How do you prioritize your SEO efforts?

[karlseidel]

If you're an in-house marketing person, almost by definition, you're neither a specialist or expert in the variety of things one might do to improve SEO. We do a bunch of stuff in-house and hire people for other stuff that needs to be done and the work is never complete!

What do you do, as the de facto in-house, on-staff "expert" for SEO? I'm purposely leaving this question fairly open-ended to solicit advise, ideas & direction to develop a framework and a guide for our efforts.

Also, I'm not intentionally ruling out pro's...I'm open to your opinions too - but I will probably only hire you unless you have a full tool bag of skills that include the ability to write auto-responders, write & blog relevant content, set up and monitor page rank, do SEO, set up AdWords campaigns, etc. at a the nice price. And I'll only do that if I can't do/learn/achieve all of the above to a certain degree on my own. Although I'll probably never stop questioning processes, costs and everything else associated with hiring a pro...all of which will make me a pain-in-the-butt client you probably don't want.

Thanks!

[eTundra]

Like most things in SEO, it depends.  What are your business goals (lead generation, ecommerce, thought leadership, etc.)?  What is the status of your current optimization efforts - i.e. has any on-page optimization, site architecture, link building, content, etc. been done?  If so, how much?  What is your competition doing and how does your site stack up against them?

Different sites have different goals and are at different points in the optimization process.  Prioritizing your SEO efforts is going to depend heavily on where you sit currently and where you want to go.

I would advise a full site audit first to figure out what is working well and what isn't.

Actually, I take that back.  First, define your goals - what do you want to accomplish with your site.  Then do the audit.

Next, discover which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones convert the best.  Then start putting together groups of keywords that are variations of your top performers and start looking for new keyword groups to target.

If you're getting a lot of traffic from what seem like good keywords but not converting, then start optimizing your site for conversions.

This is all pretty high level, but if there's one thing I've learned about SEO it's that there are no absolute answers, only problems that need solving, and there are always many ways to skin that cat.

Going through the process of identifying problems and opportunities, developing a strategy to act, and then analyzing success is a constant effort.

Deciding which problem/opportunity to attack first can only be accomplished by having a clear goal in mind.

[EGOL]

As the in-house SEO... my jobs are....

-- know the website... know where traffic is coming from and what they do on our site, identify new keyword niches where we can compete, know where sales are taking place, work to improve conversions, use title tags not only for SEO purposes but also to pull visitors into the site instead of our competitors, develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube

-- know the products that we sell and how well they are selling, develop new traffic sources for them, identify new product lines that we can strongly compete for or that can be sold to our current traffic, understand profit margins in a way that allows me to prioritize their promotion in search and on-site

-- develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube for relevant keywords and for relevant audiences

-- continuously review different parts of our site and product lines looking for changes that might increase our rankings, increase our conversions or increase our popularity with visitors... it is easier to double your income from current traffic than it is to double you income with new traffic

The above isn't all SEO.  Much of it is "webmastering" and "product marketing."   But, I don't think that a person should have anything against wearing multiple hats, sitting in multiple chairs and sticking his nose into anything related to the company web.

[karlseidel]

Hi Back Burner,

At the moment my goal is to understand better what I can do, train my assistant to do, and begin to define and document what I need to hire out.

I have a certain amount of time - and a lot of interest - in learning - but I have responsibility for more than SEO. That's where the prioritizing comes in.

Your comment about "full site audit first" makes a lot of sense. Because that would allow me some perspective and knowledge I need updated.

Who would do this audit? You? Someone you can refer? I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!

[karlseidel]

Hi EGOL,

Thanks for your detailed reply. We all need to make decisions about what we say in our marketing. I'm most interested in figuring out the form we need to follow to make sure our SEO works as well as possible. Content needs to be decided upon often and regularly to be competitive - that's an ever-changing process (for us at least!).

I am all for wearing multiple hats - it's simply a matter of prioritizing my time as I have many different venues to manage other than our site to attract, inform and generally communicate with our most likely target prospects.

The web and our sites are excellent tools to communicate - but they're not the bulk of our marketing - they're a tool. I need to learn how to use this tool better.

[eTundra]

Wow, what a fascinating product you work with and a very interesting website.

I took the liberty of checking out your site and found it pretty impressive.  Some effort has already clearly been taken to optimize this site and provide real value to your customer, so kudos to whoever is responsible for that effort.

At a very high level - so take this with a grain of salt because I only spent a few minutes - you have great domain authority and a lot of really strong content, but it appears that you are not ranking for keywords associated with your product that you clearly should be ranking for.

I went to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "cablevey tubular drag conveyors" (the first keyword in the page title of your home page) and got a long list of great keywords associated with your industry.  I went through a couple of the higher traffic ones in SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool and there's no reason why you shouldn't be ranking for these keywords based on your Domain Authority alone.  It very well could be that you just haven't optimized the proper page on your site for these keywords yet, and it is possible that a little on-page optimization is all you need to start ranking well because your DA is so strong.

I am willing to go more in-depth if you want - just shoot me a private message and we can exchange contact information.

As far as a referral goes... there are many good SEO companies and individuals in the SEOMoz community who would be able to provide quality help.  My recommendation would be to instantly tune out anyone who says you need link building and content - not that you don't need those things but I don't think they are your priority right now.

[karlseidel]

Hi!

I don't know if I got back to you or not but if you're still open to continuing this conversation I'd appreciate your help.

Thanks again for your insights, in any case.

Karl

[fatetmpwcosl]

By focusing on every channel for doing better SEO for all blog posts. You should do SEO of every single blog post on your website.