Throughout my career in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it has come to my attention that many believe SEO success begins and ends with “good SEO.” Although vague, this may have been the case in the early days of SEO. But due to Google’s algorithm evolving and advancing so quickly over past years, a successful SEO campaign not only requires white hat SEO techniques, but is also dependent upon the engagement of many other marketing teams and experts, such as the following:
- Analysts
- Developers
- Creative
- PR/Social Media
Let’s take a closer look at the roles that each of these individuals play in the execution of a successful SEO campaign, as well as the responsibilities of an SEO Expert.
Analysts
In many cases, the SEO Expert fulfills the role of the SEO Analyst, as well. Whether your team blends the two roles into one, or has the resources to dedicate individuals to each role, the Analyst is crucial to the success of SEO. Prior to the implementation of SEO recommendations and best practices, the Analyst’s first responsibility is to ensure that tracking capabilities have been set up properly. Has the Google Analytics snippet of code been inserted into the client’s website template page? Does the Tracking Status verify that data is being received? Are filters in place to exclude internal traffic from the web analytics data? And so forth. The Analyst will then want to record the client’s current organic rankings and web analytics (organic visits, organic bounce rate, organic conversion rate, etc.) as a benchmark. This data will be used as a comparison in the future in order to measure the performance of the SEO efforts. The Analyst will also work with the SEO Expert to set up conversion goals and funnels. From there, the Analyst is responsible for regularly reporting the web analytics data from organic sources so the SEO Expert can monitor the results of the SEO campaign.
Developers
Although an SEO Expert is expected to be somewhat savvy in terms of technology, various web programming languages (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc.), and Content Management Systems (CMS), he/she will work with the Developer to properly execute related SEO initiatives. While it is the SEO Expert’s responsibility to identify potential SEO “hazards” such as crawlability issues due to the usage of Flash files or iFrames, duplicate content, broken links, or un-friendly SEO URL’s, the collaboration of the SEO Expert and Developer is critical in the resolution of such issues. For example, once notified by the SEO Expert, the Developer is then responsible for accessing the CMS and implementing canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues, 301 redirects for broken links, and URL structures that follow the SEO best practices recommended by the SEO Expert. In addition, the Developer can also create HTML pages for existing Flash or iFrame pages in order to improve crawlability and loading time, both critical SEO factors.
Creative
The Creative group includes Editors, Copywriters, Designers, and the Content team. At the core of SEO is quality research and selection of targeted keywords. Once the SEO Expert has chosen keywords to target, he/she then works closely with the Editor and Copywriters to ensure proper placement, frequency, and density of these keywords within the body copy, headings, and sub-headings of each optimized web page.
On the forefront, it may not seem as though the Designer has much of an impact on SEO results; however, the design, navigation, and usability all have an effect on the quality of a site; and therefore, its optimization for search engines. In addition, Designers can work with the SEO Expert to effectively organize content, include navigational breadcrumbs, and design a clear and engaging call-to-action (CTA).
In some cases, the Content team may consist of the Editors, Copywriters, and Designers; in others, it may be a separate department. In either case, the ultimate goal is to develop new and relevant content with which the client’s target audience can engage. For example, the SEO Expert may discover a new keyword opportunity that can be capitalized on by building a new content web page. The targeted keyword provides the foundation for the topic of the web page, and guides the Content team as they write copy, capture images and graphics, create videos, and the like. The SEO Expert can then optimize each piece of content and syndicate it to other relevant and reputable sites in order to increase content sharing initiatives, as well as gain backlinks to the client’s domain.
PR/Social Media
The PR and Social Media teams also work closely with the SEO Expert. For effective optimization, press releases should be reviewed by the SEO Expert prior to syndication to ensure proper placement of keywords, as well as proper usage of anchor text. Furthermore, the Social Media team should collaborate with the SEO Expert to optimize social profiles with customized URL’s; to incorporate targeted keywords in the Info and About sections, and image title and descriptions; and to share optimized content (credited to the Content team) in regular posts.
And last, but not least…
SEO Expert
In summary, an SEO Expert not only needs to be able to collaborate with the above mentioned teams in order to generate and analyze web analytics reports, identify crawlability issues, ensure proper placement of keywords, recognize the difference between high-quality and low-quality design, discover new opportunities for content creation, optimize press releases and social media profiles (whew!), but he/she also needs to manage and execute the core SEO functions. Keyword research is, without a doubt, an integral component of any SEO campaign. Targeting an ineffective keyword not only throws off the initiatives of every team member involved in the SEO campaign, but it is also likely to lead to increased organic bounce rates and lower conversion rates. On-page recommendations; such as title tags, meta descriptions, H1tags, image alt tags, internal linking and anchor text recommendations; are all vital to the improved rankings of a specific web page, as well as the traffic being driven to that page. And utilizing all avenues of link building (e.g. authority links, link exchange, paid links (to be used sparingly), directory links, social bookmarking, content syndication, PR/article syndication, guest blogging/forums, etc.) to gain backlinks to the client’s site.
This post is not meant to be an all inclusive description of the roles and responsibilities of an SEO Expert or those team members that work together with the SEO Expert to obtain search optimization goals. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate how crucial Analysts, Developers, Creative, PR and Social Media resources are to the success of an SEO campaign.
We’ve all heard that increasingly common search marketing mantra, “content is king.” It certainly sounds nice, and if it was true, it could really be a wonderful thing, because it suggests that all you need to have a well-performing, highly ranking and highly converting site is to treat people the way they want to be treated and give them an awesome site to experience.
And, lamentable as it is, this makes perfect sense, because Googlebot is a bot, and bots do not possess the complex, higher-order intelligence that allows humans to assess the “usefulness” of a site. In a simpler, more perfect world,* a search engine crawler might be able to do so. It could go, “You know, this page’s offerings are more engaging, and the site itself has that, how do you say, je ne sais quoi. I’ll rank it above this ugly exact-match domain site with a ton of links pointing to it, because THAT site looks BORING.” Alas, our world is not so simple, nor so perfect, so Googlebot must use ranking signals as an indirect indicator of a page’s usefulness. These signals, generally speaking, correlate rather well to a site’s quality. The number of links a page has pointing to it, for example, should give a search engine crawler a good idea of how popular that page is. However, these signals do not correlate perfectly, and—as we all intimately know—they can be gamed. This state of affairs is not ideal, but it’s worthless to take the stance that if you just pretend that it is not where we are currently at, then your problems will go away.
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