ve strategies for scaling your SEO team without sacrificing your culture

In 2015, I was part of a small SEO group. Since then, our team has more than tripled in size.

We faced the challenge as we grew of scaling our team, continuing to deliver high-quality work and maintaining the culture which enabled our growth.

This article highlights the importance of building a strong team culture, and shares with you our tactics as we built ours.

This journey was not just about team expansion, but also to foster a culture that values excellence and innovation.

Each new member should amplify rather than dilute our collective strength.

You can see our growth behind the scenes.

• Share with your team the importance of fostering a strong culture.
• Showcase the steps that we took to grow successfully, while still preserving our essence.

Scaling challenges

The challenges of scaling up an SEO team come down to the “three Ps”, namely people, process, and product.

• People : Rapid growth may lead to an hiring frenzy. New hires that were meant to relieve the workload end up increasing it. The managers are now juggling a greater number of responsibilities including the training of newcomers.
• Process Service delivery can be a game based on chance without well-defined standard of practice (SOPs). This will negatively impact consistency as your team grows.
• Product : Growing your business often means less flexibility for your product offerings. It is important to establish clear swim lanes and standardize product offerings for your team, instead of offering too many options where you customize each task.

To overcome these challenges you will need to:

• Maintain the culture of your team.
• Encourage communication between locations.
• Develop a consistent SEO approach.
• Create a positive working environment that will attract and retain top talent.

You can scale your business while maintaining team culture and providing great results for clients.

Why culture is important in an SEO team

SEOs are consultants who often work with other marketers. People are the most important asset in any consulting business.

According to one study, organizations with less engaged employees see a 202% increase in revenue.

It is important for consulting teams to have a strong culture within the SEO industry. This will help them stand out from the crowd, as well as attract and retain top talent. Up to 35 percent of workers will pass up a job because they don’t feel the culture is a good match.

Twelve ways to maintain culture as your business scales

1. Define the core values of your SEO team

The best corporate culture is usually rooted in shared beliefs, values and working methods, as well as (perhaps most important) a common purpose.

Start by creating a mission statement to define your core values. What do people say about you consistently that makes you special?

In a brainstorming session, you can discuss shared goals and values with your team. However, it may be better to have a smaller group define the core values.

Stephanie Gioia provides a useful framework to help determine which values are truly valuable and which ones do not support the overall strategy.

Dig deep: Build a values-based company that delivers results

2. Build a strong team and structure for leadership

Leaders are usually the ones who define a team’s culture. It’s important to consider the most important cultural contributions when selecting team leaders and how to structure your group beneath them.

Limit direct reporting to maximize the time managers spend with managers

It’s not the manager’s fault if he or she isn’t leading properly.

Supporting the needs of key players is a way to build a culture. You need to make sure that your team is well-equipped, and proper guidance at junior levels is one of the most crucial things.

We also realized early on that managers need to spend time providing deep learning, tactical assistance, and strategic guidance.

We evaluated the need to bring on additional managers and hired them ahead of time to stabilize the management structure. We split the team into two distinct groups, each with a director.

The maximum number of direct reports we could assign per manager was three to four.

Frequent Manager Check-ins

To create a team that is empowered and retains personnel, it’s important to regularly check in with the team so they feel heard and valued.

This means that our team meets weekly with each of their direct reports to discuss the work.

Some managers meet their direct reports two or three times a week to review deliverables and prepare for client presentations.

How to create a feedback loop

Not only should you encourage feedback, but also take action on it. High-performance teams create feedback loops where feedback is not only heard, but also clearly acted upon. This encourages more feedback.

More people will give feedback if you respond more quickly and publicly. The better the team becomes, the more feedback people give.

We ask for feedback frequently on client onboarding, project execution, team events, and projects. We encourage our team members to give feedback to their managers about how they can work better together.

3. Team culture can be delegated.

Delegating tasks and objectives to the team is another important aspect of scaling.

It is okay if team members are better connectors and culture builder than the leaders.

Most leaders find it difficult to relinquish control, but the sooner they elect an “owner” of the team culture, the sooner the garden will flourish.

We chose an employee from a tactical point of view who had a strong desire and great ideas to implement culture in our team.

The person has a positive attitude, is thoughtful and pleasant and wins awards for it.

If team members are more suited to certain areas, let them own those parts of the business.

4. Culture fit vs. hiring for culture contribution

As a manager, one of the most important paradigm shifts that I experienced was recognizing that I did not need or want “culture fit” but rather needed to hire based on cultural contributions.

SHRM.org has gathered great resources about “culture ad,” and I recommend that you read them to learn more.

It’s possible to hire people who do not share your core values. Rand Fishkin talks about hiring for culture fit versus competence and makes an astute observation that you are unlikely to be able change someone’s mind completely.

Fishkin suggests that you include questions during your interviewing process to help you determine whether there are any gaps or alignments.

Assess how well a potential hire fits your culture and what value they can bring to it.

Map out the skills and cultural traits you think your team requires. Be sure to consider this when developing your career path and recruiting strategy.

5. Recognize greatness in as many ways as possible

When I listened to the stories of founders and CEOs, one common thread I noticed was that they had an organization culture that emphasized recognizing greatness.

An organization can be greatly impacted by the recognition of good deeds.

Jim Perdue, of Perdue farms, shared on NPR’s “Wisdom From The Top With Guy Raz” that recognizing his employees for their hard work through a award of “good eggs” was an important part of the change they needed to make Perdue a $7 billion company.

You can recognize your team’s efforts in digital channels like Slack, Team, email or in person by presenting a paper-cutout award, such as Jim Perdue.

You can use any method to praise your team for their hard work. Do this frequently, both publicly and in one-on-one meetings.

6. Document your SOPs.

The SOPs followed by the team and the ability to tailor deliverables for client businesses and situations are two things that distinguish an SEO practice.

Our team has been able to maintain a culture of quality work by using a SOP library.

Around 40 SOP deliverables are available to our team. These deliverables range from on-site, technical/structural, and off-site.

There is a standard template for each category. We also have an SOP document and videos.

This documentation makes our team feel confident that they are doing the right thing, while also encouraging them to improve and iterate on the SOP.

It is important to have a SOP that changes and grows with the changing industry. Ensure that the team understands “breaking the mould” is encouraged and welcomed.

You can document meetings and processes quickly with tools like fireflies.ai or tango.us. An intranet for the company where all SOPs are stored is another great resource.

Google Drive, or a project-management tool such as Asana can be used to store all SOP documents.

Dig deep: Four tips to create a data-centric agency culture

7. Learn and develop frequently

Your team is no different. Just as high-performance race cars need fine-tuning, so do your employees. A culture that is built around learning and development will cultivate top talent, while also adding value to your employees.

Learning and development can create an environment where people want to be and a community that is empowered and engaged.

We have regular practices for learning and development:

• Every Monday, one team member gives a 30-minute to 60-minute presentation on a topic related to SEO or content.
• Microsoft Teams Channel dedicated to industry tools, tips and news.
• A member of our team creates a weekly digital marketing roundup, which is shared amongst the team.
• We pay for the airfare, hotel, and ticket costs to send our employees to conferences such as Mozcon and Pubcon. The team then compares notes to learn from all the conferences they attended.

8. Consider a democratic approach

The most important decisions are made by a vote of the entire team or the managers.

A democratic team takes patience and diplomacy, but in the end, it creates a real sense of community.

Leaders may have to take decisions that are not always popular.

The more people invest in things and the better they work, the more leaders will align and treat their team as a whole.

Taking decisions democratically can be like rocket fuel to a team’s dynamic.

9. Communication channels should be well planned

We must maintain open lines of communication in a remote working environment while allowing employees to concentrate on their jobs.

We looked at how to best simulate the synergy of our office and settled on using Teams channels.

Our team can stay connected by using channels that are dedicated to tech and tools, asking for help, non-work-related topics, and channels specific to clients.

10. Celebrate with your family and friends often

We celebrate together as a team to recognize client success, personal milestones, company years, and personal achievements.

Celebrate workiversaries, or work anniversaries.

We collect quotes and send them to the team when a member of our team celebrates their anniversary. They are words of encouragement, praise and cheer.

We want people to know that, despite the fact that so much of our time is spent at work and with colleagues, we value their time.

11. Share what makes us unique

The Team Hub is a document that allows us to collect and store information about the interests, hobbies, favorite foods, etc. of our team members so we can celebrate them as individuals.

This information is used to create a festive, supportive environment that encourages individuality.

We also have a “Question of the Day” where we pose a question every week, and everyone responds.

You could ask something like, “If you were Disney character, who would you be?” Or, “If you had your own YouTube channel, what topic would you choose?”

This is a great way to get to know each other and to discuss what we love in a structured manner. Everyone gets a turn at the microphone.

12. A solid recruiting strategy leads to a powerful team

The way you recruit talent can have a significant impact on the culture of your team and the talent pool.

Hiring was one of the most effective tools in maintaining our culture.

• Job description A clear job description which describes the day-to-day tasks attracts candidates who are excited to perform that work. This is an obvious win.
• Our interview process is multi-step, with meetings of associate directors, human resources, other team members, and in some cases, our CDO or VP. This allows a wider group of team members the opportunity to reach consensus on the hiring decision.
• QuestionnaireWe send the same questionnaire to all new potential hires, including SEO technical questions and other SEO-related questions. Some of these questions are asked in person at a later stage in the interview process to give candidates time to reflect. We aim to level the playing field between candidates who are better at solving problems through writing than by rushing out answers during an interview. Research is also welcomed, since it’s a critical part of what we do as SEOs.
• Work Samples:We request everyone to send us work samples so that we can see how much attention, care and quality they put into their work.

We can accomplish several things by putting all candidates through the exact same process.

The first step is to hire the best people, who will add value to our company culture.

The process also helps us to provide what we believe is an equitable and fair approach to evaluating talents and creating a culture of inclusion, which is exactly the type we are trying to create.

Are you ready to expand your team?

Change your mindset when hiring from “culture fits” to “culture contributors”, delegating ownership of curation and acknowledging greatness, and adopting ways to retain and enhance the team culture.

We also recommend creating a learning culture, limiting the amount of managers reporting directly to them, and establishing a democratic process for making decisions.

We hope that some of the lessons we have learned will be helpful for you on your journey. The road wasn’t easy, but we were able to adapt, innovate and grow the way we wanted by using the principles we discussed.

The article Scaling your SEO team without losing culture first appeared on Search Engine Land.