Since search engine marketing industry started expanding beginning of the previous decade it came a long way from being over shadowed by offline marketing and ignored by web development sectors to become one of the most popular online marketing techniques and nowadays a mainstream marketing service. Although there is lot more understanding these days about what is search engine optimization there are still certain bad habits from the past that still make SEO process more complicated than it should be. Let’s see how SEO can be one of the key assets and integral part of your business process and marketing strategy.
Point of this post is not to stand on anyone’s side but to elaborate the SEO itself and connect those broken ties between management, development and SEO consultants.
Getting to Know Your SEO Consultant
Today there are CEOs and managers for whom SEO is still a unknown field and like every time we don’t know everything about certain topic we make it abstract and less comprehensible. Reality on the other hand is very simple. Like any other consultant or an expert in his field SEO manager requires tools, resources and some basic communication with those who hired him for the job. Regardless of whether its an agency which provides SEO services, in-house SEO or freelancer these are some basic prerequisites for every SEO expert. This way he can manage his activities on one side and demands from the client on the other.
Scaling Marketing Efforts
In certain companies it is very often situation that SEO consultant is kind of a lone rider. The SEO process is considered something less traditional so his activity is isolated without any real communication with (offline) marketing department and sales department is completely disconnected from his activities. This situation is very bad from many aspects. Firstly, SEO manager is in very uncomfortable position because he can’t entirely measure his activities and how was their impact on overall marketing strategy of the company. How do his efforts scale when comparing to other marketing activities? Are there any other online marketing activity (Social, PPC..) for specific product or service which should be or shouldn’t be in collision with SEO activities and other issues. This also applies to sales, because the core of any marketing is sales increase and in this case, SEO consultant can’t know whether his or someone else’s activity influenced the volume of sales and to what extent.
All this goes to other directions as well. Marketing don’t entirely know how they should manage their budget because they don’t know which activities are bringing them best results. They don’t know how SEO influenced other marketing channels and in what amount during their campaigns.
The same goes for sales department which is unable to see from which source their customers came and whether some marketing activities brought positive or negative sales flow. Like number of sales, reservations, bookings and other indicators of their work.
From this we could see most highlighted examples of how important is for all departments to connect and share their information for mutual benefits and above all for the benefit of the company.
Communication with Non-marketing Sectors as One of the Key Processes
When starting a campaign or even just basic analysis of the code it is necessary that SEO has people and resources available to him. Unfortunately it often happens that client or superior says something that sounds like “do your magic and call me when you are done”.This usually means that SEO doesn’t have any communication with developers which sometimes means he doesn’t even have a website access. It can also mean there are no previous instructions for developers and designers to assist him for any changes in the code or design.
Nobody likes to do stuff they are not his priority or not directly connected to their primary job description. The same thing is about SEOs, developers and designers. Unless they are particularly interested in SEO developers see these tasks daunting and as a legwork so they are usually reluctant to accept any work outside of their area of interest. This also applies to designers who don’t see reason why they should modify or remove any element from the web page just for SEO purpose.
That’s why it is necessary for all actors in this process to be prepared so they can complete their part of the job in organized manner. On one hand SEO consultant must have complete detailed instructions sorted and documented for other sectors of the company. This way everyone would have a clear picture of what should they do, when and how. It also goes without saying that SEO consultant should always be available for any questions or issues. On the other hand developers, designers should be attentive and also have a precise plan about time they will need to complete their SEO-related tasks and if certain complications appear report those issues in timely manner.
These are just basic directions for managing SEO activities with other departments, because every company has its own organization and specifics. Still it is a good start for improving efficiency and avoiding that gap in the communication between SEO and other sectors in this process.
