Visibility

Ten years ago, selling SEO was largely a matter of education; most marketers didn’t know that simple changes to a Web site could drastically improve search engine rankings, or why they should want to do that. Now, SEO is on the radar and in the budget for most sophisticated marketers. Ironically, it is often the most sophisticated teams that have the most trouble showing the success with SEO. Engine algorithms have evolved to be much more complex, and even though SEO tactics have evolved to match them, it is still often the simplest issues that stand in the way of success.

In fact, none of the obstacles I’m going to discuss has anything to do with actual SEO tactics. They are about internal business constraints and poorly implemented (or downright ignored) change management. SEO can operate in a marketing or e-Commerce silo, but the reality is that it touches, involves, and affects many aspects of the business. If these interrelationships are considered prior to investing in an SEO program, a lot of time and money can be saved.

Getting the Data

If justifying SEO means showing the return on investment, aggregating conversion data is key. But often, even if an analytics package is in place, there are huge challenges to getting the data out of it. Either the reports are not set up correctly, or no one in-house knows how to pull them (and there is no budget to pay someone else to pull them). Or in some cases, when an SEO vendor is involved, there is so much red tape involved in sharing the data that it never makes it into an ROI report. SEO efforts may have been wildly successful, and it may even be obvious from the rankings, but not being able to show the bottom line return can mean reduced budgets or canceled programs.

In some cases, the data acquisition can be impossible or cost-prohibitive. If so, unavailability of data should not delay SEO implementation. On the other hand, if getting the data is a matter of identifying and engaging the appropriate parties in your organization, then it makes sense to coordinate with those individuals prior to or in tandem with your SEO efforts. You may even consider donating a portion of the SEO budget to whatever data resources will be necessary, if it means being able to show the true value of SEO and justify additional budget in the future.

Making On-Site Changes

Though SEO has increasingly become an issue of off-site factors, on-site structure, keywords and content still play a very important role. All too often, marketers in complex business environments have the least flexibility with regard to Web site updates. Due to bureaucratic business processes, restrictive CMS implementations, or strict look-and-feel or branding rules, they have limited ability to add content, revise wording to incorporate search-appropriate keywords, or adjust the site architecture.

It’s not that a marketer in this situation should eschew SEO altogether, but assessing the situation before launching an SEO initiative can help to focus the effort and budget, reduce wasted time, and perhaps even prompt overdue business changes prior to attempting a massive SEO implementation.

One of the biggest surprises is how many Fortune 1000 companies still redesign their Web sites before they decide to “SEO” them. The best and most cost-effective approach is to design an optimized site from the start; engage the SEO team or the SEO vendor with the site design crew from the very beginning.

Cross-Functional Communication

A common feature of larger organizations is multiple disparate teams working in parallel to achieve common goals, but not always communicating with each other about them. If they did talk to each other, they might have known they couldn’t get the data or easily make changes to the Web site. They might have worked together to find solutions to these problems prior to beginning their SEO project, or they might at least pull together now and try to make the changes they can so that their SEO initiative can be as successful as possible.

Often this still comes back to education, just like selling SEO in the 1990’s. Marketers in 2009 may be on board with SEO, but many executive leaders, content production teams, PR managers, IT departments, business managers, and even potential “link bait” creators are not – and these are the folks that need to coordinate their efforts for the best SEO result. With an education plan to “sell” the value of SEO and let each contributor know how their efforts affect the outcome, organizations can start to open the lines of communication and design new business processes to support SEO success.

Ideally, SEO should come out of its silo before it even begins. Everyone is working toward the same goal, be it profit, sales, sign-ups, or visibility. Putting the business goals first, departments can collaborate on the best approach to reach those goals, and education as to the benefits and mechanics of SEO can help it find its proper place in the mix.
 
In the words of one client recently, “If we had known how messed up we were, we never would have started this project – we would have saved both our companies a lot of trouble!” In that particular case, we worked with the client to identify these obstacles and design a plan to overcome them. But this client’s story is a familiar one, and highlights the need to take stock of the business environment before committing a large budget to SEO.

SEO is not just marketing – it’s education, communication, and business consulting. Some of our clients are now choosing to do an intensive, stand-alone consulting project up front to help to uncover the issues that will hinder their success with SEO. This also enables them to project the potential return from the tactics they can employ and to better focus the SEO budget on efforts that are both possible and profitable. We strongly recommend this approach in cases where there are many unknowns, difficult-to-justify budgets, or lack of SEO buy-in among business units.