everything search, test, refine, test, refine.  By taking a holistic approach that combines your paid and organic search development, you’ll uncover the phrases unique to your site, product or service that resonate not only with those searching for information, but for those seeking to make a transaction happen.  Regardless of where a user is in their “conversion funnel,” you’ll have, and be showing, what they want.

If you do have a split search marketing program, this might be the first step in making the case that development efforts should be combined.  With today’s budgets shrinking, resources being harder to come by and a general feeling of needing more from less, looking for ways to streamline costs and find efficiencies is what makes heroes.

In a world where everything changes at break-neck speed, it seems like not a day goes by where I don’t utter some version of the same words and advice.  After a recent chat with a couple of other in-house SEOs, it occurred to me… we sound like a broken record.

Are we destined to repeat the same litany of items over and over?

ALT tags are empty… URL is not friendly… Don’t use duplicate titles… Don’t use more than one title on a page… Make sure the description is well written… Use absolute links… Be careful when using rich media… Is there a good down-level experience? The list is almost endless.

In most cases, these refrains have been uttered for years now; a staple of good ol’ fashioned, grass-roots SEO work. They have been, and will remain, the nuts and bolts of on-page SEO. So, yes, we are all repeating many of these same things over and over, it seems. While the world does change and evolve (and along with it so do search algorithms and an SEO’s response to those changes), we need to make sure we don’t get complacent.

It’s too easy to get caught up in a loop of providing the same feedback over and over, simply because someone didn’t fix it the first time you asked them too. This is not a long-term strategy for success. Success is measured in dollars, conversions, action.  Hard numbers. So let’s take a look at breaking this moldy mold.

If you find yourself having the same conversations with the same people a few times each year, perhaps there are other issues that need to be addressed. It is entirely likely those you approach actually want to do the work you suggest. Maybe they simply lack the head count to make it happen, along with other work. In other cases, it could be the language barrier. SEO’s do tend to have their own unique language; just like so many other professional groups.

If you dig deeper into the mix, you will likely find the root cause of why things haven’t been done. When you have this cause, you can effect change.

Maybe you need to have a heart-to-heart with yourself and be honest if you’ve approached your program and work from the right direction. If you work at a law firm, talking to the lawyers about SEO is a dead end. Sure to get you uninvited form the summer picnic. If you approach them and speak in terms of attracting new clients, pre-qualifying them based on keywords & topics and lower acquisition costs with higher profits, then that will likely get them to pay attention. After that, they’ll sign off on the technical needs you place before them to get to the better place you’ve described.

This heart-to-heart should also reflect on your level of approach. Like landing an airplane, success is the desired option, and approaching a runway too high, or too low can have dire consequences. Best to think about this and nail it the first time. When you built the program (or inherited it), were the correct people brought in to support the project? Did the right people have input and sign off?

If you approached a Senior VP, you might have gone too high. Their view of the world is very macro, so many small details are missing. This often leads them to think in broader terms. The downside here is over-simplification.  The opposite of this is engaging the ground-level folks (graphic designers, programmers, Sysadmins, etc.) and getting them moving. At this level, there is a need for a great deal of detail, which can overload people, processes and systems if not properly planned for and fed into the work stream.

Throw into this lines of communication, and there are many easy paths to lead you astray. Imagine you are a department lead, Manager or mid-level executive responsible for people, work and projects. You walk into work one day to find your staff all engaged in a bright, shiny new (SEO) project you know nothing about. That might be just disconcerting enough to the Manager to make them pull all of their people away from the (SEO) project.

I think one of the best approaches is to view your SEO program (or even smaller projects) through as many different filters as possible. Ask yourself whose support you need, then build a story that supports a win for their area of interest. By doing this in key areas, the end result is a storyline with many points of support across the company – just what you actually need to successfully move the work forward.

Make sure you help everyone, at every stage and level, craft the messages, too. One poorly worded communication could lead to a lot of confusion as groups try to interpret what your directions mean to them. Over-simplification can be as damaging as too much detail, so think strategically when crafting your communications, and trace the work back to an expected ROI relevant to the group being addressed.

Though it may seem to you like endless repeatition of the same message over and over again, this process is important to ensure the right messages reach the right people.

Who knew SEO work could prep you for a career in politics?

Like some many things around us, SEO follows a certain organic (if you’ll pardon the pun) ebb and flow.  Support for SEO programs hinges on often fickle politics, in some cases, and in all cases, it happens at the pace resources allow.  In today’s globally depressed economy, how do you manage your program to ensure it’s seen as viable and mindful of the times?

Pick your battles

Everyone is concerned about ROI these days.  Everyone wants more done with fewer resources.  While this might sound like a familiar refrain, it’s worth taking the time to really think about what this means.  When you’re ready, get past the “Am I going to be working 20 hour days now?” point of view.  No company expects one employee to carry them through lean times.

What it really means is this it the time for you to get extremely accurate about what your program can deliver, when it can deliver it, when the results will appear and based on your own resources, the scope of the effort.

If you know a particular group in your organization is bullish on SEO, make sure you align with them.  You need to ensure the battles you pick see you partnering up with other groups that have resources which can lead to success for you both.  While many other groups might be looking for your attention, stick close to those who are actually capable of getting work done.  Your main goal is to guide the work so the company benefits.  For your program to survive the lean times, you need to ensure your internal partnerships see work getting done and results adding up.

Right size to fit resource levels

With reduced resources, follows the ability to get work done declining.  This can spell trouble for big SEO projects that require a lot of resources to implement suggested enhancements, revisions and changes.  Now is the perfect time to review these projects.  Is the projected return going to be worth setting the reduced resources at 100%?  If you have 25% fewer resources, your capacity is summarily reduced, so any project in the hopper has the effect of increasing the actual workload.  Fewer hands make heavier work, to paraphrase.

While it might be true that results will take longer to accrue, you might be a hero if you shelf a project or two to help the company fit it’s resources to the workload.  While doing so, it’s critical you send the correct messages.  SEO is not going away. SEO is still valuable and worth investing in.  These projects are being shelved for 3 – 6 months, not being scrapped completely.  Most importantly, it’s critical you reset expectations at this point.

Set expectations

Fewer resources means less work through-put.  Thus, you’ve opted to shelve a particular project (say, setting up crawler friendly URLs) for 6 months.  It’s important, very important, to communicate out that with this action, any expected lift in organic traffic will be delayed.  Revise your forecasts if you need to, and resend them.  This type of information is exactly what executives need to make decisions around where resources should be applied.  This also has the effect of notifying everyone that the goals you’d stated for the year are in jeopardy of not being met.  Anyone else who may be affected by you not meeting your goals is now on notice.  And this is a powerful way to draw in support for your project.

Get guerrilla and back to basics

While all of this repositioning is going on, you still need to get work done.  Though everyone around you might be crying about reduced resources, you need to gauge the current appetite for SEO.  Is it still popular?  Do people still think it’s valuable, even though they have no resources?

As long as people want to do the work, there is a way to move things forward.

Be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get dirty.  Be ready to set up meetings where you sit down and do manual reviews with people in real time to walk and talk through every single item you can get worked on.  This is an opportunity to get folks focused on SEO work under-the-radar.  Sure, there are no resources around to do the work.  There’s also a world of difference between NOT getting any work done, and getting bits and pieces done here and there.  By getting folks excited about seo and seeing that even small things matter, you’ll find support in unlikely spots.  Just keep telling yourself – the goal is to fill in all the blanks, the order in which they get filled in is less important sometimes.

It’s no secret everyone wants to see results these days.  Times are tough, revenues down, expectations are up.  It’s a fight to maintain market share, never mind grow it.  And every day your inbox bubbles up requests for “SEO to drive more traffic, more page views, MORE REVENUE!”  You want to help folks, you want to drive the results, but your resources are limited.  What do you do?

You keep bringing work forward, and yet no one seems to take action.  Your battle is not with individuals, as they all say the right things.  They all want to do the work, but like you, their resources are tight.  Unfortunately, you may be up against a cultural barrier.  If SEO is not ingrained into the work habits of every person in the company, you have a cultural barrier to cross.

You my friend, may be in need of an “SEO Taser” to get things moving.

Imagine, if you will, a small, hand-held tool that when applied to someone’s posterior suddenly enables them to “see the light” and prioritize SEO work properly.  Such a device would allow you to ensure your projects moved forward.  Link building would happen naturally as part of the editorial process.  Tools would exist to help teams understand where to apply their resources for best effect.  Reporting would exist to measure the results.

So, how do we transfer this fantasy into reality?  We build the SEO Tazer from data.  Hard numbers that will enable you to gain the action you need.

Think about it.  Most SEO programs are made up of folks who are experts, trying to influence others.  By sharing their expertise and offering guidance, the product should end up optimized.  In theory, this process works.  In reality, they bump into many hurdles around resource allocation, ROI on a given item, technological challenges and more.  So even the best laid plans tend to break down for many.

I want to stress this is not because the players don’t want to do the work.  It’s because the culture demands so many things from everyone, it’s tough for them to set priorities.  Given SEO numbers tend to be squishy (technical term there) in terms of ROI, it’s important to remember that competing efforts in the company can erode people’s focus on SEO.  When you are asked “If I add an <H1> to the page, how much revenue will it generate?”, what is your answer?  Right: squishy.

The SEO Taser, true to its namesake, must deliver a crisp, perhaps even shocking, jolt.  Rather than incapacitating folks, however, our SEO Taser will invigorate and empower them.

If you want to change the culture, you need to find something in common across the board.  For us, in this business, that common ground is metrics. And this brings us back to the squishy bits of SEO.  Referrals and page view info is readily available these days, so those numbers are firm.  Where things get less firm is around revenue from SEO work items.  When you ask for work to be done, and folks ask for the ROI on each work point, being able to place a number on the table will make the difference between getting work done now, or being bumped to a lower status.  Rarely are our work items viewed as a group item.  They are usually picked apart and listed in work plans individually, and rightly so, as each requires specific tasks to be completed.

Tracking suites such as those from Conductor and Enquisite make compiling SEO specific data easier than ever.  Truly, though, if you have referral data and revenue data, you can bring some “SEO value” numbers to the table.  Don’t treat this as a trivial exercise, either.  Make sure you accurately and constantly track all of your SEO work, as tracking changes in revenue and correlating this to the work being done.

Let’s not kid ourselves either.  These numbers will remain less than rock solid, but at least there is the ability to establish a trend.  Over time you will be able to answer the question about “If we do this for you, what is the ROI?”

The next item to arm our SEO Taser with is comparative facts.

With different factions in a company vying for a portion of decreasing budgets, it’s important to create a realistic understanding of where you fit into the mix.  Since budgets are usually set for an annual basis, use the data to showcase how SEO provides a better “cost per” return when compared to paid search and other forms of marketing over the year.

About 4 years ago I ran a side-by-side comparison to determine if the PPC advertising we were running was worth continuing.  At that time, we wanted to shift money around, so I figured out the relative costs per click (PPC = $0.36 vs. SEO = $13).  This might sound like simple math, but for this exercise, you must factor in all the associated costs for each tactic.  When balanced with other factors including the quality of organic traffic, increased user time on the site and larger consumed page view numbers, the decision was simple: we turned off the PPC advertising and reallocated the money to other areas.  There is more to consider these days in PPC, though, as I’m sure no one is using PPC strictly for driving traffic and page views (hint, hint).

Still, the point here isn’t the finer points of this experiment I ran, but rather how to build the SEO Taser.

To summarize this useful “tool,” it should include a look at revenues generated by SEO efforts, and a comparison with other areas the company can invest its money.

It’s much harder to be marginalized when you bring numbers to the table like everyone else.  By arming yourself with this data, your SEO Tazer will be charged with enough voltage to shock your culture into paying attention.

Next up, we need to build the SEO Cattle Prod, designed to deliver a knock-out punch you can use to keep your agency in line. ;)

With most large organizations, a number of key stakeholders must offer their buy-in for an in-house SEO effort to be successful. With various groups all tasked with a variety of other objectives, how do you get everyone focused on the common goal of optimizing your organization’s organic search efforts?

Make a sandwich, of course.

Think of this sandwich as having three layers (top, middle, lower). Each layer plays a pivotal role, so don’t let folks get focused too much on which layer they belong to. A closer look at these layers will reveal the following:

The top layer: executives

This would be the executive group. The folks who ultimately say yes or no to resource requests and drive their organizations forward. Their role is more visionary and forward thinking—very strategic. It’s critical that this layer of the sandwich buys into the organic search effort. Without them you are simply running a rogue group trying to gain traction. Get the top layer to buy into the long-term value organic search offers and you’re more than half way there. These folks decide that we’re playing chess and not some other game.

The middle layer: management

This layer is comprised of the operational management team for a give site or company. Their job is to apportion the work that needs to get done across the resources they have on hand. They are responsible for making sure that the executive vision actually translates into reality. They may not push the buttons and pull the levers, but they set up and manage the teams who do this work. These folks make the moves on the chess board.

The lower layer: everyone else

These folks push the buttons and pull the levers that actually make things happen. These are the editors producing content each day. The Ops folks ensuring servers are set up, that files get loaded properly, etc. This layer is where the rubber meets the road. Without them, nothing exists in our world. These folks are the pieces in play on the chess board.

Back to the kitchen, it’s time to assemble the sandwich.

By educating the executive (top layer) on the benefits of pursuing an organic search effort, they can understand how this impacts their strategic vision. It’s important you gather as much information for them as possible. Look at all the costs involved; look for projected results, impact on head count, etc. The key here is that you need to be armed with every conceivable data point to answer any questions that arise. If you cannot answer questions quickly and clearly, you may lose their attention. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that although you must be thoroughly prepared you may not be called upon to use all of your data. Execs are busy folks, so be sure to keep you presentation short and sweet. Include only the absolutely necessary details, and be ready with the rest if you need them.

To tackle the middle layer, you’re going to need to expose more of that detail you held in reserve from the executive team. These folks need to make decisions to move resources from project to project, so they’ll be looking for ROI numbers to help them rank projects against each other. You’ll rarely hear this layer say SEO isn’t worth the long-term effort, but their immediate need to drive results may seem at odds with getting your work done. Don’t despair. The key is to craft the message in a clear manner, with the right details, so they can back up their decisions to do your work. Also, getting the executive to spread the word that they feel SEO is worth the effort can go a long way to helping your cause at the middle layer.

My experience with the lower layer has been positive. I’ve rarely met anyone who patently refused to do the work. The trick, again, is to show them how doing your work impacts their results in a positive manner. With editors, this is relatively easy. By involving them in keyword research, they will quickly see how their choices of which content to create or publish can have an impact the volume of search traffic a site receives. On a deeper level, they can use this keyword data to help craft the verbage of the articles themselves, to even better effect.

Depending on how your company is structured, this lower layer may be comprised of a number of groups. Showing each of them clearly how what you are asking them to do impacts the end product, and thus organic search efforts, can go a long way to not only creating a better understanding of SEO work, but to creating actual results.

Overcoming objections

Now, the sandwich model is is great in theory, but what is one layer doesn’t play ball? Let’s say the middle layer is pushing back, resources are tight and your work is being pushed down the list of to-do items. How do you manage this?

Squeeze your sandwich.

The key is to play off your strengths. The top layer has bought in—they want the work done. The bottom layer is happy to do the work, if only someone would direct them to do so. The middle layer has tough decisions to make. By facilitating communications between all the layers, you can keep the conversations going that will lead to the results you need. It may be the middle layer needs more resources to cover the work load. It may be the lower level still needs specific training. Whatever the need, you should step in to ensure, one by one, all items are crossed off the list.

In the end, someone is going to need to make the call on whether the work gets done. If you block all the exits, save one, it’s obvious where folks will go. By ensuring the top layer understands the details when you get their buy in, they can be used as a resource to help your project move forward. By getting the lower layer as in-tune and trained up as possible, you’ve covered the low ground by ensuring the basic work items around everyday SEO best practices are covered. This leaves the middle layer in a place to clearly outline their needs to the top layer. If its equipment that’s a bottle neck, it can be addressed. If its staffing levels, that can be addressed. The key point is that by narrowing down the number of choices, you guide the conversation around getting your work done in the right direction.

Although it’s rarely discussed, a huge part of an in-house search marketer’s job is setting priorities on work items.  In an even broader sense, this role expands out to encompass staffing, budgeting, content planning, infrastructure management and more.  But fundamentally, setting priorities is a crucial part of assuring your internal search marketing activities are successful.

And the process of setting priorities is different for organic SEO work and paid search advertising campaigns. Let’s take a look at both.

Setting SEO Priorities

While many feel organic search marketing is “free,” the reality is it actually can cost quite a bit of money.  Granted, not usually on the scale that paid search can move cash out the door, but organic SEO work is hardly “free,” even when done by an internal team.  When you set an SEO plan into motion, it touches developers/programmers, content creators/editors, marketing folks, advertising sales people and potentially even more folks depending on your company’s structure.  When considering all of the time these people will spend implementing your plan, making changes to web sites in efforts to rank better is anything but cheap.  So what do you do?

Set priorities.

Let’s start with the basics:

Step 1 – Keyword research

This is a critical first step, as everyone should know.  Setting up the plan and developing the critical keywords you’re going to focus your work around, a mundane to experienced SEOs, is actually a bit of a black art to many outside our world.  Most folks stare in sheer amazement and gawk in awe when our team showcases the level of detail around keywords and query volumes.  Knowing which keywords you’re targeting helps you guide the effort on two main fronts:

• Reworking existing content. If you already have content, maybe it only needs a few tweaks to perform better and capture more traffic.
• Content creation. As you develop your keyword lists, you can look for matching content on your site.  If you have none, you now have a list of topics that your content developers can use to create new material.

Step 2 – Platform level issues

Your publishing platform may be your best friend or worst enemy.  Depending on the size of your site, you may be locked into a less than desirable situation.  In truth, even the worst content management systems these days can be managed with an eye toward effective SEO. What’s critical is that you identify the major issues caused by the publishing platform that negatively impact organic search visibility and start discussions with your platform team about ways to fix them.  Be ready for in-depth discussions, and be ready to do your best to not only rank each issue you bring forward in a prioritized list, but also to back up your requests for changes with projected improvements to ROI to justify this work.  A developer’s time is not cheap, so be ready for tough questions when you try to make changes to your content management system.

If you’re blessed with a search friendly publishing platform, you’ll still want to make that list and identify items that can be further tweaked.  The same rules will apply as above around justifications, but at least you know the lifting isn’t as heavy.

One added tip: Making your platform team feel like heroes by giving them the credit for any success here will go a long way to helping next time you need work done.

Step 3 – Template level issues

This step involves prioritizing all of the technical, on-page items that need attention.  Often, these issues relate to template design.  You might be using templates and simply not call them that.  The bottom line here is to make a list of the top on-page issues and track down why they exist and how they can be fixed.  The road splits here into “it exists and is properly used” and “it exists and is improperly used.”  Both have clear paths, so make sure you get the right people in the room and start the discussions.  Missing header tags?  Get it fixed.  Duplicating titles?  Decide if this belongs here, or with the platform team, then fire off the “fix it” message.  A good way to get the attention of non-search marketers here is to outline the negative consequences of not fixing the problems.

Step 4 – Editorial items

This step is one of my favorite parts of managing an in-house SEO team.  I’ve worked with a lot of editorial folks over the years.  While no writer or editor enjoys being “told what to write,” when you trot out keyword research info and show them exactly what their readers are searching for, the pitch on your “suggested content ideas” is an easy one.  These conversations usually start in a guarded fashion, but most editorial teams quickly see the easy route to producing winning content.  And any time you can help your editorial team be the center of attention because they created new, valuable content is good.

If you are sensing a theme here—namely, that you should be generous in your praise and acknowledgment of the efforts of the teams implementing your priorities—you’d be correct.  Organic search work is still marketing, and I see marketing as a support function in any business.  By enabling others to gain their fair share of credit as part of the process, everyone benefits.  Trust me, no one will think it was anyone but you, the internal SEO expert, that offered up the necessary guidance to get things done properly.

Prioritizing paid search campaigns

Setting priorities on the paid side is relatively straightforward, namely, set goals for your campaigns and track the results.  Once you have ongoing data, you can really begin to drill into what is a keeper and what to turf.  Being easier to prioritize, however, in no way implies that the paid side is a piece of cake.  In fact, in today’s environment of cost cutting, squeezed budgets and must-have-ROI’s, the paid side of the house is under scrutiny as never before.  Thankfully, the domain of PPC is so well tracked as to make it simpler to stem the flow on foundering efforts.  By setting clear targets, and pulling the plug on non-performers, you can effectively manage a budget to the penny.

A larger challenge may be getting money to put into paid campaigns.  When management bristles at the idea of money being spent on paid search, it’s often because paid search can run through large sums of money quickly.  Tie this effort to specific goals and timelines, though, and folks breathe easier knowing the angles are covered.   In the end, it’ll usually help persuade the doubters to note that that brand awareness jumps when you hold both a high paid placement and organic listing on the same result page .

Setting priorities is critical these days.  Most managers are understanding if you make a mistake, as long as you learn from it and do not repeat it.  Most managers also understand the inherent lack of trackability around SEO activities (for example, it’s impossible to provide an exact ROI number for implementing a header tag in the way you can track the ROI of a paid search ad).  If you set out clear priorities, set expectations reasonably, structure realistic timelines and manage the plan you’ve created, your program is well on its way to success.

One final tip: Keep track of the tasks you ask others to implment.  When you set something as a high priority work item, and others do not get it done, having their sign off via e-mail that your work item was bumped on their say-so can make all the difference in the world.  This isn’t about CYA either.  It’s about establishing who sets the priorities around work items.  This may be the in-house subject matter expert, or someone else.  Often it comes down to balance between your efforts and available resources, but if you’re outvoted, you’re outvoted.

First off, I would like to start by reminding everyone to participate in the SEMPO.org 2009 in-house salary survey. Running for the second year, this benchmark survey provides direct industry feedback, from in-house professionals like you, on the realities of compensation in this profession. Agency side folks, don’t worry, will be launching the second annual survey for you shortly.

Click to take the In-House Salary survey

Opportunity in a recession

Buy low, sell high. That’s the mantra of every great investor. Finding a career on the internet, and especially in search marketing, is no different. Now is an excellent time to start a search marketing career, or shift your current efforts into high gear.

If you listen to the news, or follow what the pundits are saying about the economy, it’s a cinch that this recession will be lasting through 2010. While most feel trepidation at this scenario, those seeking a career in search marketing should look at this as an opportunity to buy low and sell high. More now than ever, businesses need to justify every marketing dollar they spend with a serious return. No longer are they able to simply state, “as long as the ROI is positive, we are fine.” This need to get granular can pay off for those with some experience. Businesses are in need of your skills, and now is a great climate to cement your place as a professional. This effort will pay dividends as both your portfolio and experience grow.

With the current economy, every business needs to be certain that they refine their business model to the point where there is no further gains to be had from any investment of marketing dollars. Ultimately, this means fine-tuning areas of marketing such as pay per click advertising to the highest degree possible, ensuring that every possible penny is accounted for as an ROI.  In today’s climate, even the previously untouchable budgets of pay per click advertising campaigns are coming under scrutiny. While search marketing may be stealing traditional marketing dollars, the days of those search marketing programs running autonomously and only having to return vaguely positive ROI is rapidly coming to a close.

Today, we are seeing pay per click campaigns run with such efficiency that high double-digit click through rates are standard and expected, and eking out a growing return on these highly efficient campaigns is becoming increasingly more difficult. Add into the mix, rules changes at the platform level, the latest changes in expectations of an ever-increasing relevancy by consumers and the time is right to see a mass migration of large, Fortune 500 branded companies towards organic search marketing as they’re truly long-term marketing avenue of choice. Though many invest in paid search campaigns, most don’t do SEO well.

More and more large businesses are choosing to invest in organic search marketing as a baseline marketing tactic. SEO is being seen as not just a marketing tactic, but is the marketing tactic online. While certainly not news to those of us in the industry, these large well-known brands have been slow to adopt in the fast-moving Internet environment. As these companies come online, their need for talent will spur growth in search-centric career opportunities.

Getting started

Getting your career as an SEO professional started in today’s climate takes considerably more effort than even just a few years ago. With most businesses extremely focused on their bottom line and the return, the demand for performance has never been higher. Couple this with traditional hiring practices that typically dictate years of experience equating to future performance, and we’re seeing the merging of the need for both education and experience.

The days of being able to claim success on your personal website or blog and see that translate to a high five figure job are coming to a close. Businesses that can afford seasoned professionals also need to be ready to step up well into six figures to secure this desirable talent. If you are new to this career path, and you see this as a quick route to a six figure income, best to change your perspective now. To command top dollar requires experience and proof of results. Having a few months, or even less than 2 years of time-in, simply isn’t enough for most high-level SEO positions today.

While the speed of the Internet moves at the click of a mouse, when it comes to hiring top talent, most businesses fall back on traditional hiring practices. This means they invest time into doing the research about the work they want done, they create a detailed job description and run candidates through a typical interview process. Often, they overlook critical areas due to lack of expert knowledge. Very little information compensation information exists, which is the back-bone of any HR plan when creating a new job. Very little internal talent exists to help them build the proper job description, even – that’s why they are looking to hire. The end result is many positions are scattered in their approach to this work, tacking SEO on as “part of your duties”, and allowing the company to mis-classify the job as a Marketing Manager, and vastly under-rate the compensation.

Add to this, to be an effective SEO, you also need to be part salesman, part soothsayer, part sorcerer and part coding savant. Beyond actual SEO knowledge & experience, general business experience is needed, as you’ll be functioning in a business environment.

Your best bet to start a career or move your career forward in this industry is to get a solid theoretical grounding in both organic and paid search marketing, then use this education to obtain a position of employment that will allow you to grow your experience base. If this advice seems familiar, it is. This is the same pattern of career growth that has existed since the early 1900s.

State of the nation

The realities of obtaining search marketing work in today’s environment are such that, unless you are an established quantity, six figure income jobs will be extremely hard to come by. This does not mean to say, that you must be a “branded name.” Plenty of people in this industry make an excellent living, and you’ve never heard of them. Recruiting being what it is, the few who are focused on finding this talent generally know who most of the players are.

Businesses, however, while seeking to justify a high salary for unique talent, will require years of experience. Given that most large brands looking to expand their organic search marketing efforts are coming from a traditional marketing background, they will seek to protect themselves. This usually means following traditional hiring practices.

These companies often have no one internally who understands the intricacies and details around search marketing. Though they may have spent millions on creating a current website capable of leading edge e-commerce, community management and/or lead generation, this does not mean to imply that those websites were properly optimized. Large companies will usually invest in dedicated third-party reviews to determine where they may be lacking before they decide to even go down the road of hiring a search marketing professional. At the end of this process, they are usually left with one unpleasant truth: more investment is needed in their state-of-the-art website to make it truly search friendly. Thus begins the search for their own talent.

With most of these large companies now understanding the realities of the social marketplaces and beginning to see the value that direct marketing a product to the end client via the Internet allows, they are thinking seriously about how to not only optimize their website, but how to optimize their bottom line. These businesses are more than willing to invest in their own website and their product if they feel the return will be there.

Final thoughts

Most people would agree that organic search marketing can form a solid foundation for future income. While a paid search marketing campaign will require dollars invested upfront, in addition to dollars invested in the human resources required to run such programs, organic search marketing usually requires far less direct funding beyond the initial talent location.

As these businesses hire top-end SEO talent, more opportunities will exist for those with lower levels of experience in the industry. This doesn’t mean you can skip your education and learn on the job, but rather, this implies that more jobs will become available, which require less years of experience to compete for. If you’re just starting out, be sure to look for opportunities that provide experience not just in SEO for you, but also provide a serious grounding in basic business management. A few years poking around and picking up these talents will pay off handsomely for you down the road.

Paul O’Brien is an old-hand at the online marketing game, having honed his skills with brands such as Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.  I recently had an opportunity to chat with Paul, and it’s always impressive to meet well-rounded, knowledgeable thought leaders like him.  If you think you have heard Paul’s name before, it could be because you recently read Online Marketing Heroes, in which he’s one of the 25 interviewed.

How did you get your start as a search marketer?

It is astounding to imagine, in this industry which evolves so rapidly, that some of us have been at this for a dozen years or more.  Only yesterday, Google replaced Overture while Facebook was a twinkle in a teenager’s eye; technology continually evolves the landscape of our business.  I was intrigued by web sites and html about 15 years ago (that being all it was at the time); enough to put some articles I had written about the Beatles and Don McLean’s American Pie online.  The original site has been overhauled many times; its most recent iteration, a static instance of WordPress at http://www.rareexception.com.

While learning web design, I dabbled in SEO and other online marketing techniques.  In my spare time, I managed corporate accounts for B2B technology vendor Insight out of Tempe, AZ.  My website caught the attention of someone at Yahoo!, as they were in need of people with internet experience complemented by an industry/vertical.  Yahoo! was the first portal to recognize the significant advertising budgets available in traditional business verticals, as well as the need to segment Sales and Business Development to support each verticals’ unique needs. I was brought on to run the Technology vertical for Yahoo! Shopping; later for Yahoo! at large.  Yahoo! was invaluable experience that, unfortunately, is fairly unavailable today; that is, I was there early enough to wear all of the hats that one does at a startup, while working with the major partners (i.e. Dell and Best Buy) afforded such a big company.  During this time, I was managing search, advertising, sponsorship and comparison shopping budgets.

From Yahoo!, I took over interactive marketing for Hewlett-Packard’s direct-to-consumer business (then hpshopping.com).  At the time, the consumer business was responsible for the majority of HP’s paid search marketing. Part of my responsibilities included driving the bulk of the company’s SEO and online marketing strategy.  It was there that I started seobrien.com and spearheaded a number of, then, theoretical search projects regarding searcher behavior, click-stream, and the synergy between paid and organic search; concepts we now consider foregone conclusions.

I was immensely fortunate 2 years ago when the opportunity to run marketing for Local Search engine Zvents presented itself.  Again, like my time with Yahoo!, working with a unique instance in the evolution of the internet to both manage search and online marketing programs while defining the product on which we marketers advertise.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Teaching companies that SEO is neither marketing nor web design, but both.  I think one of the greatest oversights we make as an industry is neglecting referring to SEO as a “practice.”  We are practitioners of SEO in the same way that doctors and lawyers practice their field.  That is, there are few certainties and each circumstance demands a unique approach.  We practice SEO.

Too many companies want to fit the practice of SEO into a marketing P&L; a specific budget, forecast, and set of resources.  Many vendors and consultants have perpetuated this expectation, offering a packaged service upon asking for the specific keywords and pages the company wants optimized – and where they want to appear in the search results.  SEO is a philosophy that needs to be adopted by and throughout a company, not simply delivered by a 3^rd party.

On the other hand, some companies treat it as the responsibility of the web designers or engineers; the consequence of which is often a lack of marketing expertise or an emphasis on design.  I often find customer insights such as keyword research overlooked, a lack of attention to analytics, or content optimized for look and feel, or mere traffic, instead of conversion.

What has been your biggest success?

I’m most proud of a discovery regarding click stream, or rather, the “search stream,” before a purchase.   We all know now that customers search more than once before making a purchase.  What I studied is that the pattern of searches is an indication consumer behavior and intent.  Consider, for example, that when you run a TV spot or drop a catalog with a celebrity involved, searches for your brand, products, and the celebrity (which shouldn’t be surprising) increase.   But to what extent and in what pattern?   Which celebrities create the most interest or awareness?  Does the personality have a greater impact on demand for your brand or its products?  These are the kinds of questions we can ask with a well structured and integrated search marketing program; one that comprehensively manages both paid and organic search with robust analytics in place to measure user activity.  With that approach to search, my greatest success is having repeatedly seen triple digit growth in search traffic and performance.

How do you see the future of careers in search evolving?

Online marketing will continue to invade traditional marketing until we’re blended again as simply “Marketing.”  I imagine that years ago, when television was invented, companies had a dedicated organization for TV commercials.  It was only years later, as TV became a norm, that those resources we consumed by Marketing with TV playing its appropriate role in a greater marketing strategy.  Online, and search, are still orphans.  If not at least distinguished as “online,” they are relegated to test budgets or specific campaigns.  Those of us in Search know that as much as 90% of the U.S. population goes online to search for more of what they’ve heard about off line.  Future executives are those with much more online experience than off, but with sufficient offline experience to effectively manage both channels. Search marketers in such an organization wear three hats: marketer, support, and analyst. Marketers driving demand and fulfillment through search. Support roles helping optimize traditional marketing channels.  And analysts who have unique insights on customer behavior and trends.

Any advice for those looking to build their careers?

Define yourself, while getting as broad experience as possible.  Online marketing is still so alien to folks that the best way to find success in the industry is to find your niche, your expertise, while recognizing that a niche can limit you as much as opening the door.  Does your expertise lie in ecommerce or social marketing?  Are you highly analytical?  Do you favor the creative work of an agency or developer?  That expertise will help you develop a reputation, while standing out from the crowd; but recognize, that without broader experience, you limit yourself to always working on paid search or viral video.  Online is about much more than Google and Facebook.

And, on the lighter side… What’s your favorite city and why?

San Diego, California.  I find it amusing that people love Northern California because of the weather; from where I sit (I live in Los Gatos outside of San Jose), we have about four months of beautiful weather, warm enough that you can really go swimming outside.  The rest of the year it runs about 65 degrees.  Now, let me first point out that I can hear everyone else in the rest of the country crying foul, “did he really just complain about it being 65 all year round!?!”  I grew up in Portage, Michigan; right here on my hand (imagine me pointing to a spot on the palm of my hand – people from Michigan will get it).  The San Diego Zoo, Disney Land, Lego Land, Balboa Park, Coronado Island, La Jolla, a beautiful downtown, an easy to use airport, and it’s always 75 degrees.  San Diego.

Do you know of any outstanding restaurants you could share with readers?

I just had dinner at the Plumed Horse in Saratoga, California.  It was featured in Esquire magazine as one of the best new restaurants in the country and it is well deserved.  The chandeliers are made from fiber optics while a wine cellar descends two stories under a floor of glass.   The TV in the bar is hidden behind a mirror above a fire place; a mirror that just dissolves when the game comes on.

That’s on the high end so in the more reasonably priced market, I have to point out the exceptional  Asqew Grill in the Marina District of San Francisco; with a caveat that it was MUCH better before they redid their menu and changed the Cajun Chicken.

Of course, those that know me will probably scold me for not mentioning Baja Fresh; a guilty pleasure.

If someone were to offer to buy you a drink, what should it be?

Ketel One on the rocks with olives.  That or a Jameson whiskey; I had the privilege of spending a week in Ireland with my wife, touring the distillery as distinguished guests.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

This may be a half-baked answer but I’m not sure I see myself out of the industry, entirely.  With a website, a blog, and experience with a major portal, a publisher, a startup, and an advertiser, an eCommerce business, I see myself as having experienced different professions while always staying connected to what we do.  You don’t live to work but work to live… I think it has to be a bit of both and you have to love what you do.

I suppose if I had to chance, I’d really enjoy being a college professor; of interactive marketing :)

What profession would you not like to do?

Working for the DMV or any environment in which the government or incumbent organization has so stifled efficiency that your job is something which shouldn’t even be required.  I really hate to criticize it but our local DMV has someone who hands out the numbers people need to wait their turn!  That, I would not like to do.

What are you reading right now?

I favor escapist books; thing that provide an opportunity to take my mind of work, the Clive Cussler novels are a favorite.  Right now I’m reading Gregory Maguire’s Lost.  Maquire wrote Wicked.

More about me:

Blog: http://www.seobrien.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulobrien

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500013990

The Rare Exception: http://www.rareexception.com

Duane Forrester is an in-house SEM with Microsoft, sits on the Board of Directors with SEMPO, can be found at his blog where he speaks about online marketing and monetizing websites and is the author of How To Make Money With Your Blog. The In House column appears on Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.