to create a culture of SEO in large organizations

I have worked in the SEO industry for over a decade with a variety of enterprise organizations including CDNs, encryption email providers, American Insurance Companies, and commercial passenger aircraft.

The management of stakeholder groups and the acceptance of SEO by a wider audience is a challenge that these large organizations face.

I’ve worked and learned from organizations that have unique communication, teamwork and internal culture approaches.

The company can record and share client meetings publicly on its YouTube channel. This is a total transparency approach to consulting for an organization that invests in the community.

I will share with you my thoughts and methods on how to foster a culture of SEO among stakeholders who are not involved in SEO.

Also, I will cover how to help other non-SEO teams achieve their website goals while not compromising organic KPIs.

Understanding the current SEO process and knowledge

Organic search can be a major driver of traffic and brand awareness for most companies.

There is usually a history of SEO in mid-market and enterprise-level companies, whether they were involved with the early stages of website development, such as architecture, or content-related processes.

Some companies have SEO practices that are documented or checklists for their team members.

You can use your initial discovery meetings to:

• Existing processes should be reviewed.
• Assess the SEO level within your organization.
• Assess the opinions of others on SEO and see if you agree with them.

You can now communicate with and engage effectively with different stakeholders and business levels.

At this stage, it is important to recognize and reward existing good practices.

Simple gestures, such as comments on Slack channels or project management tools and highlighting of analysis, can be very effective. They do not need to be grand gestures, nor are they required on phone calls.

Alignment with business objectives

It is important to align and report SEO impact with business-wide metrics such as OkRs and shareholder KPIs.

Take advantage of the 7 Cs for communication, reporting and information flow.

• Clear
• Concise
• Concrete
• Correct
• Coherent
• Complete
• Courteous

Keep in mind that C-suite and VP-level stakeholder responsible for OKRs or KPIs across the business are likely to be time-poor. In order to build effective relationships, it is important that communications meet these seven criteria.

Alignment with team objectives

Understanding and collaborating with other stakeholders is essential.

You may need to improve the website’s conversion rate and brand engagement without affecting any SEO variables.

The reverse is also true, as it provides insights into the organic journey of the user, possible pain points and mismatches in query intent with the content presented.

SEO is not something that can be done in isolation by the marketing team. Collaboration is required between content creators (online and off), developers, UX Designers, sales (online or offline), community managers, and customer success.

By integrating their efforts, all teams can benefit from each other’s support.

Communicate task-level objectives

In order to effectively communicate SEO-focused recommendations, it is important to emphasize their impact on business and prioritize them beyond ranking.

Included in this is their impact on broader metrics such as brand visibility for nonbrand terms, and the impact of site user experience.

Get leadership buy-in

The executives and managers of the company must be aware of the value and support efforts to optimize the content and technical aspects on the website.

Five key areas can help you achieve this:

Education

• Explain that SEO is focused on creating an excellent user experience, which also ranks highly in search engines.
• SEO can increase organic traffic, conversions and revenue. Use statistics and case studies to show the impact.

Business Impact

• Consider SEO as a way to achieve key business goals such as:
  • Increase market share.
  • Brand awareness is a great way to increase brand recognition.
  • Reduce the cost of acquisition.
• SEO Best Practices and Revenue and ROI: Connect the two.

Proof-of-concept

• Before requesting significant changes or resources, run a small SEO initiative and prove its value.
• Share the results and measure the impact of the pilot program to get support for a larger program.

Identify and address concerns

• Be prepared to answer any objections or questions that your leadership may have about SEO.
• Risks and mitigation are discussed.
• SEO is a powerful marketing tool that complements all other channels.

Strategy feedback loops

• Include leadership in the determination of high-level SEO priority and key performance indicators.
  • Align SEO goals with business objectives.
  • Instill in your leadership a sense that they are responsible for the success of the program.

SEO as an organizational strategy

To cultivate an SEO culture in a large organization, optimizing internal processes is essential.

SEO best practices can be made second nature by streamlining the way information is shared and how tasks are completed.

Open communication pathways

In a large company, open communication is crucial to the implementation of any new initiative.

All teams can benefit from regular cadences and internal newsletters. They can also attend presentations that explain SEO objectives and strategies.

Share recent successes and key metrics that demonstrate the value of SEO. Ask for feedback and address any concerns as soon as possible.

Create documentation

Documenting SEO guidelines, standards and workflows will help employees maintain consistency.

Create checklists, cheat sheets and handbooks that cover technical SEO audits and content optimization.

These can be stored in a portal that is shared by the entire company. Standardized documentation reduces the need for duplicate efforts and helps train new team members faster.

Storage should be centralized and easily accessible, like Confluence or SharePoint, and kept up to date.

Documentation can also be a valuable tool for an organization when it comes to onboarding new employees. The documentation repository will help them with the onboarding process and bring them up-to-speed on past and current initiatives.

Accountability and responsibility are clearly defined

To keep everyone accountable, assign SEO responsibilities to each department or team and identify key performance indicators.

You can, for example, assign content writers the task of optimizing a specific number of pages per month and web developers with the task of fixing a specified amount of technical problems.

Accountability is required at all levels to achieve a real culture shift.

A RACI chart or RASCI can be used to achieve this.

Post allows everyone to see the status of their projects, and fosters a culture of accountability.

Seek out perspectives

Asking non-marketing teams to share their perspective is one of the most effective ways I’ve found in recent years to collaborate.

I called one of the product teams while working with a DevOps tool.

It took some time to get the discussion going.

• 
  “What changes would you make to the website content and the way the products are displayed?”
  

The conversation was an hour long, with feedback and different perspectives. This helped to inform the content and template redesign initiative.

Facilitate SEO Education

Online courses, webinars, and internal documentation can be used to educate employees on SEO best practices.

SEO is a great way to support and relate to their roles.

• Teach content producers about keyword research and topic clustering.
• Inform web developers on technical SEO.
• Product teams should be instructed on how to optimize product pages.

Raising awareness of the importance of SEO in achieving business objectives.

Internal SEO champions

Search for employees with a passion for SEO and digital marketing.

They should have excellent communication skills and be able to explain SEO concepts simply and in an engaging manner.

Consider hiring individuals who can influence others. This includes managers, directors, and team leaders. To ensure that they understand best practices, offer them additional SEO training.

Dig deep: Unleashing enterprise-level SEO superpowers: the 4 pillars of SEO success

Integration of SEO into enterprise organizations

It takes time and patience to establish a SEO culture in an organization.

You can integrate SEO in all your activities by achieving an “SEO Transformation” through executive buy-in and offering educational resources.

The first post Search Engine Land : How to create a culture of SEO in enterprises.