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So in an in-house team, the SEO function typically sits within marketing.
And so, it's important to think about the structure as it aligns to the business
objectives.
So let me tell you the example of how we're aligned and
then I'll maybe share also one other company I'm aware of.
So when you think about a company, you have various product lines and business
units that you work with and marketing functions tend to align by the line of
business or the product or service that is pertinent to that person's skill set.
So whether you're in content marketing or web production or SEO,
you would align to a business unit and so the same thing occurs on my team.
We have seven people on my team, two of sit in regional roles.
One who is based in Japan and supports Japan and Asia Pacific marketplace and
his responsibility is for all the lines of business for that particular region.
So he would have an end to end role where he's looking at keyword research and
content marketing and making recommendations and
delivering on reports and aligning with stakeholders and
delivering things on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis and
he is the point of contact in that region for all SEO strategy.
And he has someone equivalent to him who's in Europe based out of London who has
a very similar role, who has responsibility for every region.
And it's really up to these two folks in regional
roles to prioritize based on what are the top countries and
languages where we can influence the strategy to drive the most revenue for
that region, then we have folks that sit in North America who have, basically,
a junior or a senior role and so the junior role would be called a SEO analyst.
And this is somebody who has one and three years of experience who perhaps,
has a background in basic web design.
Maybe they've created their own website.
They worked either as a consultant.
Maybe they've done pro bono work or hourly work to gain a little bit of a skill set,
getting them up to a years worth of experience, so
that they then have knowledge of how to apply that.
The other things they have is in-house experience.
They may bot have in house SEO, but they've worked in a company and
they understand what's unique to working inside of a corporation and
how that's different that an agency.
The skills that this person would employ most would be related to keyword research,
would be related to providing basic recommendations,
would be helping with analysis of the data.
They may not do all of the data pulling and data reporting, but
they would look at some of the numbers and help interpret what that means back to
this more senior role who might be a strategist,
who is also working with the same line of business and is aligned more
around what's the strategy and how are we moving forward the business?
So, they're much more future oriented and
they're thinking three to six months out and they're planning strategies and
driving recommendations that are a little bit more advanced.
They've got five to seven years of experience and so
what they are typically thinking about is how do we take most
advantage of the newest things that are taking place?
And so they are trying to keep their ear to the ground with what's coming from
Google about new changes, and they are tied into the industry best practices, and
they are looking for the best ways to maximize.
And also pushing hard on stakeholders to drive those recommendations forward, so
that they are sure to get done in the right way.
So these two folks, junior role whose common analyst and
a senior role who is called a strategist work hand in hand with each other,
driving forward the recommendations for a single line of business.
And so there are four of these team members, two pairs who work with
the respective lines of business to drive these recommendations forward.
So that's the way that we are laid out within our organization.
I'll just share briefly about another organization where they think about
SEO in an aligned way, they have people with a paid search and
an organic search background on the same team in the same role and
they're looking for somebody with a blended skill set.
Where they've done paid media and they've done organic search, and
they are driving both sides the paid media, and
the organic or the free traffic recommendations to the same stakeholders.
They then separate out the analytics and reporting role separately, and
they separate the regional role from the ones that are focused on paid, and
organic, and reporting.
So those some slight differences, but really what it comes down to as I
mentioned at the beginning is aligning to the digital marketing and
marketing overall objectives.
Making sure you're pushing forward the strategies that meet the highest KPIs,
key performance indicators that matter and knowing the best strategies from
a search engine marketing perspective to push at the right time.
Rebekah MaySEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor, Lead Qual
