What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?

Often search engine optimization is an after-thought, if it is thought of at all. The biggest benefit for bringing search marketing in-house is that you have someone internal who can champion and represent SEO in the hallways, at meetings, and through relationship building. Also, it gives everyone in the company someone to reach out to for an immediate answer and/or involvement when the need arises.

What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

The biggest challenge with bringing SEO in-house varies by company. The other in-house experts in this series have mentioned the biggest challenges, but to give a different perspective, I’ll talk about challenge that I see many in-house teams face – obtaining and maintaining advanced SEO knowledge.

Many in-house teams are formed from existing employees that dabble in SEO and/or get training from a consultant. If the in-house SEO is lucky, they will attend one or two conferences a year. This will get you through the basics, but not the advanced challenges related to search engine optimization. To get around this, I encourage in-house SEOs to have outside council. Corporate attorneys have an outside council to assist with questions, accountants have auditors and SEOs need an SEO consultant that they can reach to with questions, concerns, unique situations and the “what happened” emergencies that pop up every now and again.

The rest of the In house SEO Series:

Part 1 – Chris “Silver” Smith - Net Concepts
Part 2 – John W. Ellis – ResortQuest
Part 3 – Rudy DeDominicis – Time Inc.
Part 4 – Jennifer Mathews Somogyi - Formerly at Classmates.com
Part 5 – Aidan Beanland – Yahoo

View our own Web Analytics World video walkthrough guide on whether to Outsource your Digital Marketing or bring Inhouse

Aidan Beanland is the Regional SEO Manager at Yahoo – Aidan is also a frequent speaker at Search Engine Bootcamp in Australia.

What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?

The biggest advantage would be understanding. Having worked in agencies and in-house I’ve learned immersing oneself in products, platforms and content affords a depth of understanding no out-sourced expertise can match. It takes time to get to know how things work, and more importantly, how the people in the company function individually and as a team. I see myself as an internal consultant, advising at every step of production and liaising with almost every department; programmers, web developers, designers, content editors, project managers, sales and marketing. Educating each stakeholder is a vital factor in success, illustrating the benefits of SEO, teaching best practices and passing on knowledge to create a culture where sites are designed to accommodate human users as well as search engines.

On a personal level I relish this bird’s eye view of the whole operation, I’m intimately involved with the business which fuels my enthusiasm and allows me to contribute to strategic development, providing value beyond my core SEO role.

What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

I would suggest communication is one of the biggest challenges. Effecting change in a large company requires diplomacy, clear processes, patience and strong communication skills. The in-house SEO manager must be able to clearly illustrate success that’s closely aligned to the true business goals – it’s all very well ranking highly for a specific keyword phrase, is it meeting the right targets? You need to show how your efforts and advice have made a difference. Use whatever reporting tools you have available to track performance over time, and if possible, translate this into financial terms.

Once you have buy-in from all departments, people should proactively seek your advice and willingly implement it. Aim to empower your colleagues and share in each others’ success.

It’s also wise to take a look outside your usual sphere, keep your skills sharp and avoid becoming too comfortable with the same sites. Try to think objectively, don’t be afraid of a second opinion, challenge yourself and try fresh approaches to familiar problems.

The rest of the In house SEO Series:

Part 1 – Chris “Silver” Smith - Net Concepts
Part 2 – John W. Ellis – ResortQuest
Part 3 – Rudy DeDominicis – Time Inc.
Part 4 – Jennifer Mathews Somogyi - Formerly at Classmates.com

- What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?
- What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

Today we’re featuring Jennifer Mathews Somogyi who was formerly the SEO Manager at Classmates.com. Also check out Jennifer’s SEM Website: http://www.semdiscussion.com/. Below are Jennifer’s thoughts:

The biggest advantage to bringing Search Marketing in house really depends on the company and that scale of the campaigns. Search Marketing as a whole is usually split into 2 categories; 1) Paid Search Marketing (Or PPC) and 2) Natural Search Marketing (or SEO). Even when the paid search campaigns are handled in house there is usually a vendor brought in to manage the bidding, and the overall campaigns. The same can generally go for natural SEO. Vendors are often brought in for more man power with a larger site, or to help the in house SEO justify projects or bugs to those that still remain skeptical. Even the larger companies like Classmates.com and other even larger corporations bring in vendors to help with their paid and natural campaigns.

So what is the advantage to having an in house search marketing person? The scale of paid and natural search marketing can be such an immense undertaking that assigning one person to manage the vendor relationships as well as monitoring all of the paid and natural search marketing initiatives will not only help the individual focus on the companies best chance at increasing the return on investment (higher conversions through paid and natural search will generally increase the ROI). Rather than assigning the task to someone that already manages direct marketing, or another aspect of the business who then tends to place a low priority on the search marketing initiatives either from lack of knowledge or general interest in search marketing.

The first challenge as an in house person is brought in is lobbying the buy in from others within the corporation itself. Executives tend to believe in SEO and see what it has to offer, but don’t always understand it. Those in Management and lower level positions tend to be more skeptical and therefore can be a bit more difficult in gaining the support needed to get initiatives moving. The key role of an in house SEO is to get the support needed from others within the company which will help in getting work completed for SEO (whether it be a change in url structure, change in content to include key terms, etc).

Us in house SEO’s are usually a team of one. There are so many aspects to natural search that the one person (if to given support ) will eventually burn out. Keyword research, analysis and tracking, campaign management, project management, and so on. The larger the company, the more man power is needed in order to fill all of these roles.

The rest of the In house SEO Series:

Part 1 – Chris “Silver” Smith - Net Concepts
Part 2 – John W. Ellis – ResortQuest
Part 3 – Rudy DeDominicis – Time Inc.