How to Educate my Company About SEO

[CodyWheeler]

Hey Mozzers,

I'm currently faced with a situation that I believe is probably quite common in the SEO industry. I'd like to get the input of the SEOMoz community to see how others have handled this situation and how I can use that to help my company and of course myself in this process

Here's the dealio.

I recently obtained a position at a fairly large company ($500 million annually) with the task of being our Lead SEO, which I am loving, but am finding one thing to be a big hurdle to our success.

Essentially no one here has any pre-existing knowledge about what SEO and inbound marketing are. There are a few younger folks who understand some of it, and a few of those who I work with on a daily basis are starting to get it, but I fear that many of the folks on our webteam and even higher up do not understand the value of SEO, the implications of certain things the webteam does to our website, and moreso the value of me being here as the sole SEO expert.

I'm wondering if anyone else out there has been in a similar situation and how I might be able to effectively instill a culture of SEO within my company to get people to think about SEO before they do things.

My first goal is to ensure people think about SEO before making changes to our site. My second goal is for them to see the power of proper SEO, thus proving how valuable I am to the company.

Thoughts anyone?

[RyanKent]

Money.

Show your company how SEO will offer a direct financial benefit to them.

I would want to make a presentation at a future meeting. Thoroughly research your company's current site statistics, along with your competitors. Track the keywords, conversion rates, and everything which can impact the bottom line. Be sure to include any hard figures such as the company's marketing budget, any website expenses for advertising, any non-website expenses for advertising, etc.

Educate your company on the value of being listed in the first page of results, and then further as you climb the ladder to the number one spot. Successful businesses want to know how your work adds value to the company. Show them them the dollar trail and you will have their attention.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Cody,

You're not alone in your situation.  Most anyone who has an in-house SEO role will most likely face the same challenges.  There are probably a lot of great articles out there, and others will probably weigh in here.  I'll offer a couple things for you to check out to at least help.

What I offer is as much about your need to understand their point of view, so you can provide intelligent, reasonable and high quality reasoning that speaks to their perspective.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wake-up-suzy-wake-up-managing-seo-client-expectations/19730/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-is-a-team-sport-part-1/20206/

And I'll leave you with this:

While SEO should not be the ONLY factor in design, development or content writing, without it, a business could potentially be missing out on vast new business opportunities. When SEO is not integrated into the site process from the beginning, it's just as likely to mean that work needs to be undone or redone if it's going to meet search engine requirements.

As much as developers, designers or content writers may THINK they know about SEO, only a true SEO expert can offer the critical insights and recommendations necessary to make all the difference. And when we're talking about the difference between being on the 1st page of Google results or ending up two or three pages down, we're talking about things usually only the SEO professional would even be able to remember or know about.  Especially since search engines change their methods on a regular basis.

Bottom line - asking an SEO expert to step in after something has been done means lost opportunities, increased design'/development/marketing expense, and more.

[AgileInt]

I agree. "The Benjamins. It's all about the Benjamins.

Don't get too technical and try not to use terms that will only confuse. We often don't realize that  many people do not even know what SEO means. I had a client....six months down the road finally sheepishly ask what it meant after he was more comfortable.

Talk about ranking, engagement, traffic, orders, inquiries, growth etc.

Your job is to help the company prosper online and off line and add to the bottom line. They will understand that.

[CodyWheeler]

Thanks guys for the replies. We're still in the process of setting up all of our web tracking as well. Like I said there are only a few younger generation folks here with the capabilities and understanding of web technologies to be effective at things like this. My plan is to develop those talents within all of us.

As far as everyone else goes - we've even got some late Gen X and dare I say it - baby boomers - developing content for the web. It's pretty scary the things they put out sometimes. From an SEO standpoint, I'm definitely finding that I really have to deeply explain things. I've even on a number of occasions had to explain what the acronym SEO itself means - yikes!

I suppose there is a good side to this situation because we are currently building a new site. They brought me on about 6 months too late in my opinion, and there is a lot of catching up to do, but even since I've been here I have fixed many SEO nightmares we were heading towards, and am finding more all the time. It's going to be night and day to what it was before.

Good suggestion about educating people - whoever said that. I think I am going to try to convince HR to let me hold basic SEO classes for those folks involved in web development and marketing. I could never in a million years teach them everything they need to know, but I think I can at least get it in their minds enough that they can at least be thinking about how SEO factors into things they do before they do them.

Any additional thoughts and comments are appreciated!

[RyanKent]

My recommendation is to educate your company on the VALUE of SEO, not the mechanics of it.

What your company needs to understand is the value a website offers their business. They do not need to know the technicalities of how SEO works. Those who desire that knowledge will ask or seek you out.

I sneaked a peek at your profile and noticed you work for Samtec. I took a look at Samtec.com and I will assume that is your site. It looks like you mainly sell online.

I would bring a laptop with a screen projector to your presenation. Google a few terms related to your industry and show your company where you rank in the search results. Next offer a presentation of industry statistics on the value of SERP. 90% of users select a result from the first page. Within that group, the higher you are on the first page, the better.

This should be your focus. I wouldn't mention "meta tags" or "canonicalization" even once unless answering a direct question.

[Promoteam]

Do not forget to pass by Stephen presentation blog. Im sure it will help you alot in your teaching !

[CodyWheeler]

I agree with all of this.

However on top of just educating them about the value of SEO, I want at least some of them to know the ins and outs, such as how changing the Title of a page can completely change your rank in the SERPs (had an old boss that changed nearly every Title tag on our website in the CMS not knowing what it was that just killed our rankings.

I do think that showing them the value of SEO might help them start thinking about how SEO plays into things before making decisions however.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[CodyWheeler]

Very cool. I'll check this out. Definitely can use some presentation skills!

[MikeGracia]

Have you seen the 'business case' template files that Econsultancy have? They have one for SEO specifically... Maybe a help? (Although it is from 2010 it seems! So maybe update any stats!)

http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/sem-search-engine-optimisation-seo-business-case

It does cost though, unless you or anyone in your company has a membership there?

Personally, I find that working out some basic figures on traffic increases with existing, and forecast conversion rates can help.

In addition, do you track what the leading competing brand is doing?

I sometimes find that whilst some folks further up the food chain will be convinced by the figures and stats, others will be convinced by seeing that their leading competitor is spending on SEO (this can be proved by measuring various metrics, checking out their social profiles, etc). I guess nobody wants to be the last kid in the playground chosen for the team? <-- Even with this though, having some stats on projected ROI is a very good idea, and yup, as Promoteam said above... presentation matters!