2013 SEOinhouse.com

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Message from Jessica Bowman

After 11+ years of working in the in-house SEO arena, I can give you the following insights:

Most SEO teams shoot themselves in the foot. They do not know what they do not know, they do not understand how to create the ultimate SEO roadmap, nor how to leverage other departments to their fullest potential. As a result, they leave low- hanging SEO fruit on the ground because they do not know how to see it.

The SEO team does not control many of the levers impacting SEO success; as a result, SEO opportunities are mixed and management has doubts concerning the SEO initiative.

Most companies have not integrated SEO into required business operations so that it becomes part of everyday business activities a process we call Operationalizing SEOSM. As a result, SEO remains a discipline that is overlooked (intentionally or unintentionally) and rarely reaches its full potential. This is especially the case with enterprise-level organizations that can lose hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in a single release.

This book will challenge your thinking and ask you questions that you may not be able to answer right now. If you can master the elements in this book, SEO success will increase exponentially. If you cannot master the elements in this book, the chances of missed opportunities and frustration (by you, your management and your staff) are guaranteed.

Best of Luck, Jessica

2013 SEOinhouse.com

SEO Success Requires the Right Team 4

Part 1: SEO Knowledge 5

Part 2: SEO Execution 9

Part 3: Redesigns & Large Projects 16

Part 4: Mitigating Risks 22

Part 5: Reporting 27

Part 6: Budgets 16

Part 7: Potential Solutions to the Questions 40

SEO Organization Assessment 41 SEO Audits & Strategy 42 SEO Training & Education 43 Redesigns & Migrations 44 Common Challenges We Fix 45 About SEOinhouse.com 46

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2013 SEOinhouse.com

SEO Success Requires the Right Team

1. Executives who know how to most effectively drive SEO, challenge their thinking, insist upon Operationalizing SEOSM and hold the entire organization accountable for their respective portion of SEO execution.

2. SEO leadership that embraces cutting edge tactics that create innovative strategies, define technically feasible roadmaps, and ensure the complete set of SEO requirements are defined for projects, and knows how to get their teams to work with IT optimally.

3. Everyone involved in the website willing to incorporate SEO into everyday activities.

4. The right skills set to train everyone on SEO, systematize SEO and evangelize SEO in a way that drives lasting change.

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Many people have faulty SEO knowledge, dated skills and insufficient understanding of cutting edge concepts that translate to enterprise-level environments. Dont let these elements characterize your company.

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:SEO is a game. Like every game, you have winners and losers, and the competition is fierce. However, unlike other games, the rules change and expand without warning. Questions to ask yourself: What are you doing to ensure you and your team are consistently aware of the latest rules of the game?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Many executives are still learning how to effectively manage SEO. Questions to ask yourself: What are your executives doing to improve their SEO skills to best manage the SEO team? What are you doing to educate them?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:An increase of 1 point in the average IQ of a country's intellectual elitethe smartest 5% of its populationraises the country's per capita GDP by an average of $468. (Source: The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review). If you translate this fact to your company, it means that you will actually see an increase in the bottom line by educating key employees about SEO. Questions to ask yourself: How robust is your SEO education program? Do you have a plan for identifying key players to become SEO champions? Are you investing in ongoing training for the SEO team?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Execution is the ultimate driver of success, yet its execution is what holds

back most SEO programs. Dont be like most companies.

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:A study conducted by Marketing Sherpa found that developing an SEO strategy was a top objective for most companies, but the task of creating one was a low priority! An SEO strategy guides decision-making and prioritization, yet few companies have invested in developing a strategy to help them zero in on clear SEO drivers for success. This situation results in increasing ROI on SEO being a higher objective than developing an actual strategy that will make it happen. Questions to ask yourself: Does your SEO program have a strategy in place? Is it thorough enough to drive decision-making and prioritization of SEO over other company objectives?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Best in class SEO programs have at least one person on the SEO team who understands every change going onto the website. This person knows how to define SEO requirements proactively to the project team. Questions to ask yourself: Does your SEO team know what is scheduled to go live in future releases? Does your SEO team have the experience and intuition to recognize which changes will have SEO implications?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:A company with SEO engrained in their DNA gives SEO a seat at the table when release-scoping decisions are made. Questions to ask yourself: Does your SEO team have a seat at the table when each website release is scoped?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Companies with strong SEO programs ensure that, on average a specific percentage of each release is focused on SEO. Best in Class SEO programs at web-based organizations give SEO their own development swim lane to ensure ongoing SEO activity. Questions to ask yourself: What percentage of each release is dedicated to SEO changes and enhancements? Do you have an SEO development swimlane, or a dedicated developer(s)?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Part of SEO execution is checking the work when it has been done. This review includes SEO code checks after development is complete. Questions to ask yourself: Does development invite them to do a code check? Do they have the skills to do proper code checks?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:A vital but often overlooked task is QA testing before a site goes live. This task usually is deprioritized, rushed, and executed ineffectively because many SEOs do not know how to do proper QA testing before a site goes live. Questions to ask yourself: Is your team involved in SEO QA testing? Are they pulled in early enough? Is it being given the proper level of prioritization? Do they know how to do QA testing systematically, or are they spot-checking because they are in a hurry? Worse, could they be failing to realize that they should be doing more?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Few SEOs have experience with enterprise-level redesign projects, because there are few people in the world who have done this well. Be differentHave a redesign project without the Oops! Factor.

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:There is a single large challenge that enterprise-level redesigns and large projects face: Often, a non-technical SEO with only 2-4 years of SEO experience is placed in discussions that he or she does not understand and has never experienced. As a result, this individual cannot contribute to the discussion because they do not know how to identify SEO risks, opportunities and requirements when they hear other departments requirements. Questions to ask yourself: Are you certain that your SEO team knows how to identify SEO requirements and needs based on what other departments (including the IT Department) are requesting for the project?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:SEO needs to contribute to written project documentation. Unfortunately, few SEOs have experience doing so and know how to paint a box that defines the parameters for the IT departments development options. Questions to ask yourself: What are you doing to ensure that the project documentation is thoroughly reviewed? Are you requesting new SEO requirements weeks or days before launch because the right SEO reviews did not happen early in the project?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:The SEO team needs to write the SEO project requirements. Unfortunately, most SEOs believe that discussing them in a meeting is enough; thus, they generate the same results as a childs telephone game. Questions to ask yourself: Is the SEO team writing their SEO requirements for larger projects, or merely telling others about them in a meeting?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:When SEO teams do write SEO requirements, they are typically very broad and leave many loopholes that allow the IT department to accidentally code things unfavorable to SEO. Questions to ask yourself: Does the SEO team know how to write proper technical SEO requirements? What are you doing to train the SEO team on how to write proper technical documentation?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Best in Class SEO programs have SEO fully integrated into every facet of the development process. Everyone from project managers to designers and QA testers understand how they need to work with SEO when executing their portion of the project. Questions to ask yourself: Has your entire development process been audited to ensure that SEO is integrated in the right places? Does everyone without SEO in their title understand their impact on SEO? Do they know when to pull in SEO? Is it happening at the right times?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

SEO is like accounting and business law It changes. Ensure you have plans in place to be thorough, cutting edge and playing within the new rules or risk the penalties (even if rules are broken accidentally by one of the many cooks in the kitchen).

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:The SEO industry changes rapidly and tactics evolve. The set of tactics recommended 2-3 years ago is not necessarily the same that would be recommended today. Questions to ask yourself: What are you doing to give certainty to management and shareholders that the tactics and strategies being executed are appropriate for this year? Are you certain the tactics you employed in the past and today do not present future risks?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:SEO is like a drug at many companies. They get a little hit from something that works and then keep doing more of the same thingeventually, they overdose. Many SEO tactics work well when done right. Its exciting to think about, and it works, for a while. However, many SEO tactics can reach overdose very quickly, resulting in diminishing returns. The most common offenders: link-building tactics and dynamically-generated pages to rank for the search tail. Questions to ask yourself: What tactics might your team be employing that could be having diminishing returns? Are you at risk of this tactic having negative consequences when you are not expecting it? What are you doing to ensure such tactics are not employed in the future? What past tactics/strategies do you need to be concerned about?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Employee turnover is a killer for business a lot of history and know-how walks out the door. When you have a new team, they do not know the ins and outs discovered in the past. If they are not senior-level SEO talent, they do not know how to find all the issues to define an optimal roadmap. Questions to ask yourself: What are you doing to ensure that your new team has the right roadmap to take SEO to the next level?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:There are a lot of people who claim they know SEO, and can talk-a-good-talk to non-SEO managers when interviewing. This means your replacement may not be the right person for the challenges they will face on the job. When SEOinhouse.com is involved in interviewing in-house SEOs we will easily spend 2-6 hours vetting candidates. Questions to ask yourself: How thoroughly are you vetting the in-house SEO? Do you thoroughly vet their SEO skills? Do you challenge them with technical situations they will face on the job?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Avoid ho-hum reporting where everyone only monitors the same KPIs of the past. Instead, you can study critical drivers for what we call SEO OperationsSM that will predict future results.

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Most SEO reports and dashboards are the same for executives and practitioners, yet the dials each role needs for effective measuring are quite different. Questions to ask yourself: What reports could you add that would give management greater insight into SEO, and for comparing SEO to other marketing channels? What could be added that better illustrates the success of the SEO program? Is the SEO team using more detailed SEO reporting for deeper insights and direction?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:KPIs are good indicators of what happened in the past, but they do not indicate that you are going to achieve the desired results in the future. Questions to ask yourself: What are you measuring and reporting on that will predict future results?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:The right reporting dashboards are as insightful as MRIs are to a doctor. SEO success requires understanding of the silent but deadly killers lurking in the organization: The strategy, the technology and how SEO is executed. Questions to ask yourself: What exists that might be holding you back today or in the future? Are you reporting on these activities?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Business veteran, Keith Cunningham says: What gets measured is what gets done. What gets measured is what gets managed. What gets measured and reported improves exponentially. Questions to ask yourself: What are you measuring and how are you holding everyone accountable? Are you reporting on what needs to improve exponentially?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:The ultimate success in SEO does not come as the result of activities conducted by the SEO team or agency alone. Questions to ask yourself: Are you holding anyone beyond the SEO team accountable for SEO success?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Solid management aims to understand what got you the wins versus the losses. The goal is to sustain the wins, but you can only do so by taking the following actions: Measure progress and results Identify the activities that led to the results Correct and optimize the activities that led to the result Repeat Questions to ask yourself: Do you really understand what activities led to the wins versus the losses? Is this getting communicated beyond the SEO team?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Most SEOs report solely on metrics pulled from search results (rankings) and analytics systems (Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.). Questions to ask yourself: What do you need to report on that is not in an analytics tool, but needs to improve? What additional tools are being used?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Enterprise-level companies can gain or lose millions in any given release (due to SEO mishaps). Dont be penny wise and pound-foolish.

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2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Overspending on SEO is fatal, but so is under-spending. Many executives think of SEO traffic as free; therefore, they do not think they need to invest much in SEO. Many SEO budgets are less than 5% of the revenue SEO generates. In contrast, PPC spends are a much larger proportion of the revenue it generates. Yet, the instant you stop spending on PPC, the traffic disappears. In contrast, SEO traffic will coast for a little while if you need to stop investing in it AND it actually gets a larger portion of the clicks in the search results, without having to pay per click. Questions to ask yourself: How much are you leaving on the table because you are not investing as much in SEO as you do in other channels? What would it cost you to get the SEO traffic volume via other channels?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Each year, every company needs to invest in training for the SEO team and the non-SEO staff who work on the website. Questions to ask yourself: What types of SEO training do you have planned this year? What is your education plan?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Reality:Best in Class SEO programs engage a third party to conduct an audit every 1-2 years for two reasons: (1) SEOs often put on corporate-tinted glasses, being negatively influenced in regards to SEO tactics. The third party perspective will ensure that the right things are happening, the wrong things are identified, and the innovative ideas are brought to the table. (2) Things in the SEO industry and on your website change rapidly; the fresh set of expert eyes will see what you missed. Questions to ask yourself: Did you budget for a third party to review your SEO teams work? What are you doing to give certainty to management and shareholders that the SEO traffic is not at risk? When is the last time you had an expert set of eyes thoroughly assess your website?

2013 SEOinhouse.com

The following are the most common items in SEO budgets:

SEO conference(s) SEOmoz (most common SEO tool) SEO keyword research tools Enterprise-level SEO tracking tool SEO training (for the SEO team) SEO training (for everyone else) SEO consulting (advisor/mentoring) SEO consulting for large projects SEO consulting for site redesigns Copywriting (if no one else will do it for SEO) SEO social media (link bait, promotion of link bait, etc.) Keyword research (if no staff to do it) Annual or bi-annual audit Programming for in-custom SEO tools SEO process assessment/organization assessment As-needed consulting Subscriptions Developer budget to build tools (found in budgets of advanced Enterprise SEO Programs)

2013 SEOinhouse.com

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Organization Assessment

Executives engage SEOinhouse.com to improve SEO operationally, not only technically. Agencies address SEO tactically, but only SEOinhouse.com knows how to address SEO operationally. Even if your organization is comprised of superstars, if SEO is not injected in the right places in the right way, you will never experience operational synergy. If you do not reach operational synergy, you will never maximize SEO potential because SEO requires the entire organization to paddle in the same direction, as a team. Our proprietary approach will examine your organization to get the real skinny on whats going on, why implementing SEO isnt working as smoothly as it should, and what to do about it.

Its time to say Adios! to the organizational challenges that hold back your SEO program.

2013 SEOinhouse.com

SEO Audits & Strategy

SEO Audits: Technical SEO Audit International SEO Audit Mobile SEO Audit

Video Audit Social Media for SEO Audit SEO Reporting Audit Why Not Ranking Audit

Focus less on the what do we need to fix and more on the fixing.

SEO Strategy: SEO Strategy SEO Link Building Strategy SEO Content Strategy

SEO Keyword Targeting Strategy SEO Roadmap

2013 SEOinhouse.com

SEO Training & Education

Customized SEO Training We follow a proprietary training methodology that trains for different learning styles to ensure every attendee remembers the most crucial elements. More importantly, we get people thinking about how to integrate SEO into their everyday activities. We are trainersnot just SEO gurus armed with a PowerPoint presentation.

In-house SEO Exchange A closed-door workshop and online community specifically for non-agency SEOs, designed by in-house SEOs for in-house SEOs. Its an intimate, facilitated, open-the-kimono atmosphere where you can ask anything and get a candid answer not laced with expectations for a sale. Get insider tips and tactics from some of the industrys best in-house search marketers. Past speakers have included top SEOs from eBay, AT&T, Adobe, Shopzilla and many more. Workshop curriculum and topics are attendee driven, and no subject is off limits.

Theres training (snore!) and there is I cant get enough of it ah-ha moment training. We believe in the less snoozy sort.

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Redesigns & Migrations

Few SEOs have the experience integrating SEO successfully in website redesigns. We know the process, and we know how to identify the requirements that paint a box within which the IT department can code. We know enterprise-level development, its challenges, the unexpected loopholes, and how to work with the various stakeholders. We minimize risk, maximize potential, and ensure smooth operations post-launch. We have a methodology for enterprise-level redesigns (yes, we said the m word). We have an approach that works so that you can breathe easy on the day of launch and watch your SEO key performance indicators soar. Get it right, before you launch your fancy new site so you can avoid the SEO scramble post-launch.

So many risks. So many anti-SEO requirements & restrictions. This when its time for 3rd Party expertisefrom someone who knows enterprise-level technical SEO.

2013 SEOinhouse.com

Common Challenges We Fix

SEO is left out of project discussions SEO is executed solely by the SEO team, yet others have to do what needs to be done You are having the same discussions you had 6 months ago You need other roles to do SEO, but it hasnt happened yet You are bringing SEO in-house for the first time You have an SEO program and want to take it to the next level You need a roadmap for what to do, in what order, so that you can focus on execution You take 2 steps forward, and 1-3 steps back You have a major project/redesign/migration that your team hasnt faced before You need a trusted advisor with 10+ years of enterprise-level SEO experience on your team You need to fill knowledge gaps on your SEO team You need a technical SEO to work with your in-house SEO team, to get things right the first

time

You need SEO integrated into everyday business activities throughout the organization

Common challenges that cause companies to hire SEOinhouse.com

2013 SEOinhouse.com

About SEOinhouse.com

SEOinhouse.com knows enterprise-level Internet marketing. We are the experts at in-house programs that leverage in-house resources and opportunities to their maximum potential. We deliver sustainable, scalable and successful strategies that you can actually implement in your world, with your legacy systems, challenges, and hurdles. We sit where marketing and IT converge. We understand what is going on in both worlds and how to integrate the two. We are marketing-to-IT translators. We know both languages. We can speak IT in one sentence and marketing in the next. Plain English is our native language. We dont throw around jargon you may not understand. We recognize the audience and remove the jargon as needed, opting for plain English that even grandma would understand. We are marketing operations and process experts. We can see multiple spectrums, agendas, and processes while understanding where and how they need to merge. We put things in place to integrate search marketing into everyday business activities.

An enterprise-level consultancyNot an agency. There is a big a difference.