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Bringing SEO In House – Insight from the Experts Part 4

June 27, 2007 By 1 Comment

In this multi-part series I am asking some of the Top In-house SEOs the same 2 questions:


- 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.

Filed Under: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

Bringing SEO In House – Insight from the Experts Part 3

June 26, 2007 By Leave a Comment

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series we featured Chris “Silver” Smith and John W. Ellis. Today we are getting Rudy DeDominicis’ thoughts on bringing SEO In-house.


Rudy DeDominicis : Search Marketing Specialist at Time Inc Interactive – Rudy previously did search marketing for Ziff Davis, AOL, and Paper.com. Also check out his Audience Development Golden Triangle.

Here are Rudy’s thoughts:

I think the biggest advantage to having an in house SEO expert, is the familiarity with all of the in-house technology and business cultures. Having worked with many of the top consultants and SEO agencies I have noticed that once the consultant drops off a document the internal work of translating that document into ownership and getting approval starts. In many cases proper prioritization of the recommendations based on business needs to be applied. In addition its very easy for a company to just say yes to a recommendation from an outside agency. As an in-house expert you need to understand what the recommendation truly does and how to best execute for your specific business with your specific resources. Making sure you execute the SEO items that have the biggest SEO impact with the least amount of effort.

I think the biggest challenge is finding that perfect balance of SEO expert and affinity for your business. You need to truly know about the business you are performing SEO for to offer the best advice. You need to truly live in that world and become that business. Finding that individual to bring both business experience and proper enterprise SEO experience will be the toughest challenge.

Filed Under: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

Bringing SEO In House – Insight from the Experts Part 2

June 25, 2007 By Leave a Comment

In this series I am posing the same 2 questions regarding bringing SEO In-House to industry professionals. In part 1, I got insight from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Search Strategist from Netconcepts. This week I will be featuring professionals who are part of In-House search marketing teams.

Today, John W. Ellis, Online Marketing Manager, Search for ResortQuest, will share his thoughts:

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

Having search marketing in-house makes search marketing a top priority. Thus, ROI becomes much more important. Often, out-sources solutions focus on traffic, and not the quality of the traffic.

Because many at the executive-level do not understand and/or appreciate search engine marketing, an in-house team is forced to constantly look for new ways to improve ROI. Plus, having the department in-house allows for quick changes and strategies. This can often counter-act any unwanted press or take advantage of news-worthy items quickly

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

Of course, the above can also be one of the biggest hurdles. Because of the lack of knowledge at the executive-level, a vast majority of an in-house team’s job consist of educating the company. There is often a struggle not only at the high level, but also at the IT level.

However, lessons learned from these hurdles make a stronger well-rounded Search Engine expert. Thus, these growing pains make him/her more marketable when the time comes.

Filed Under: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

Bringing SEO In House – Insight from the Experts Part 1

June 22, 2007 By 2 Comments

After yesterday’s post about the 10 Great Resources regarding Bringing SEO In House got me thinking, wouldn’t it be useful if I got insight from some of the Top In House SEOs (amongst other Industry professionals)? I asked a few SEO Experts the same 2 questions:

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

The first expert up is Chris “Silver” Smith the Lead Search Strategist from NetConcepts who wrote an excellent post which listed some of the Top In-House SEOs. Chris had this to say:

The biggest advantage in bringing search marketing in-house is the combined synergy from: long-term cost savings, long-term revenue/conversion improvement, and having readily-available expertise and advocacy on all stages of online marketing projects from inception to project launch.

The biggest challenge in attaining in-house management and development of SEO is in terms of politics. Not only must an organization have search channel managers, but those managers must also have support and prioritization of their projects at the executive level, along with the cooperation of the IT department to make it happen. As a best-practice, an organization should also build-in some sort of process management to insure that their in-house team will not become too incestuous or myopic. In-house projects should have some amount of auditing, either from outside agency experts, or from a peer review of practices and plans if a company has multiple internal experts. As a further indication of the political support for the search marketing program, there needs to be some amount of budget set aside for it. Not only could tools be purchased to assist with the program, but agency consulting could be available to be brought in for special projects, and the internal staff need! to be able to attend a couple of search marketing conferences every year in order to keep their education up-to-date.

Stay tuned next week as I get some thoughts from some In house SEOs (from companies such as Time Inc., Classmates.com, Business.com and ResortQuest). If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts, send me an email: mjasra@gmail.com

Filed Under: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

Bringing Search Marketing In House – 10 Great Resources

June 21, 2007 By 1 Comment

Bringing SEO In house is quickly becoming one of the hottest topics across the Industry. With businesses looking to cut down on marketing budgets and wanting to expand on preexisting In House teams it will be difficult for traditional SEM Firms to continually offer the same services (at the same premiums) as they have been in the past. Businesses are looking to strengthen their relationships with their online marketing departments and what better way to do this then removing the 3rd Party SEM firm out of the picture.

There are already some excellent resources available in helping businesses bring SEO in house and I would like to share the ones I have looked into:

What about the other side of the story? Read: The True Cost of an In-House SEO Campaign: Why an SEO Firm Can Increase Your ROI by Scott Buresh from the American Chronicle.

Filed Under: Search Marketing In House, SEM, SEO, SEO In House