BY Brad Miller
SEO isn't what it used to be.
Ten years ago, an SEO
specialist might spend 40 hours a week on keywords, title tags and
content manipulation. Nowadays, he or she must possess a much broader
skill set and think far more strategically.
That's because there's been a shift toward Search Marketing
Integration (SMI) or "layering." This concept is forcing digital
marketers to become master collaborators who can effectively utilize
cross-departmental initiatives to fuel a rise in organic visibility.
The credit for this idea has to go to Rand Fishkin, CEO at search-software company Moz.
During a conversation with Rand, I asked him whether the term SEO was
still relevant. He explained that, rather than looking it as something
distinct and isolated from your other business and marketing
initiatives, you “need to add SEO as an important review layer on top of
all of those other things.”
I think this is a really good way to conceptualize how SEO needs to
be integrated into all aspects of your business to have the greatest
probability of success. It really helps to visualize these concepts, let
them sync in and “get it.”
In order to become a master collaborator and get the most out of your
search efforts, it helps to break your collaborative efforts into four
distinct areas:
1. Interaction
The first thing every successful digital marketer must do is learn to
interact with the different departments within their organization. This
has to be done regularly and consistently in order to produce results.
The only way to discover the SEO opportunities that exist elsewhere in
your organization is to communicate with your colleagues and actively
undercover them. This includes attending cross-departmental meetings,
happy hours and formal training sessions. You can even uncover SEO
opportunities during conversations at the water cooler.
2. Persuasion
Once you’ve had a chance to interact and identify opportunities, you
need to motivate your colleagues to help you achieve your goals. The
best way to approach this is to find a champion within each department. I
won’t bore you with tactics for motivation, but it’s vitally important
to have a friend that can communicate initiatives from within their
department. Having a reliable ‘point-of-contact’ can drastically help
you turn ideas into actions and push your initiatives up the priority
ladder.
3. Organization
This is probably the most difficult part of mastering the art of
cross-department collaboration. Unless you are organized right from the
start you will find yourself struggling to organize and motivate your
‘helpers’. In most cases it’s best to put the infrastructure in place
right from the beginning – before you even start approaching people from
other departments. There are some great tools you can use to help with
this process including digital project management tools like basecamp, collaboration tools like tracky and idea organization tools like mind map.
The simplest way to get started
is to create a spreadsheet that will document all of your
opportunities. You’ll want to create tasks for regular communication
(weekly check-in emails with ‘helpers’), ongoing lists for all SEO
opportunities, dates for timely opportunities, rating mechanisms for
prioritization and a list of actions items for each new opportunity.
4. Implementation
The implementation process will vary based on the nature of each new SEO
opportunity. Some things will be easy low-hanging fruit that can be
accomplished quickly, like updating a press release. Other opportunities
will take an incredible amount of time and effort like collaborating
with your engineering department on creating an interactive site widget
that can be used for link building purposes. The systems you put in
place need to be designed to handle tasks at each end of this scale.
The search marketing world has changed. Content is still king and
link building is still queen (debatable), but collaboration is the key
to both crowns.
To make sure you publish content that delivers value to visitors at
every point in the sales cycle, you need to collaborate with
departmental colleagues across the organization. By approaching this
‘integration’ in a measured, organized way, you can increase the
probability of success.
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