Imagine building the ideal SEO team, one with the skills, expertise, and experience necessary to push your website to the top of search engine results? By understanding its core components and optimal structure – including essential tools – this goal can be reached.
This article will outline the key strategies for building an efficient SEO team. From identifying essential roles to structuring it for maximum effectiveness, we’ve got everything covered!
Create an Effective SEO Team: Three Strategies
To rank higher and generate more traffic for your website, a solid SEO team is essential.
Studies conducted recently revealed that 90 of brands recognize SEO as essential, with 54% having already established in-house teams dedicated to it. Businesses clearly see the value in having dedicated teams.
But creating an effective SEO team requires more than simply hiring people who know keywords; you need a team with specific skills, expertise and experience who understand your business goals and work collaboratively towards reaching them.
1. Understand the Components of an SEO Team
No matter if it’s a small company or large corporation, an SEO team needs certain key roles that serve as the cornerstone of a successful SEO strategy.
SEO Manager
An SEO Manager serves as team lead. They develop your SEO strategy, manage team members, analyze data and find new opportunities while overseeing budgets, timelines and reporting ensuring results from all teams under their care are achieved on schedule.
Think of a Technical SEO Expert as your website mechanic; their role is to ensure it’s technically sound for search engines – including site speed, mobile-friendliness, broken links, site architecture and structured data – so search engines can access and understand it properly.
Content Writer (SEO Focused)
This team member brings your website to life through words. They create engaging content that stands out from the competition by ranking well and connecting with their audience – from blog posts, landing pages, product descriptions and ebooks – all the way down to blog comments and landing pages!
Outreach Specialist/Link Builder.
Your online ambassador, an outreach specialist, creates quality backlinks from authoritative websites for your brand. This often requires reaching out to bloggers, journalists and influencers in order to secure high-quality backlinks that act as endorsements in search engines.
2. Building An SEO Team
Your SEO team structure depends on various factors including budget, company size, resources available to it and goals set for it.
Small Businesses and Startups
At first, a smaller enterprise SEO team may be best. This could involve assigning one SEO specialist to cover several key areas instead of dedicating individual specialists for every field; this strategy reduces costs while creating an agile team structure.
Larger Enterprises
Businesses with more complex operations often employ dedicated SEO team structures for technical SEO, content marketing, link building, local or international SEO as well as certain other areas. Some organizations even create separate teams for each area or form “pods” within one team for specific projects.
Larger agencies may wish to consider adopting a flat SEO team structure with minimal hierarchies and benefits such as greater collaboration and efficiency.
3. Essential SEO Tools to Support the Success of Your Team
SEO professionals require the appropriate SEO tools in order to be successful. These tools help with tasks such as competitor analysis, audits, and tracking performance over time. Here are a few options:
Ahrefs provides a comprehensive SEO toolset including keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink analysis and rank tracking features. SEMrush offers another robust solution with insights into competitors’ strategies regarding display advertising, organic/paid search advertising and link building activities.
Moz: With its user-friendly interface and range of tools for site audits, rank tracking, and backlink analysis; Google Analytics and Search Console are indispensable when it comes to monitoring website performance and understanding how Google sees your site.
Conclusion
Establishing an effective SEO team is an investment in your online presence, so selecting individuals with relevant skills and experience and providing ongoing training helps your team adapt with ever-evolving search engines. When prioritizing training for this important area of SEO, leaders are created who are prepared to face this ever-evolving landscape head on.
An experienced in-house SEO team can have a significant effect on the success of your website. A dedicated SEO team helps to explain how search engine algorithms operate and how best to improve it accordingly. For more on developing leadership for this group of individuals, see my blog post entitled: “SEO Leadership: 6 Key Strategies for Success.”