How to Build an SEO Team?

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Benefits of Hiring an SEO Agency

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1. Gives You an Experienced Workforce

An SEO agency is just that -- an SEO agency! They don’t do manufacturing or movie production. They exist on mastering every means necessary to make websites stand out for search engines.

They Know What They Do

Agencies work for hundreds of companies. Their staff has years of experience optimizing websites of varying sizes. This enables them to offer you strategies that work best for you.

Saves You Time & Energy

SEO is an extremely dynamic field. What works today may not work tomorrow. Also, you need to do constant research and optimization to keep your gains. An SEO firm releases you from all these worries.

2. Finds You Keywords That Convert

Agencies have years of experience doing keyword research. They find out the most relevant keywords trending in your industry and make you rank for them. This raises your sales as most users visiting your website have a high purchase intent. The agency keeps updating its list of keywords as trends in user intent change.

Metrics Matter

Agencies have a better understanding of important SEO metrics. By keeping track of them, agencies ensure you do not lose your gains to an update or an innovation.

3. Saves Your Money

Building an in-house SEO team needs heavy investment. You hemorrhage money through:

• Recruitment of professionals
• Organization of training sessions
• Provision for salaries, incentives
• Purchas of SEO tools, equipment

However, there is no guarantee that your team will outperform an SEO agency even after all this. An agency, on the other hand, offers its expertise for a fee. This expense is far lesser than the investment listed above. You also have the option to pay for only those services that you need.

4. Improves Your Website Credibility

An SEO agency sees your website as a customer does. The difference is that an agency can alter it to make it more appealing and user-friendly. There are benefits to reap in having your website checked by a third-party expert. It can be clear in its opinion and spot-on in criticism.

Knowledgeable Workforce

An SEO agency’s survival depends on its ability to churn out results. This forces it to strive to stay abreast of the latest developments happening in SEO. If it fails to deliver, you can always fire them and hire another agency.

Benefits of Using Internal SEO Teams

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1. Develop Customized SEO Strategy

An SEO agency works for scores of organizations simultaneously. That means you are just one of the customers it has. It might offer you a proven strategy -- one that ‘loosely’ fits your firm -- but it might not be anything to write home about.

Your Team Knows You Better

Your in-house SEO team has a deeper understanding of your organization. It is in a position to learn about company goals and visions. This allows it to formulate an entirely customized SEO strategy for you.

2. Create Diverse Content

The agency can’t spend all its time researching about you. As such, it misses out on many nuanced details about your company and the industry. This is not the case with an in-house SEO team plugged into the mainframe of the organization. It can use such details to weave unique content that gives you a competitive edge.

Overarching Influence

An internal team is better positioned to offer insights on various marketing decisions. For example, you can involve your SEO team in the naming of a product so that users can find them faster online.

3. Greater Focus on Your Website

The biggest advantage of having an in-house SEO team is that it can devote its entire time to your website. It can analyze the various metrics better and make changes faster.

More Digital Properties

You can also use your in-house SEO team to optimize your other digital properties. These can be blogs or social media pages. Done properly, SEO efforts on these channels can increase your search rankings.
Extra : In terms of effectiveness, face-to-face interactions have no match in technology. As such, communication with an in-house team is more effective than that with an agency. This results in faster implementation of your SEO plans.

Important Positions to Be Filled

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1. SEO Director

This person connects the SEO team with the rest of the organization. They formulate the company’s SEO strategy and set goals. They are adept in cultivating inter-departmental relations that benefit their team.

Highly Analytical

An SEO director is where the buck stops. The team sends all reports to the director. They analyze the reports and order changes, if any, to strategies and plans. They apprise the top brass of the project progress and obtain resources for the team.

Commanding Presence

The director is the rope and sinew that keeps your team together. They ensure that each team member knows and performs their duties. Using their personality and position, a director wins the trust and loyalty of the team. They instill purpose in each team member and weed out negativity and intrigues.

2. Senior Data Analyst

In the murky depths of numbers, it is easy to get lost. That’s why you need a data analyst to show where you are heading. This person has a deep knowledge of the various SEO metrics. But more importantly, they know which metrics to monitor. They mostly check:

• Ranking for select keywords
• Organic traffic to website/s
• Technical metrics like click-through rate, bounce rate, and dwell time

They are also adept at using the latest and most sophisticated SEO tools and platforms.

Tests Optimization

The prototype of every SEO plan reaches the data analyst. The analyst executes the tests needed and collects data. Based on this data, the team improves the prototype.

Prepares Reports

As they are privy to such insights, the analyst prepares reports for each team sub-section. These reports form the basis of all decisions regarding optimization and strategy adaptations.

3. SEO Strategist

The strategist is the second-in-command in your SEO team. This person knows the field like the back of their hands. They know how a change (think a Google algorithm update) will affect your project. If it diminishes your gains, the strategist devises plans to cushion the repercussions.

The Researcher

The strategist carries out in-depth studies of the industry. These researches produce insights into buyer/audience behavior, competition, and technology. They are also the first recipient of reports from the team’s data analyst. As such, the strategist advises the director on the needed course correction if a plan fails.
The strategist also holds team meetings to discuss plans and strategies. The strategist uses these meetings to bring back or emphasize the team’s focus on their goals.

4. Project Manager

They manage the daily affairs of the team and ensure that the project moves forward. They form short-term plans to execute specific tasks entrusted to the team. These plans comprise:

• Dividing a strategy into its actionable components.
• Assigning the tasks to team members
• Allocating resources and impart training
• Setting deadlines, monitoring progress, and preparation of reports.

The project manager has a more hands-on approach. They know who does what, how, and when. They have a bird’s eye view of the project and are responsible for completing each task.

The People Person

The project manager is thorough in their knowledge of the field. However, their greatest skill is the management of people. It is to them that each team member turns when faced with an issue. It is they who resolve intra-team conflicts and motivate the team to chase the larger goals.

5. Content Marketing Manager

The manager ensures a steady supply of fresh and relevant content for your web pages. They hunt for the right keywords you must rank for and form content marketing strategies. They determine which form of content will achieve the goals set.
Keep in mind that the term ‘content’ refers to any marketing material the firm publishes. This includes:

• Social-media videos
• User-generated content
• Infographics, etc.

Content Creator

Ideas are not worth a penny if you can’t serve them on the right platter. That’s what your content creator does. They generate content for different audiences and platforms. This person has a reasonable understanding of SEO.
The number of persons in your content team depends on the size of your organization. If you think having a gatekeeper can ensure quality, hire a content editor.
Note : If you think you can use the resources for a content team better elsewhere, outsource this role. Many freelance content creators can turn your ideas into great content.

6. Link Outreach Specialist

None needs a lecture on how important links are to improve search ranking. But, with each new algorithm update, finding quality links is becoming increasingly difficult. That’s why this task warrants a dedicated position within your SEO team.

Relevant : Legit Ways to Earn Backlinks to Your Site

Highly Focused

The link builder of your team has a thorough understanding of the industry. Their responsibilities include:

• Scouring the internet for the relevant content
• Ascertaining the legitimacy and quality of a website
• Convincing owners/webmasters of such websites to link with you.

They know the existence and use of various tools that help them find quality websites. They are also adept at strategies like broken-link building.

Responsible

You need a link builder who loves the work they do. This is a person who believes that their task makes the wider web more navigable. This is the person who believes in contributing to the growth of the internet.

7. SEO Specialist

The SEO specialist, a jack-of-all-trades, optimizes all your digital properties. These include your website, blogs, and various social media accounts.
They must ensure that your digital properties appear on SERPs. They also optimize such factors as title tags, metadata, and alt text. As they work on the ground, SEO specialists work closely with the data analyst. The latter offers them valuable insights into what works and how.

Going the Extra Mile

Some SEO specialists co-ordinate with your content team to develop new ideas. They may also use the technical team to address issues that mar user experience.

The Confluence of All Ideas

Their work may not be very exciting. At worst, it can be a grind, doing the same work over and over again. But, they are the confluence of your strategies, studies, and creativity. They are the ones who turn a theory into practice.

8. SEO - Technical Head

The SEO - Tech head is the invisible hand that clears the path for your strategy to succeed. Some of the responsibilities of an SEO technical head include:

• Carry out audits to find areas lacking optimization.
• Ensure that search engines can crawl and index your websites
• Remove duplicate content, broken links, and faulty redirects
• Advise on creating websites that support SEO standards
• Help your link builder find high-quality backlinks.

The technical head works closely with the analyst in monitoring the website’s health. They also help the analyst in testing prototype SEO plans in a safe environment.

Up-to-date

They are up-to-date with the latest developments in web development, design, and hosting. They pass this knowledge to the wider team in the form of training and advice.
In short, if your SEO team faces a website glitch, they have a person to turn to.

9. CRO Consultant

Now we tread the more esoteric realms of SEO specialties. A Conversion Rate Optimizer (CRO) focuses on the conversation rate on your website.

User Behavior

CROs make extensive use of metrics like heatmap/clickmap to understand user behavior. Using this knowledge, they identify and rectify weak points on your web property. Normally, the CROs find such weak points on landing pages.
These pages can be anything from a simple form to product pages of an ecommerce giant. However, these are the most important pages on your website. This is where you want your customer to act. Within the landing page, there are different elements: Design, copy, and code.
A CRO analyses these areas for their UX qualities. Through running extensive A/B tests, the CRO recommends changes to each of the elements. These changes can be anything from a button tweak to a total revamp of the page design.
The CRO also keeps an eye on pages and content presented to users at various funnel stages. If any of these pages fail to move users to the next stage, the CRO will suggest an improvement.

Tips for Building a Successful SEO Team

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1. Create a Good Working environment

Giving your team an environment where they can learn and grow benefits both the team and the company. So, organize regular workshops and training sessions on the latest developments in SEO.
If you have a competent captain, give your team a certain amount of autonomy. Encourage a competitive work culture centered on efficiency and adaptability.

Learning Together

Your working environment should be such that each staff member is free to voice their ideas. You can achieve this through regular internal meetings. This will also help you spot talent within your team and cultivate it.

2. Make Your Wins Their Too!

Employee engagement should be your focus. If you win something big, be generous in sharing the credit with your team. Make them feel that the organization cares about them, that it values their efforts.
An engaged employee makes the company’s goals theirs as well. Such staff won’t hesitate to go that extra mile to make a strategy work. For them, a chance to express loyalty is as much rewarding as their monetary remuneration.

3. Adopt a Project Management System

With a large team comes the possibility of chaos. This may be duplication of work, missing deadlines, and mismanagement of resources, and more. One way to solve this is by adopting a project management system.

Read : Best SEO Project Management Tools

This will keep all your team members up-to-date with all the major developments. Having a project management tool also nullifies the need for a project coordinator.
Extra : SEO in any organization-- enterprise or small-scale -- is a collaborative effort. So, exploit every opportunity, strategy, or tool that increases collaboration in the team.

4. Make It a Lean, Mean Machine

A great team is akin to a well-oiled machine, where each cog and wheel does its job perfectly. Likewise, each member of your team should fit snugly into their role. If you are building a team from the ground up, conduct extensive skill tests to choose your team members.

Resources

Allocate them resources (tools, software, a pair of hands) in stages. This ensures that the team’s productivity increases with each stage.
Note : Since these tools can be expensive, consult with experts before buying them.

5. Record Everything & Be Careful With the Changes

Since SEO is a data-oriented field, hold regular meetings to review your gains and losses. These meetings should focus on KPIs like organic traffic and keyword rankings. Frequent review meetings afford your team a dynamic view of its efforts and results.
Do not make more than one major change on your website at a time. If you do, you will not know which SEO effort worked and which didn’t. Also, make sure to document all your efforts. You must feed even the smallest of changes into your project management system.
Do you need any help in building an Internal SEO team? or are you looking to outsource your SEO services? Drop your details here to get a free consultation now.