9 Characteristics of an In-House SEO

One question I get asked a lot is “Are you more of a ‘technical SEO’ or a ‘marketing SEO’?” This question used to puzzle me a bit in the beginning as in my head the answer was pretty clear: I’m a marketer with a technical bent of mind.
This question then led me to think about some of the common characteristics that make a good in-house SEO. This helped me a lot too when making hiring decisions on what characteristics I should look for in an in-house SEO.
The other fact is SEO as an industry has matured over the years. As a result, what is expected out of an in-house SEO has changed as well. Companies don’t want to hire someone who can get them top rankings or create some monthly reports – that is a given now.
Increasingly, in-house SEOs are required to be more analytical and ROI focused. This evolution of SEO clearly demands SEO’s to have a good left brain and right brain combination. That said, there are definitely some peculiar characteristics of an in-house SEO, so let’s go over few of them.

1. SEO as a Thought Leader

Many times people outside the SEO world may not be able to visualize the business benefits you can drive from a successful in-house SEO program. An in-houser can open many new opportunities for a business and generate new streams of revenues.
Simply put: an in-houser can help people understand what SEO can do for their business. So in every conversation, in every meeting a SEO has the opportunity to display their thought leadership in search.

2. SEO as an Influencer

As an SEO you have to be an influencer. Influencer of new ideas, new ways of generating traffic, new set of processes, and so on.
In every organization, big or small, there are certain sets of processes that people follow. To integrate SEO into that process, you need influence many stakeholders.
Remember, when you add something new like SEO to an existing process you will encounter resistance. What you need to do: communicate and influence many stakeholders. After all, you’re inserting SEO for the greater good of the business and those convictions can drive you to become an influencer of people or ideas.

3. SEO as a Salesman

Gosh, aren’t we always selling something? Moreso with SEO as you are selling ideas, ROI projections, tools, projects, or even agency partners or consultants. Most of the times in order for SEO to get a seat at the table you have to be that salesman and build your case why SEO is integral to your overall business objectives.

4. SEO as a Collaborator

Over the years I have realized that SEO is baked as part of a bigger project with tens or hundreds of stakeholders and you need a team to climb those big mountains. An in-house SEO works with different sets of teams, stakeholders, and business objectives.
In a typical day you could end up collaborating with tens of different groups – collaboration becomes the key. A classic example is collaborating with your IT team. Another example is baking your SEO part into an agenda of a larger meeting. Sometimes to get those 10 minutes in a meeting you need to collaborate closely with the product or project managers so that you can give your SEO “update.”

5. SEO as an Educator

So much of SEO is viewed as a black magic in the outside world that the onus is on SEOs to bring transparency to the process. Once what we as SEOs do is transparent and stakeholders understand why you recommend the type of changes that you do, it creates a lot of buy-in as well.
SEO education is essential to getting buy-in. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself doing multiple rounds of SEO training across the organization.

6. Analytical SEO

Marketing is analytical in nature and as marketers we base our decisions after looking at analytics reports and then optimize our targets. SEOs have to do forecasting, look at product or keyword level ROI, work with finance, do budgeting, and most importantly also work with your analytics group (if you’re at a large org). As with many things, you need to be clear when working with analytics on not just what reports you want but how to extract the data that will help you in optimizing your campaigns.

7. SEO as a Logic Builder

This is where the power of your left brain comes in and that is logic. Software developers and programmers use their strong logic skills to create software flows and endless loops of if and then statements as an example.
SEOs need to have a logical mind as you would be dealing with programmers and also working through the code yourself. Plus, if you aren’t from programming background, then start learning languages as you need to understand codes. Once you understand code, then you will start forming logic.

8. SEO with Patience

You definitely need boatloads of patience. Depending on the size of the organization, there would be times where a straightforward title tag change could take weeks if not months!
Then you have designers, IT, business partners, and all other elements that your SEO recommendations won’t just move at the speed you desire. In situations like these, you have to exercise patience and push through to ensure that even after few months your recommended changes are done. If there are some bigger projects, then multiply that number by 4!

9. SEO as a Synthesizer

SEOs make many recommendations (e.g., changing URLs, replacing graphics and Flash with text, adding new content, pagination), but not all of your recommendations will be implemented. There could be business or other (political) issues that could come in the way and your job is to synthesize different viewpoints in order to get SEO requests accomplished. This makes SEO a synthesizer of ideas and different viewpoints.

In Summary

The above reads like a long list, but SEOs do wear many hats both in an agency and in-house role. These were just some of my insights into characteristics (or qualities) of an in-house SEO. What would you add to the above list?
By: Bob

Successful SEO Tactics: Reporting & Analytics

As we close out our four-part series on the SEO Tactics chart, we touch on the most powerful of all of the pillars – measurement, reporting, and analytics. This is the subject I’m most passionate about as it lies at the core of a solid organic strategy and ultimately the long-term success of an organic program.
It’s striking that there is still such casualness when it comes to the discipline of SEO. There are still a remarkable number of companies that can’t differentiate organic traffic from direct load and referring traffic.
If you’ve managed or been close to paid search campaigns you understand the degree to which measurement and analysis impacts successful efforts. One of the first pieces of advice I give to clients and colleagues is to apply this same mindset to organic search.
Data is useless. Insight, and then action, is the key to advancing your program. This article will highlight some of the more important, and underutilized, metrics that can help you find performance breakthroughs, as well as discuss exactly why it’s so critical that you get this part right.

Justify Your Existence

If you aren’t tracking conversions, then you’re probably in for a short ride. Rankings will only get you so far.
Justifying your retainer (agency) or salary (in-house) is going to be difficult without demonstrating the business impact you are making. We’re talking about revenue, leads and margin – not rankings.
Be persistent about the need to track these metrics before you engage with a company. If the tracking isn’t present and they aren’t willing to put forth the effort to measure these goals, you should pass on the opportunity until the proper tracking is in place.

Understand Causality

Without taking the time to analyze data it becomes incredibly easy to chase your own tail. Chances are you’re putting forth a ton of time, energy, and effort to make an impact on your program.
But what’s really moving the needle and what’s simply an effort of futility? If you find yourself asking this question, slow down half a pace, execute, monitor, measure, and make note (as best you can) of which tactics indeed moved the needle.

Conversions, Then Traffic, Then Rankings

Focusing attention on keywords that have the highest likelihood to convert to a sale or lead isn’t always synonymous with high traffic terms. Spend the time in your analytics package to understand the difference and apply more pressure to keywords that will increase revenue/leads. As mentioned earlier, if you keep your eye on conversion, you have a better chance of keeping your job.

Differentiate Between Brand & Non-Brand

In relation to measuring keyword-level conversion (and in proving your value), be sure to clearly differentiate performance of brand and non-brand terms.
Non-brand growth is the leverage point in most programs. If you’re analyzing, or worse presenting, data that is only rolled up as overall organic traffic, it’s possible to be misleading yourself and others. If the overall organic program experienced a 36 percent year-over-year lift in traffic and 14 percent lift in conversions – ask yourself why and where. Was it driven by brand terms as a result of an aggressive offline campaign that is running?
Know why, take credit for your efforts, and be transparent when you’re riding the wave of brand terms. Transparency and honesty go a long way.

External Influences

It’s easy to get caught up in your own site and analytics and forget about external factors that impact your program’s performance. One of the most critical is seasonality. It can impact everything from traffic volume to competitive pressure and conversion rate.
Many verticals have peak seasons, some more dramatic than others. These peaks are sweet spots, and you should be planning around them.

The graph above is an example of peak query volume for a client in the home services vertical. Knowing that 45 percent of the annual query volume occurs within a three-month window is critical knowledge and impacts both what you do and when you do it. Google Insights for Search is a great tool to model this data.

Benchmarks & Baselines

Early on in my SEO endeavors I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and capture benchmarks that I missed as I was begging to work on a program. Live and learn.
Fortunately, you’ll have many of the most critical KPIs captured within your analytics package. Obviously you will want to capture a benchmark of the rankings of keywords you are focused on.
A few suggestions: Use SEMRush to capture a more holistic view of all keywords that are ranking as you begin. You might be surprised at what you find here. Download this, and keep it! Watch the growth in non-brand terms that rank over time. Consider the same for inbound links. It’s a snapshot in time, so be sure to take the picture before you begin. Open Site Explorer makes it easy. Do the same exercise for major competitors so that you can track their velocity versus your own. These all become compelling stories over time.

Track Your Calls

Whether your goal is to be driving leads or revenue, you should be taking credit for organic conversions that are resulting in the call center. More than 90 percent of the businesses we’ve encountered have overlooked this – even in instances where they are tracking call center conversions from paid search.
The technology is there (e.g., ClickPath), and if your business model is reliant on call center activity for conversions, the information available through this tracking typically opens up new opportunities and gives you a much more accurate view on the entirety of the results you’re driving.
This is just a snapshot of some of the tracking and analytics themes that are performance drivers, but certainly not the entire list. I welcome you to add to it through your comments, as your insights can likely help others who find interest in this topic.
And that wraps up our four-part series on Successful SEO Tactics. If you missed them, check out Keyword Selection, On-site Optimization, and Off-site Optimization. Hopefully, you’ve found the information relevant and useful. Good luck in your organic efforts!
By: Ryan Woolley,

Top 10 Web Analytics Myths… Dispelled

Having worked in online marketing and web analytics for nearly a decade, I’ve heard it all when it comes to myths passed around small and large companies alike. Here is a top 10 list of my favorite web analytics myths and practical advice on how to dispel them.

1. Free Analytics Software is Just as Good as Enterprise Analytics

There are several reasons why free software is never the best solution. Some of my favorite retorts to “why do we use Omniture rather than Google Analytics” often involve witty comebacks like “because I have to pay the bills” or “because my boss said so.” If that doesn’t work (and it never does), the primary reasons to go with enterprise analytics are:

• Service Level Agreements: What happens if your software fails? If you pay for analytics, you have a neck to choke; if not, you have to wait it out and pray nothing is lost.
• Data ownership: Free doesn’t mean consequence-free. Someone is paying the bill. Free software is often offered “at no cost to you.” Enterprise solutions enable you to take your data with you, should you so desire. 
• Privacy: Enterprise solutions offer security and privacy through non-disclosure agreements protecting both sides of the contract. 
• Customization: Hacking free solutions like Google Analytics is possible, but only to a certain degree. Enterprise solutions are built for customization with business objectives in mind.

2. Bounce Rate (or “Insert Metric Here”) is the Best Metric

Avinash Kaushik calls it the sexiest metric, but it’s not the best because there is no “best” metric. I know of several companies that employ teams of analysts whose sole responsibility it is to monitor a “God metric,” but rarely do these stand the test of time. It’s best to focus on a handful of metrics that actually drive profitable insights.

3. Everything Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, or Eric Peterson Says is Gold

Don’t get me wrong, Avinash is brilliant, but none of the experts in analytics know your business well enough to provide a plug-and-play measurement strategy. On a high level, their best practices are indeed gold, but nothing beats digging into your data and creating an analytics playbook of your own.

4. Dashboards or Reports Should Have 4 Quadrants and Only a Handful of Data

Although it’s a lofty goal to aim for when producing any content (resumes, menus, etc.), it’s extremely difficult to integrate the data, insights and visuals on a single page that caters to everyone on a distribution list. A good strategy is to start bigger than necessary to showcase your capabilities, get the attention of several stakeholders in your organization, consult with unique business units, and fine tune custom reports for each audience.

5. Insights are More Important Than Data

Sometimes key data is all your executives need to make a decision. Should your company officially support IE6 for our next redesign? If only 2 percent of visits to your site for the last six months came from IE6 and incorporating development and testing for an application would cost several million dollars, the answer is easy!

6. Unique Visitors are Real People

Unique visitors is perhaps the single most abused metric in history. If you really think about it, the metric known as unique visitors is no more than: count of persistent cookies dropped in a browser. Unique visitors do not equal browsers, individual people, or computers.

7. Analytics Code Degrades Site Performance

All code degrades site performance. If you had a single webpage with nothing on it, adding any code to it would increase load and execution time. That being said, there are customizations that add considerable bloat to your JavaScript files supporting web analytics data collection. As with any code added to a page, try to measure the benefit of adding additional code versus the cost of not having it on a page.

8. Web Analytics is the Responsibility of Marketing/Research/Communications/Operations/IT/etc.

Web analytics is the responsibility of a data-driven organization. If your website influences your business in any way, it’s everyone’s responsibility within your organization to take a portion of the responsibility for coming up with actionable business insights that increases revenue, decreases cost, takes advantage of opportunity, or mitigates risk.

9. Metrics From Different Web Analytics Vendors, Web Logs, and Databases Should Match

Web analytics is inherently inaccurate and practitioners are rarely adequately versed in statistical theory, so to argue that any one data collection source should match another is futile. There are several factors that contribute to inaccuracies in web analytics data including:

• Browser compatibility with JavaScript code employed by any given vendor. 
• Cookie acceptance.
• Data corruption: receiving, executing, and transmitting.
• Server-side caching, scripting or configuration issues.
• Filters and processing rules: reverse DNS inaccuracies, data sampling, data encoding.

Look past the numbers and analyze trends, ensure your findings are statistically significant before coming to a conclusion, and always be transparent about web analytics limitations.

10. Insights From Web Analytics is Free

Nothing is free. Adding JavaScript code to a site requires time and effort, analyzing reports and deep-diving may entail hard costs and additional access to tools, and the practice of web analytics itself comes at an opportunity cost to the organization that must be considered just like any other capability.
By: Garry Przyklenk,