Can your employees handle SEO internally? Here’s a list of some of the responsibilities you might have to perform in-house, even though you’ve hired an outside SEO firm to optimize your web site (depends on the types of SEO services you purchase):
- provide an initial list of keywords
- select and approve the final list of keywords
- insert keywords into content so that it still reads naturally and gives value to your customers
- develop and write content
- upload optimized pages to the server (tif your company has strict security policies)
- approve code and content to make sure it is consistent with company branding
- coordinate PPC campaigns (e.g. AdWords, Yahoo! Search) with your optimized terms in order to capitalize on SERP real estate
- stay abreast of the latest changes in search marketing so you can continue to make good decisions
Several SEO vendors I’ve spoken with have shared similar concerns with me – a lot of work was done on their end to optimize a client’s site, but the client was slow to do their part. They missed important deadlines and in many cases didn’t institute many of the suggestions made by the vendor. Then, when the client didn’t get the rankings they wanted, they blamed the vendor for doing a poor job.
The important thing to realize is that even with an outside SEO provider, you will still have some amount of work to do, especially if your company has multiple web sites. But even if you only have one site to optimize, make sure you sit down and have an open and honest talk with your SEO provider to determine how much of your employees’ time and resources will be required in order to optimize quickly and efficiently.
If your Webmaster and marketing people already have their hands full, throwing another job on top of them will only make both their current work and the SEO work suffer. And if your people are required to participate, but you’re looking to the vendor for accountability, don’t expect your employees to put their best effort into SEO. Make SEO a part of someone’s job description (or their entire job description) so they can be accountable for it, just like they’re accountable for their current duties.
