In this third and final post, we’ll dive into the uber-geek promise land of the future - looking at what may be in store for us sooner than we know - things like reverse engineering the brain, computerized human telepathy, and two way communication between consumers’ brains and marketers.
Personal and Relevant is not the Future, it’s Now
Personal and contextual advertising is here, and becoming more granular and more ingrained in our surroundings every day. FourSquare is an iPhone app growing in popularity that allows people to “check-in” wherever they are, see who else is checked in there, any notes anyone has left about the place, and where their friends are checking in. Locations appeal to their FourSquare patrons by giving deals to frequent visitors, and by showing specials nearby. Personal and contextual promotion in action. Another app, UpNext lets you fly through a city and “see” what’s inside buildings. Ample personal and contextual advertising opportunity.
That stuff is already here. Now here’s the really fun part. What do the marketing and technology futurists, the Nostradamus’s of the information age, have to say about what’s in store for us? Here’s a few examples of where thought leaders think we’re headed in 2010 and beyond.
Ubiquitous Computing (and Ubiquitous Marketing)
Ubiquitous computing was coined by Mark Weiser in 1988, and is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s world. Wikipedia defines ubiquitous computing as “a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.”
Can your radical creative marketing mind start to picture the opportunities? Don’t think of this as information overload, think of it as taking personal and relevant marketing opportunities to the extreme - truly to the individual.
Ubiquitous marketing is a term that is so new it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page as of this post (nor does ubiquitous advertising), but it speaks to marketing in an extremely relevant context – taking the concept of reaching the right people at the right time in the right place to a whole new level. It is two-way communication, at visible and invisible levels, all around us, all the time.
Consider providing a targeted online ad, knowing not only the consumer’s demographics, but also that they went to see an action movie last week, bought a high-performance bike, live in an A-frame in Tahoe, and booked a two-week camping trip to Yosemite. Would you put designer heels in front of this person, because her demographic profile that you currently have shows she’s a mid-income 23 year old girl?
Adam Greenfield (who visited us at Yahoo in 2006 and spawned the futurist fascination in me), wrote a book called Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing that explores the adaption and future of Weiser’s ubiquitous computing concept. Check it out for yourself.
Marketing Straight to the Brain
Did you know there are systems that can project a sound that only a specific person can hear? Imagine walking down the street in your home sweet U-city and when you’re within a block of a department store you hear a sound coming out of thin air that a pair of Adidas you’ve been trying to find are in stock at this store and on sale. Mix ubiquitous computing with Audio Spotlight’s hypersonic sound applications and you have just that.
How about getting TV commercial feedback from viewers by knowing what they’re feeling when they watch the ad, without consumer survey or online listening platform feedback? Already being done. Innometrics claims that of last year’s Superbowl ads, Careerbuilder.com had the highest engagement (this year’s results to come). They know this by measuring conscious and unconscious measures in the brain.
We put microchips in our pets’ necks to find them in case Fluffy should wander off and get lost someday. We’ve been experimenting with humans too, using the same technology (RFID) that U-cities are using. There have been tests on controlling human emotions through microchips, which is just downright scary when you put it in a marketing context, or worse yet, the possibility of being hacked. But awesome when you consider that microchip implants in the brain could help control the tremors in Parkinson’s Disease.
In 1998, Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, had a microchip implanted into the median nerves of his left arm, linking his nervous system directly to a computer in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled. They created the first extra-sensory input for a human and the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans - a computerized telepathy of sorts. While he was at it, he also had the chip in his arm open doors at his lab and turn on the lights for him when he entered.
According to Ray Kurzweil, an eccentric futurist and author of The Singularity is Near, we will be able to reverse engineer the brain by the year 2019. In reverse engineering the brain, nanobots inside the brain could replace actual senses with virtual senses, replacing actual experiences with virtual ones. Brain microchip experimentation for controlling disease was happening in the 1960s. This implies that software could be (and according to Kurzweil, already is) downloaded straight to the brain. Progress is being made in controlling a computer interface by reading the brain, and the future of gaming could likely go this way (no more expensive TVs broken by Wii controllers!).
All of this suggests that the future of marketing and advertising hasn’t even begun the profound changes we will encounter in the coming decades. Imagine providing singly personal and contextually relevant ads to specific individuals in shopping malls, on street corners, in virtual realities, or better yet, zapped directly to the brain. Imagine getting your marketing data from signals sent directly to your desk from inside your consumers heads…
This is the kind of stuff Neal Stephenson fans drool over, the kind of stuff sci-fi movies are made of, and the kind of stuff our real life, near term future holds for us. You can prepare for marketing through the newly released, highly hyped iPad, but I suggest you start keeping an eye on RFID systems that will hold our valuable marketing information in the near future.
We all know the marketing landscape is changing, and fast. The term “traditional marketing” is an everyday, commonly used term, meaning marketing beyond what is considered traditional is well-ingrained. It’s here to stay, but that doesn’t mean traditional marketing channels are dead and gone, (although some channels and agencies are on a slippery downward slope), moreover the landscape is just changing.
In the first part of The Future of Marketing Series we took a quick look at what people are searching for online around the future and the future of marketing to find that internet/online/web marketing is popular, followed by search marketing, email marketing and direct marketing respectively, and that they are interested in the future of their devices (computers and phones).
In Part 2, we’ll look at statistics behind the shift from traditional to interactive marketing, the explosion of channels and devices, and the inability of marketing management platforms to support the fast-growing industry, hindering marketers’ ability to manage true, complete, multi-channel marketing effectively through one platform.
Marketing Dollars are Shifting Towards Interactive
There are several sources citing a trend towards abandoning some traditional marketing channels for more interactive marketing:
Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014 suggests that “Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media and toward search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing.”
Interactive Grows At The Expense Of Traditional Media
Figure 1: Forrester: Interactive Grows At The Expense Of Traditional Media
Marketers See Greater Potential in Interactive Channels
Figure 2: Forrester: Marketers See Greater Potential in Interactive Channels
Forecast: US Interactive Marketing Spend, 2009 To 2014
Figure 3: Forrester Forecast: US Interactive Marketing Spend, 2009 To 2014
Destinations Where You Reach Target Markets are Exploding and Fragmenting
Our grandparents told us stories about how the old days were so hard, how they had to walk to school in the snow uphill both ways with only bread and butter for their lunch. We’ve got it so easy today. Right? With marketing I dare to say it’s the other way around. People who’ve outlived their marketing days and retired before MySpace or the Blackberry are sitting back fat and happy and laughing at all the newcomers who have to make sense of social marketing, search marketing, digital book readers, mobile apps, local targeting, personal targeting, mobile marketing, interactive TV, slingboxes, popboxes, zaggboxes, boxees, iPhones, iPods, iPads… Who’s walking uphill both ways now?
I implore you to take a deep breath, close your eyes, take a step outside yourself and your marketing day-to-day, and think about this in a holistic manner. Because the information age is exploding with marketing channels and devices, each with its own features, uses, adoption demographics and shelf lives, one must consider all of this as a whole, rather than each channel and device separately – at least to understand the big picture.
We, as consumers, have been testing the technological grounds to find ways to stay entertained, informed, and connected throughout our day, in real time, when we want it, where we want it. As marketers, our target markets are still at the core. Just because social media marketing is all the rage right now, doesn’t mean you should blindly move your entire marketing budget there. In the same respect, creating an iPhone app just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t always translate into revenue. One thing that has stayed the same whether you’re a traditional marketer, a new media marketer, or something in-between is that you need to identify your target markets and determine how and where they ingest information, then determine your goals (traffic, brand awareness, double your revenue, etc), and then devise strategies for marketing and advertising in those channels.
Maybe your target market hasn’t fully adopted mobile yet – they don’t generally have smart phones, iPads, digital book readers, etc. Do this research before you spend all the time and money on a mobile app.
Maybe your goal is to increase brand advocacy among your targets so they are more of a fan of your brand than your competitor’s. Make sure your efforts are geared toward exactly that.
“Ready, Aim, Fire” vs “Fire…What Happened?” Simple isn’t it?
New technologies allow us to microtarget consumers, at local and personal levels, whenever they access information, wherever they are, which makes interactive marketing all the more relevant and useful for the consumer, and hopefully more targeted and profitable for you.
Define your target market. Define your goals. THEN define channels. Don’t forget to breathe, and everything will be ok.
Marketing and Advertising Management Platforms Aren’t Keeping Up
If you want to make some money, create a flexible, personalizable, multi-channel marketing platform that can keep up with the marketing industry. Better yet, plug that platform into cross-functional business platforms within an organization like Sales or Customer Service CRM platforms, and ad sales management platforms.
At the highest level (stepping back outside of our day-to-day), all of these business units work separately but as a whole, with the ultimate goal of making money for the company. Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows you to choose and connect your own platforms for managing whatever parts of the business you need to, and usually without having to hire someone to build and connect it all for you. For example, if my business needs software for managing sales, financials, and the company website, I can literally grab the apps I need and put all of those pieces together to form my cross-functional management platform.
Managing all of our complex marketing channels through one software (or even several pieces of software than can connect together) still has a lot of growing to do though – especially if we want to do listening, targeting, monitoring and even vendor management all in one place. Most marketing software focuses on traffic, conversions and/or ROI from traditional channels, with some Search, Mobile, and Social capabilities if you’re lucky. Free-standing Search, Mobile and Social software is usually much more robust since the primary business goals for those software creators has been much more targeted to one channel than the full-solution providers. Add on the different devices where we want to track impressions, adoption, clickthroughs, engagement, traffic, conversions, ROI… and.. well we’re still getting there.
Unfortunately as of yet, marketing analytics platforms, listening platforms, and PaaS solutions aren’t keeping up fast enough to allow advertisers to fully manage true multi-channel marketing, as fast as multi-channel marketing is evolving.
Forrester’s 2008 Enterprise Marketing Platform paper on this subject states “Eighty-three percent of marketers, a significant majority, tell us that they need a comprehensive marketing suite to improve their effectiveness.”
It suggests that today’s 6 core enterprise marketing platforms still do not support complete marketing information and efforts.
Forrester: Six Applications Dominate Today’s Enterprise Marketing Platform
Figure 4: Forrester: Six Applications Dominate Today’s Enterprise Marketing Platform
With better tools to do the job, the future of interactive and comprehensive multi-channel marketing would surely become a more streamlined and uncomplicated process. And as we’ll see in the third and final post of this mini series on the Future of Marketing, this explosion is just the beginning. Soon everything will be computerized, potentially even our brains. Imagine the splinterization of channels, devices and management platforms that will need to keep up with that…
The word “futurist” is one of those things that makes my eyes light up, my heart rate increase and my imagination run wilder than George Michael on a bender. In the first of a three-part series on the future of marketing, we delve into what people are searching for around the future of marketing and technology to gain insight into what’s on the top of searchers’ minds.
This three-part series consists of these three articles:
Part 1: What Do People Want to Know About the Future?
Part 2: Making Sense of Exploding Marketing Channels, devices, and platforms
Part 3: Marketing Straight to the Brain
What do People Want to Know About The Future?
Since my background is in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I naturally go straight to search data to read what people are searching for – like my own little crystal ball into consumers’ heads.
Sometimes search data is very useful and insightful, and sometimes it’s just interesting or downright weird. In this case there’s nothing groundbreaking to be found in these terms people are searching around the future, but it does give us some idea of what people are thinking about and what is trending.
Of course there are the general search terms like “future” and “the future,” but I’m going to skip over those. I’ll also exclude searches having to do with the futures market and trading. Which leaves us with some terms I pulled out and put into two categories: Marketing/Technology and Interesting.
Figure 1: marketing & tech future searches
Notice that people are obviously interested in the future of their computer and phone devices.We don’t see TV/television, car tech, tablets, kiosks, etc, which of course are other devices that can be used to access real time digital information. The interest is clearly in the future of mobile devices (sans tablets…so far).
Another thing I find interesting is that we see “future media” and “future marketing” here, but not future advertising.
We are a demandingly inquisitive bunch, are we not?
What Does it All Mean?
Not a whole lot so far, but that was fun, wasn’t it? Digging in further we can expose more interest into the marketing world in particular. What people are searching on in marketing is a good indicator of what’s hot now or soon will be.
The table below represents the top 20 global searches in Google in January around the term “marketing”.
Figure 3: Marketing searches
In this economy it isn’t surprising that people are searching for marketing jobs more than anything else. And alongside jobs, people are searching for internet/online/web marketing the most (3.9mm when combining the internet/online/web searches above), then search marketing (1mm combining the two search marketing searches), email marketing (673K), and direct marketing (450K). Social media marketing (not in the top 20 list above) has about 40K searches in January 2010 in Google.
This aligns fairly nicely with Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast in the second part of this series that predicts the shift of marketing dollars away from traditional marketing towards interactive marketing, especially Search.
,
That goes by the Blackberry name.
But as you iPhone readers know
It’s not even close to the same.
I called the places we’d been last night,
In my voice some hope did flicker,
“Have you seen my white 3G iPhone?
With a big Search Engine Land sticker?”
But no one has turned you over
And given you back to me.
No one has claimed to see you,
My own beloved 3G.
No one has answered my Craigslist ad
For my lost iPhone.
No one has called me back with news.
Your fate remains unknown.
So I mope around thinking of you,
Wincing at iPhone ads,
Trying to think of something else
but my heart is broke, I’m sad.
I simply can’t go out and buy another
Without proper grieving time.
To do so would be unthoughtful,
Dare I say a crime?
So with my heavy heart I’ll grieve
And resort to my laptop.
Maybe Sunday if I’m up to it
I’ll venture out to shop.
But know that iPhone Number Two
Just wont mean the same to me.
I’ll never forget you Number One
White Apple iPhone 3G.
In Part 1 of The Ultimate Guide to In-House SEO, we explored who is going in-house and why, how to determine whether bringing SEO In-House is worth the cost, and the advantages and disadvantages of having SEO In-House.
I covered determining how many people you need to hire and where they might live in your organization. Here in Part 3 we’ll take a deep dive into types of SEOs, SEO titles, salaries, and lots of great industry survey data. It’s a long one, so get your caffeine fix and get comfortable, we’re going for a fun, data-delicious ride.
How do I hire someone?
An In House SEO is much more involved in office politics than a contracted SEO, since that’s where they are all the time. The In House SEO needs to be successful at penetrating cross-functional teams, educating those teams, and getting them to buy-in to SEO and fully implement it. Here are some qualities to look for in your In House SEO:
In House SEO Employee Qualities
Personable. Because they’ll need people on cross-functional teams to like them
Patient. Because the larger the company and the more moving parts there are, the longer they might have to wait for implementation.
Inquisitiveсмотреть порно бес . Because you want them to ask questions in order to determine the right solutions and you want them to stay on top of industry trends and techniques (you don’t want any know-it-all SEOs).
. Because they’ll need people who don’t report into them to do things (listen to them, trust them, implement SEO).
A. For Marketing In House SEOs:
A marketing SEO can potentially take on strategy, and how to work SEO/M into the overall marketing mix. They should be skilled in seeing the big picture and prioritizing. If they are technical enough, they can also conduct competitive audits to determine competitive landscape before building a product. Most marketing SEOs are less skilled on the technical side (and vice versa), but are much better at the big picture, and therefore better strategists.
Opportunity:
This person should know how to find SEO opportunity, determine how big or small that opportunity is, be able to prioritize multiple opportunities, and how those opportunities fit into the overall traffic or marketing opportunity for a site.
For example, for a suite of multiple properties (sites), this person can tell you which property has the most opportunity to gain search traffic (and ideally how much it’s worth, if your internal systems are set up correctly to determine this). Then within each property they can tell you where the most opportunity lives, and prioritize which parts of the site would give you the most return in search traffic.
Link Relationships:
This person may or may not have control over internal and external linking relationships (sometimes this is purely a business development function). It is good for this role to understand the value of a link (internally and externally) for SEO, since it’s more than likely this will come up often, whether biz dev/partnerships is part of their job or not. It is a critical ranking factor and needs to be fully, completely understood anytime there are link exchanges, partnership negotiations, or even for internal linking strategies that can boost search traffic.
Balancing SEO & PPC:
This person should understand how to make SEO decisions based on PPC data, and PPC decisions based on SEO data. This includes being able to make decisions on SEO & PPC actions to take when event spikes happen (there’s a hurricane & we’ve got fresh pics on it – should we buy the terms while we build content around it?), or even for reoccurring or predictable events like holidays, shows, etc. They should also be able to read PPC & SEO data to determine when to start, stop, ramp up, or ramp down any PPC campaigns based on PPC and algo CTR performance.
Marketing Mix:
This person should also understand how search traffic can potentially be integrated with other marketing campaigns. How does SEO/M fit into your overall marketing mix? Be sure to consider both short term & long term. Can you send search traffic via offline advertising? Are you engaging in social media campaigns? If so, how is this affecting search traffic (and/or your branding)? Are you doing affiliate marketing, and if so, what are the considerations to take?
Many SEOs are in marketing at small companies and wear multiple hats. The more they know about marketing outside of SEO, the more opportunities you might have to create visibility beyond an algorithmic search result, since they will be able to see and potentially act on the connections between SEO and other marketing channels.
B. For Engineering/Development In House SEOs
Technical SEOs are usually technically skilled but less adept at figuring out how search traffic fits into an overall property marketing strategy (although it’s not impossible!). But they are good at creating a site that is not just crawlable, but one that will rank highly in search results. A web dev/ engineering SEO can potentially take on everything once you say “go” in the build process. This starts with information architecture, URLs, and wireframing, moving completely through the entire build process, and can also include pre- and post-launch QA.
Logical
This person must not be a hothead. You don’t want SEOs who say “just do it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.” You need someone who can sensibly look at all aspects of a problem and decide on the best route to a solution, and sometimes that isn’t the best thing for SEO. Most of the time an engineering SEO will face issues with what’s best for SEO vs. Usability or sometimes SEO vs. Accessibility (although those two usually go hand in hand – but not always – depending on what your SEO is recommending). Objectivity and a maintaining a sense of the overall goals of solving the problem at hand are not only important, but will make for a friendlier and more trusting relationship between your SEO and engineers.
Problem Solving:The Goldwyn Follies downloadThey Shoot Horses, Dont They? full movie
This person needs to be inquisitive – needs to have that unending desire to solve any problem – because believe me, this is going to be the foundation of their job. SEO basics are cookie-cutter, but a good SEO can (and will almost always need to) go beyond basics. Once you start building something you’ll be running into issues on how to build it to look and function like you want it to, but to still meet SEO needs. Treatments for pagination, navigation, AJAX & Flash usage, and dynamically created pages or content often require someone to come up with unique solutions for how to successfully deploy these things so everyone is happy.
Code-savvy:
This should be self-evident. This person has their nose in code all day long. The more they know about coding types and intricacies, the more solution options you’re bound to have. If *nothing* else, this person at least has to understand and have experience hand-coding HTML and JavaScript. That might get you by, but ideally you want your engineering SEO to have a much more impressive code portfolio.
Technical SEO techniques:
If anyone needs to know this stuff inside and out, it’s your technical SEO. Most of the SEO ranking factorsLange flate ballær II psp on SEOmoz’s infamous list are technical, and not just ‘need-to-know”, but ‘need-to-fully-understand’ items. This is especially true for understanding how information architecture affects SEO, URL structures, handling redirects, geolocation, microformats, image, flash, video and javascript/AJAX considerations, creating XML sitemaps, etc. Side by side with problem-solving, this is the crux of a technical SEO job.
Keyword-savvy:
There’s often a fight over who is supposed to write the meta tags. Should it be editors since they usually do all the writing? Should it be marketers since their job is to draw people in? Should it be engineers since they are already working with all of the code? You might have to decide that one for yourself. But more often than not, whoever is writing the tags is deciding what the page titles and meta tags are saying, and what Hx header tags are wrapped around. For this reason, this person should have a keen understanding of how each of those areas work for SEO – how to write unique titles that will get you the best ranking, how to write unique meta descriptions that will get you the most clickthrough, exactly what content on the page should be the H1 header and what that should say in order to be relevant and get you the most search traffic, and what the rules and limitations of each of these are.
CMS/Publishing:
If you’re using a content management or publishing system that is hindering your site’s visibility – you’ve got a big problem. Your technical SEO should know how to best choose a publishing system for you, or know what needs to be done to the one you’re using now in order to get the best results. For example, if your current CMS spits out super-long dynamic URLs and doesn’t allow you to overwrite them with search-friendly ones, you’re going to want to fix that.
C. For SEO Copywriters:
SEO copywriters have a very distinct, targeted area of SEO to focus on. Oftentimes SEO copywriters are outsourced contractors, but can also be full-time employees. Writers tend to have more incentive to write in a search-friendly manner that will get you more search traffic when they are paid by performance. Consider doing a rev share – the more money you make from Search off their articles, the more money they make. Otherwise writers tend to be more chic and stylish, ignoring high-volume traffic-driving keywords, linking practices, and other tactics that boost search traffic.
Writing for the Web:
This person must understand the differences between writing for offline (magazines or newspaper for example) and writing for the web. They are different mediums and need to be treated that way to be successful.
Linkbaiting:
There is no shortage of great ideas out there for creating linkbait (see More Resources at the end of this article). This person should have the creative prowess to generate titles that grab attention and content that makes people want to share it, link to it, twitter about it, talk about it, etc. If your SEO copywriter is coming up with drab, lackluster content and meaningless, keyword-less titles, you may have gotten a bad deal, and people just aren’t going to link to it.
Keyword-savvy:
This person should know precisely how to manipulate titles, text, and links with just the right keywords to maximize search traffic opportunity for your pages. If the article is about Jennifer Lopez they should know whether to use her whole name or J-Lo (or JLo), how often to use one or all variations, and exactly where to use them.
Linking:
A major factor in good SEO’d copy is the links within the copy. This person must not only understand what terms to use in the links, but which parts of a sentence or phrase to link and which parts not to, how much is overdoing it, what that link URLs should look like, where they should be linking to, and where the more valuable links are on a page.
Blogger Relationships:
Part of the SEO Copywriters job is to become an integral part of a blogging community. By interacting (on- and offline) with other peer bloggers/journalists in the space, you will likely benefit by getting more links to your own content. If a blogger is a loner, they better be a darn good linkbaiter.
D. For Social Media SEOs:
There’s a new breed of SEO in town (well, I guess they’ve been around for a few years). This position could be an SEO position, or could be a separate community manager-type position. Since many social media/community managers were bred from SEO, oftentimes the two overlap. This position also has the most “if’s” since it all depends on what you’re having your SEO/social media/community person do.
This person needs to be likable, since they will likely be managing accounts in various places in order to build up followers, gain trust, and interact with others in those social spaces. The more smart, friendly, communicative and amicable this person is the more success they will have at getting others to retweet, digg, link to, spread the word, etc.
Multi-tasking:
This person will likely be managing conversations, link negotiations, and social networking accounts in many places, so if multitasking isn’t one of their skills you might be in for a long ride.
Link Relationships:
This person may or may not have control over internal and external linking relationships (sometimes this is purely a business development or marketing function). It is a critical ranking factor, so if your Social Media SEO is out there building links to your site, it is crucial that they fully understand all aspects of link building. This includes canonical URLs, anchor text, link placement, and relationships between linking pages.
Cross-functional business knowledge:
In larger companies, this role might work more like the middle man, delegating social media actions to be addressed out to various groups within a company such as customer care, brand marketing, or product. For example, if you launch a new product and are monitoring it in social spaces online, your social media SEO (in addition to promoting it in social spaces online) might find people who are talking positively or negatively about the new product and can send that feedback to the Product Manager. In that, they might find a major influencer online trashing the new product, and all of their followers starting to do the same. They might send that feedback over to Customer Care to take action before it escalates. They would also likely touch base with Brand, Product Marketers, PR, and possibly even Business Development. Keep in mind that they should be situated in a part of the org that allows them to effectively reach and work with cross-functional groups.
What are their titles?
One of the fun parts about SEO is that titles can be practically made up. SEO encompasses so many things, can live in multiple areas of an organization, and is different everywhere you go. So what is the first step in determining your SEO’s title? Check out some of the existing titles below (feel free to add more in the comments if you know of any I’ve missed!), and factor in some of the consideration points below as well.
Personally, I don’t like to call most SEOs SEOs, but of course I do it out of habit (and – what else would you call them)? This is because SEO comes with stigmas: a lot of people think all you do is code tweaks, plus there have been people who have given SEO a bad rep over the years. For these reasons I’d suggest thinking about doing away with “SEO” in titles, and allowing your SEOs to encompass more, functionally and through other people’s eyes.
How much do SEOs get paid?
Ahhh, now the juicy stuff. SEO salaries have historically been fairly high for an industry where most of its professionals have less than 5 years of experience. Although rather than seeing a normal bell curve when looking at SEO salary ranges, we’ve seen somewhat of an inverse bell curve – where the mid-range salaries are actually the dip, and the peaks are in the low $30K-$50K range and the high over $100K range. More and more people have been entering the business recently (word has gotten out about how great this job is!), plus the economy hasn’t helped salaries much, so will this effect SEO salaries now and in the coming years? I’ve dug into some past and current data to try to find the answer.
Keep in mind that article is from 2006, and now let’s look at a little more recent data.
2008 SEMPO In-House SEM Salaries Survey:
As for positions in the 2008 SEMPO In-House SEM Salaries Survey, most of the respondents (35%) had “other” titles, followed by 26% Managers, 10% Directors and 9% Senior Managers.
In-House SEM Titles - SEMPO 2008 Survey
On salaries, the bell curve is left-slanted, with the peak towards the lower end and a long downslope going towards the higher end. The peak of the salary bell curve is in the $60,001 - $70,000 range. The bulk of the bell is between $30,000 and $80,000, and each 10K increment in that range was over 10% (ex: $30K was over 10%, $40K was over 10%, $50K was over 10%, etc). There were two emerging peaks on the extended downward slope - one at $100K - $120K and another at $200K - $250K. Again we see a bell curve with peaks in the low range and in the high range.
Here’s testament to how young the industry is: A large majority of the SEMPO respondents were in the biz 0-3 years. These 0-3 year SEMs’ salaries peak at $30K-$40K. This is followed by a good percentage of people with 3-5 years experience, of who likely push up the $60-$70K range. Very few had more than 5 years under their belt, and most of these (oftentimes doing more than just SEO) are creating those smaller peaks in the over $100K range, although there is a peak with the 5-7 year SEMs in the $40-$50K range.
Not surprisingly, there were larger percentages of respondents in metropolitan areas than rural. And the company sizes seem to imitate what I see at In-House sessions at conferences –most (similar percentages (8% difference)) are at companies under 100, or over 1000.
Most managed either $0 - $25K monthly SEM budget or over $200K. And lastly, most did not manage other people.
Here’s some really interesting (some of it borderline shocking) data from straight from the press release on that survey, on SEM’s managing budgets:
Of those managing budgets greater than $200,000/month, 42.3% are managers, and within that group, 27% report salary ranges in excess of $100,000/year.
39.4% of respondents managing monthly SEM budgets in excess of $200,000 report having 3 years of experience or less. 34.2% have between 3 and 5 years experience, and those with 5+ years of experience totaled 26.4%.
42.6% of those managing budgets larger than $200,000/month do not manage staff. 92.9% are part of a dedicated “in-house” SEM team and 77.4% of those “teams” are considered to be part of their company’s Marketing departments.
From this data, it’s relatively safe to assume that the Director level or people manager SEO/M, with more years of experience (and possibly larger SEM budget management) are likely in the $100K plus range, where the people they manage are in the $30 to $80K range. I don’t know the stats for salary by location, but because a large number of respondents were from metropolitan areas, I think we can be fairly confident that they are also driving the bell curve outlier peaks at $100K - $120K and possibly some of the $200 - $250K salaries, where SEMs in rural areas and with less experience are good contenders for driving the $30K side of the curve.
SEOmoz 2008 SEO Industry Survey
All of this jives nicely with the salary data from the SEOmoz 2008 SEO Industry Survey, which shows a salary peak at $30K, and a downslope from there, with the exception another peak in the $75K - $100K range. I’m inclined to think that SEOmoz survey participants might err on the side of learning stage and developer-oriented, where SEMPO participants might err on the side of slightly more experienced marketing professionals. If that is the case, I would expect SEMPO data to skew higher. And in fact, the highest percentage of SEOmoz survey respondents (21%) were SEO specialists, followed by 12% web developers, 9% President/CEOs and 8% marketing managers.
Salary Tools
There’s also some other interesting collections of SEO salary data that, happily, also fall in line with what we’ve seen so far from SEMPO and SEOmoz.
Here’s some information that seems to suggest a downtrend in SEO and Search Marketing salaries. When I checked Director of SEO jobs on SimplyHired in March (when I started this blog post) the average was $98,000. Checking it now two and a half months later in May, the average salary for the same title is down 25% at $73,000. Interestingly enough, Director of SEO in San Francisco is a bit higher at $98,000 (the previous average), but was $104,000 in March. Search Marketing titles that were in the $80K range in March are now averaging out at $64,000.
As for salary trends, word on the street is that SEO salaries (and agency fees) are hitting a tipping point. Whether it’s an effect of the recession, the industry peaking, or both I’m not sure. But if that is true, then we’re coming to a point where really only the best of the best with proven performance track records can rightly ask for a high salary, not just anyone who says they “do SEO”.
Here is some more data that suggests a downtrend - below is an Indeed.com graph that shows a decent sized dip in the SEO salary index
from October 2008 to Jan/Feb 2009. There is a slight rise in April (were people getting the drift that SEO/M is more targeted and cost-effective in a down economy?), but the rise doesn’t bring the salaries back to where they were in 2008 (yet).
SEO Salary trend from Indeed.com
Although the index is lower in January 2009, it’s nothing compared to summer of 2007 on this chart (actually low salaries or lack of positions to create the data)? SEM salaries don’t show the same trend – they’re all over the place. SEO Directors and SEO Specialists are also on a rollercoaster ride (although comparable trends to simply “SEO”), and SEO Managers better start looking for a new job (or at least a new title) by the looks of this chart.
SEO Manager Salary & trend from Indeed.com
It is refreshing to see SEO/M salaries normalizing, making employers much more comfortable with that aspect of hiring an SEO, and SEO/M’s beginning to realize their worth.
The most important thing to remember is that no two SEOs are the same. There are multiple facets to SEO/M and each person has their special interests, talents and work ethics. Think about what your needs are when you’re hiring. If you’re looking for pure technical on-site implementation, you’ll be fine with a technical, web-dev background SEO. If you’re in an industry with a lot of competition online, you might lean more towards an SEO who can provide you with marketing and competitive strategy insights, and use an agency or hire an additional SEO for the technical on-site implementation. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find one of those rare species of SEO who is master of both domains.
If you’re still not sure about what kind of SEO to hire, where to find them, or what questions to ask, check out Jessica Bowman. She specializes in placing SEOs, and can do the entire hiring process for you to find the right kind of person to fit your needs. She is well-known and well integrated in the In-House SEO community, so if there is anyone who can find you your SEO in shining armor, it’s Jessica.
Have insight on SEO types, titles, salaries and trends that I missed? Add your thoughts in the comments below!
In Part 1 of the Ultimate Guide to In House SEO we explored who is going in-house and why, how to determine whether bringing SEO In-House is worth the cost, and the advantages and disadvantages of having SEO In-House.
Here in Part 2 I’ll assume you’re convinced, and now trying to determine how many people you need to hire, where they should live in the organization. I was originally going to add salaries in here too, but it’s already a long post, so we’ll cover SEO salaries in Part 3..
Let’s get started, shall we?
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Where should SEO Sit?
This is not an easy question to answer. Nor is there a one-size-fits-all answer to this challenge.
At many of the large companies I’ve talked to, SEO also rolls up into marketing, but again, this is not always the case, and there are advantages as well as disadvantages to rolling up into marketing versus other places. Let’s look at a few options and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
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SEO Org When Everything Rolls up into Product
If your marketing and engineering teams roll up into product (rather than being horizontal to product), one of these two options below might work for you.
Figure 1: SEO reports into Marketing under Product
SEO follows what is usually a natural path rolling into Search Marketing (which can also roll into Internet or Online marketing) and then into Marketing, all under product.
Figure 1: SEO in Marketing under Product
Advantage:
Marketing, Engineering and Product are all held accountable by head of Product
SEO and PPC are all handled in the same place
Disadvantage
Engineering has less accountability for building SEO into CMS and/or code (Head of product needs to make engineering accountable)
If there are multiple products, SEO can become decentralized, although a central SEO unit can still set standards & processes (see figure 3)
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Figure 2: SEO reports into Product alongside Marketing & Engineering
In this example, SEO is it’s own entity, reporting directly into Product alongside Marketing and Engineering
Figure 2: SEO under Product alongside Marketing & Engineering
Advantage:
Accountability could potentially be stronger here since SEO is closer to Product, as long as Marketing, Engineering and Product are all held accountable by head of Product
Disadvantage
Breaks the relationship between marketing & SEO, where SEO is accountable for search traffic as one of multiple traffic campaigns (including PPC)
When there are multiple products, SEO can become decentralized, although a central SEO unit can still set standards & processes (see figure 3)
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Figure 3: Split SEO into two functions, under Product
Here SEO functions are split into two separate, more individually focused positions: one Marketing position that handles everything that is not technical (strategy, systems, processes, link building, press releases, social media, training, potentially PPC), and one Technical position that handles all of the technical on-site implementation, either hands-on or working alongside designers, developers and QA folks.
Note: The marketing position could even be split up into two separate positions – one that handles pre-build competitive strategy, training, education, PPC, and PR, and one that handles post-launch link building, accounts in social spaces, and reputation management.
Figure 3: SEO split into two functions under Mktg & Engineering, all under Product
Creates accountability for Strategic (Marketing) SEO to balance PPC & SEO as marketing channels, and devise competitive search strategy, press releases
Creates accountability for engineering SEO to create search-friendly CMS, provide technical SEO recommendations, work with QA on the product, etc
Allows SEO to be more focused on a specialty within SEO rather than spread thin and wide
Marketing and Engineering roles must be clearly defined and they must collaborate seamlessly for successful well-rounded success. This isn’t always easy since many aspects of SEO often overlap between technical and non-technical.
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Figure 4: Centralizing when there are multiple product BU’s
Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3 shown here as multiple product business units in one organization. This can decentralize SEO unless you have a central SEO team (or at least intranet) that controls horizontal standards and processes such as reporting, CMS optimization, styles guides, etc.
Figure 4: Centralizing decentralized SEO under multiple products
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When Marketing and Engineering are horizontal to Product
If your marketing and/or engineering hubs do not roll into product, then product is not held accountable for implementation. In this case data can be your best friend, and you may have to work harder to get buy-in from multiple groups. Making sure that people under products can see the results of implementation (or non-implementation) is usually the best driver for buy-in, especially if you can tie money to your story. As far as organization, lets look at a couple of structure possibilities below, with advantages and disadvantages.
Figure 5: SEO reports into Marketing, horizontal to Product & Engineering
This org chart shows SEO reporting into marketing (potentially could layer like this: Marketing > Internet/Online Marketing > Search Marketing > SEO).
Figure 5: SEO report into Marketing, horizontal to Product
Advantage:
Easier to incorporate SEO as a marketing channel (including PPC)
Disadvantage
Engineering has no accountability for building SEO into CMS and/or code
Product has no accountability for building SEO into product plans
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Figure 6: SEO reports into Engineering, horizontal to Product and Marketing
Here SEO reports into engineering, which usually allows more technical on-page SEO to move forward, including publishing and content management system optimization. For SEOs with a technical background this is often a more natural structure.
Figure 6: SEO report into Engineering, horizontal to Product
Advantage:
Engineering is accountable for incorporating technical on-page SEO and/or CMS optimization
Disadvantage:
Product is not accountable for including SEO into product plans
Breaks the relationship between marketing & SEO, where SEO is accountable for search traffic as one of multiple traffic campaigns (including PPC)
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Figure 7: SEO reports into Product, horizontal to Marketing and Engineering
Here SEO reports directly into Product, rather than into Marketing or Engineering. Because SEO incorporates marketing (competitive strategy, partnerships, press releases, and search as one channel of an overall traffic strategy) and engineering (on-page SEO, publishing systems), this separates SEO from being primarily liable for just one side, and potentially gives SEO more freedom. It also put SEO closer to the product, which in the end is ultimately accountable for implementing marketing and engineering.
Figure 7: SEO report into Product, horizontal to Engineering and Marketing
Advantage:
Puts SEO closer to products, that are accountable for including SEO into their product plans and fully implementing all aspects of SEO in the end
Freedom to take responsibility for both marketing and technical/engineering SEO tasks
Disadvantage:
Breaks the relationship between marketing & SEO, where SEO is accountable for search traffic as one of multiple traffic campaigns (including balancing SEO strategies with PPC)
May be more difficult to get accountability directly out of marketing and engineering teams for balancing SEO with SEM and for implementing, QA’ing and/or search-friendly CMS. Must have a Product Manager who can and will do this.
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Figure 8: Split SEO into two functions, horizontal to Product
Here SEO is split into Marketing and Engineering, but do not roll up into Product like in Figure 3. The split allows for accountability on both the marketing and engineering sides of the spectrum, but still needs to influence Product to include SEO as part of their product plans and then to implement recommendations from both sides. This also splits search traffic accountability into two separate teams. So they must work closely together towards the same goal.
Figure 8: SEO split between Marketing and Engineering horizontal to Product
Creates accountability for Strategic (Marketing) SEO to balance PPC & SEO as marketing channels, and devise competitive search strategy, press releases
Creates accountability for engineering SEO to create search-friendly CMS, provide technical SEO recommendations, work with QA on the product, etc
Disadvantage:
Product is not accountable for including SEO plans and recommendations in the product
No one accountable of both marketing and engineering SEO teams do not collaborate
Depending on what your organization looks like and what its needs are, consider the different advantages and disadvantages to these org options and choose what might be right for you. Obviously it could be something completely different than what is listed here. If you have other situations that are working (or not working) for you, I would love to hear about them – drop a line in the comments or ping me on Twitter @lauralippay.
No matter what your org ends up looking like, one of the most important things for the success and sanity of your SEO(s), is that they report into someone who understands the value of SEO and the multiple cross-functional efforts that are imperative to making long term SEO successful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told managers in the past that I wanted to be more than just a bullet point on their agendas. If you have a manager who understands your needs they’ll provide you the resources you need and help you pull the strings that need to be pulled. Otherwise you might end up with too much to do, not enough people to do it all, no one implementing your recommendations because they’re too busy with other stuff, and then execs are asking you why your search traffic isn’t skyrocketing yet. The biggest difference between doing SEO in-House rather than at an agency is that you are accountable for what happens after your recommendations are given.
As Marshall Simmonds put it, “I didn’t want to roll up to someone who needed education or ran the risk of not getting it…I wasn’t about to take 4 steps back and have to prove the business case every time I wanted something done.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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SEO in International Organizations
There are certainly considerations for SEO in an organization that has global constituents. If you’re creating products in one country or language and then passing them off to other countries to adapt to their local areas and languages, here are things to keep in mind:
Streamline backend
: Content management and publishing systems need to allow for optimization of page templates in different languages
Local SEOs: Each localization and language should have an SEO representative to tweak optimization against their local competition (marketing & strategy side) and to effectively translate things like title tags, meta content, link text, etc (technical side).
Centralized reporting: Consider where reporting will live for properties that have global constituents. You want reporting to be as streamlined across the company as possible to avoid multiple different types of reports using different data filtering and telling different stories.
Centralized Standards: A centralized global standards group or intranet must exist, to ensure that there is one set of standards that will be applied across the company. This can help avoid products using different SEO styles and techniques in one area that may not be acceptable to SEOs in other areas. This should be done regardless of whether the company is global. As long as there are multiple SEOs and/or SEO groups, a set of uniformly agreed-upon standards should be in place.
Some other things you can do to bridge the gap between internationals are:
An annual Intl SEO conference just for SEOs: Get together physically in one place every year to go over wins, bottlenecks, lessons learned, tools, reports, and basically catch each other up on what’s been going on in each location over the past year. Then go out and do something fun together. If you only get to see each other once a year you want to really get to know each person.
Whether it’s an email list or an internal forum on your intranet, have a place where internal SEOs can bounce ideas off each other, ask questions without having to turn to external resources, and basically keep a rapport going.
A: multiple properties: Anywhere from one to four properties per SEO (also highly dependent on the rest of the questions in this list)
Q2: How often does content update?
A: less than once a week: Less work might be needed once best practices are in place and decent links are built up. You might even be ok with using a contractor rather than in-house. See Part 1 of The Ultimate Guide to In-House SEO: When to Hire In-House SEO vs. Contracted and Why
A: More than once a week: More work might be involved, especially in continually building links to updated content and making sure SEO is built into content refreshes. How much work with this person be doing in recommendations and/or hands-on? Across multiple sites and multiple business units, and especially multiple countries, this might take more than one SEO.
Q3: How many cross-functional teams will this resource/team engage with?
A: The more cross-functional teams this person needs to engage with, the more shallow their work will be (in the sense of reach, not necessarily of quality). On the other hand, the less widely spread they are, the deeper they’ll be able to get. In other words, one person who is working across a wide range of functional teams like editorial, engineering, design, marketing, QA and so on, will be less fully engaged (and available) as one person who is working more deeply with one or two teams. Consider how many people at the company need to tap into this resource and whether or not you’ll need multiple resources to gain reach wide as well as deep.
Q4: Are underlying processes already in place (proper SEO reporting, search-friendly CMS, training and education) or will they need to be built?
A: Yes, my CMS is optimized, my SEO reporting tells me what I need to know, and we have an SEO training system in place. In this case your SEO will not have to spend the majority of their time putting the systems in place that allow for long term successes, and can focus solely on strategy and implementation. It takes less resource when they don’t need to plan for systems and processes.
A: No, we need someone to give us reporting, optimize our CMS, establish standards and train people at the company. Don’t underestimate how time consuming it is to set the foundation for successful long term SEO at a company. The bigger the company and the more moving parts, the more time consuming this will be - this in itself could very easily be a full time job. And it’s highly recommended to have your foundation laid before you start expecting long term SEO successes. You might consider hiring your full time SEO to get the underlying process started and hiring contractors for short term recommendations in the meantime. Let your full time SEO manage the contractor, don’t let the contractor come in and step on their toes.
порно сказки Q5: How many of these things are expected of this resource or team (listed from potentially less time consuming to more):
Press release optimization
Social account management
Marketing & competitive strategye. Reporting and analysis
Link building & partnerships
Technical SEO recommendations and/or implementation
A: One person will do all or most of those things: Again, if you have one person wearing many hats you should expect their reach to be more shallow.
A: Different people own each of those things: The more separated and targeted each person’s role is, the wider the reach they can attain. Consider the split org structures above.
Short term results: A contractor might be the best bet if you’re looking for short term one time results. If you’re hiring someone for long term results, but need short term wins in the meantime, you might want to hire a contractor for the short term wins while your employee works on getting the program up and running. If you’re already good to go with your SEO reporting, optimized CMS, and educated constituents, then your employee should be able to start working towards getting you short term wins fairly quickly. As mentioned previously, if you have your SEO foundation already in place, your SEO(s) can focus on implementation and wins, rather than the practically full-time job of chasing down people to create an optimized foundation for long term SEO.
A: Long term results: For long term results you’d ideally want an internal full time employee who will become a well-known point of contact for all of the product managers, engineers, editorial folks, designers, etc. Again, if you need to build the underlying foundation for long term success (CMS, reporting, training), you might need more than one person, since that can be a full time job in itself.
Q2. When current projects are finished is there still demand for this resource or team?
A: No, we only really have a couple of immediate projects: In this case, you might consider a contractor rather than a full time SEO. See Part 1 of The Ultimate Guide to In-House SEO: When to Hire In-House SEO vs. Contracted and Why
A: Yes: We’re always putting out content for which we want search traffic: As long as there is content hitting the page, whether its refreshes of current content or building new sites and new content, pages, modules, widgets, etc, you’ll want someone internally to work with the product managers, designers, developers, editors and marketing teams on making sure that everything that hits the page (and the systems they use to create the content) are optimized. You’ll likely want someone to provide not just reports, but expert analysis as well. And don’t forget about link building, reputation management, social account management, press releases, balancing SEO and PPC, and all the other things that influence search traffic. Most importantly, don’t ever forget that SEO is an ongoing thing, not a one-off project.
Q3: Are you able to engage in resource leveling to manage this resource or team across multiple projects?
A: No, there is only one are where we demand this persons time and expertise. This is ok. In fact, maybe great. You want your resource to know one property/site or set of properties/sites well, and to be focused on long term wins for that property. As long as the property has refreshing content and initiatives, there will be something to do.
A: Yes, this person can split their time between multiple areas or projects. I never, ever, ever suggest bringing in a non-SEO person to do an SEO’s job, especially if you are in competitive verticals online. That said, if you are expecting your resource to jump around between projects, this resource should be your SEO resource and their projects should be related to increasing search traffic. It’s ok to focus on only one or a few properties at a time when they are in the midst of creating something new, and then jump to another area when it is more active, but 1) keep it all in the search traffic acquisition family (which indeed is quite broad already), and 2) don’t expect to do some SEO work on one property/site and then let it go – it’s going to need follow up TLC. Remember SEO is an ongoing thing, not a one-off project. Also, expect better results with a more focused resource. If you must prioritize across multiple projects, put your resource where you have the most opportunity to gain search traffic for profit.
COST: Can you justify this resource or team?
Q1: What is your expected ROI if you can reach your search traffic goals?
A: I don’t know what I expect to get in return for what I spend on my SEO resource(s): This is important. You don’t want to spend more on your SEO resource than you’ll get in return from search. Just because a product is launching doesn’t mean there is search demand for it (although with good marketing it could be created). You’ll want to either a hire a contractor who can tell you what the demand for your product might look like, or stay tuned for Part 5 of this series, What You’re Expected to Get Done and How to Do it, which will highlight determining SEO Opportunity in the reporting section. You can also see a little bit of that in online write-ups of my and Dave Roth’s previous speaking sessions on SEO reporting: Search for Dave Roth’ presentation on the SEO Reporting and Scorecarding for Management session at 2009 SMX West, Laura Lippay’s presentation on the Analytics Every SEO Needs to Know session at 2008 SMX Advanced.
A: I do know what I expect to get monetarily in return for what I spend on my SEO resource: You are amazing. Not much more needs to be said here. If you know what your monetary opportunity looks like, you know how much you can spend on your SEO resource. Stay tuned for a look at SEO Salaries in the next post Part 3: How to Hire an SEO and What They Get Paid
Curious about the benefits of hiring an SEO or in-house search marketer vs. paying an agency or consultant?Looking for answers as to which solution is right for your business? Part 1 of this 6 part Ultimate Guide to In House SEO delves into who is bringing SEO in house and why, the potential costs of bringing SEO In House, and the advantages and disadvantages to having SEO in house.
On the large vs. small company in-house SEO argument, most of the people who I know that have been in house for some time, namely Marshall Simmonds (About.com, NYTimes), Melanie Mitchell (AOL, Folio Investing), Derrick Wheeler (Microsoft), Jessica Bowman (Yahoo, Business.com), are/were, as evidenced, at large companies.
Also, this awesome list of In-House SEO people from 2007 reveals that most work for large companies, like HP, CitySearch, Walt Disney, or at least companies we’ve all heard of (there’s also some great conversation in the comments on In-House vs. Agency). Granted, those people are probably easier to find.
As for the company size of these SEOmoz polltakers, most (23%) are a force of one. Beyond that, the large bulk (collectively 52%) are at small companies with less than 50 employees. Only 5% are at companies over 500 people.
As the workload size: 40% have one person at the company working primarily on Search Marketing; 17% have either two people; and another 17% have no one working primarily on search marketing. This supports the position that one person (or, very few people) does it all.
from 2004 says that “52% of advertisers said they would manage 100% of their 2005 spending on both paid inclusion and organic SEO in house”.
More recently, this 2009 MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Benchmark Guide shows that 74% of survey participants “Use of SEO Vendors” was in-house (vs. 26% vendors) in 2006. That’s two percent higher than the 72% 2007 and 2008 findings. Company size is not indicated in the survey, but the trend indicates no considerable movement, although the numbers are much higher than the (different, but related) Jupiter Media survey from 5 years prior.
It seems readily apparent that larger companies are already on the bandwagon, and many smaller companies are indeed becoming increasingly involved—likely with one-person search marketing teams covering SEO as a part of their overall duties.
Now, how do you know if setting up SEO in-house is right for your company? Let’s delve deeper!
Some may argue that hiring an in-house SEO can be more costly than hiring a consultant or agency, while others are of the opinion that contracting can be more expensive than going in-house. They’re both right, but multiple variables determine their respective arguments.
You can expect an SEO consultant or agency to charge anywhere from a few hundred dollars to upwards of $90K per project. Or, if you’re hiring them on a monthly basis, you should expect anything from $500 a month to $10K or more a month. Throw in PPC campaigns, and you’re likely to tack on even more costs.
Internet marketers’ salaries can range from $30K per year to $250K per year or more. A wide discrepancy indeed.(More on that in PART 2: What does the In-House SEO Organization look like?)
Sometimes you might get more people and more tasks done for your money with a contractor than with one person in-house. If you’re looking at short-term SEO results, this could very well suffice. If you need long-term in house solutions however, I highly recommend looking at the advantages of an in house SEO found further in this article.
The cost points below are just a few – please feel free to provide more reasons, one way or the other, in the comments. I use “might” below because, as Aidan Beanland pointed out to me on Facebook, considering in-house SEO over contracting “would have to be case-by-case, I don’t think you can generalize. Depends on the type of business model, value per acquisition etc”.
When it might be too costly:
If business does not have an online core or, if you target things people aren’t searching for online.
If your business does not have a solid marketing plan for SEO (and essentially SEM) to tie into.
If short term search traffic gains are all you’re after.
When it might be a cost advantage:
If you have a large company with multiple businesses online.
If you’re after long-term search traffic gains.It takes more than an audit to get to this. Getting someone engrained in ongoing processes, underlying structures, and cross-functional teams is imperative.
If you have a full marketing team that is missing search marketing or the organic SEO part of search marketing
If you’re paying more than $60-$80K/year on audits
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3 :: In House SEO Advantages and Disadvantages
When it comes to what you get with an in-house SEO vs. a contractor, in-house for large companies (especially ones with multiple brands) usually makes absolute sense. There is always something to keep on top of, whether it’s upkeep on the search-friendliness of underlying systems that make long term search engine optimization work, educating new teams and individuals, or just making sure you’re staying on top of the competition. A large company with an online business that doesn’t have search traffic acquisition as part of their marketing strategy either has low search volume for their product or services online (which could potentially be changed), or is missing a crucial part of their marketing mix.
For smaller companies, consider these things:
Cost vs. Return: What return do you expect to get in terms of dollars? (Stay tuned for determining opportunity in PART 4 of this guide: What you’re expected to get done and how to do it.) Is there enough long-term opportunity to go after to justify bringing someone on full-time?
How many moving parts do you have?: Are you always adding new content, updating site templates, making new online relationships? An audit, and follow-up contracting when needed, might be more cost-effective, unless you are at a point where you are heavily dependent on your contractor and need their undivided attention to get things done effectively. Contractors will often have multiple clients and be able to give you some of their time, where as in-house SEOs are yours 40 hours a week, and can build the relationships internally to ensure key players are on-board and well educated. They would also ensure that internal moving parts are well-oiled for staying on top of your competition at all times.
Buy-in: Are any/all product managers, marketers, content designers, developers, writers, and most importantly, executives at the company ready and willing to play their part in supporting and playing their part in search traffic acquisition?
Some of this is vague, but if you’re still not sure, ping Jessica Bowman, who can help you with your specific situation.
For larger companies – consider these advantages & disadvantages:
Potential advantages of hiring in-house for large companies
Relationships (people): Internal SEOs gain trust and build constant relationships with key players. Getting people in cross-functional teams to implement takes trust and a sense of consistency.
Intimacy (product & processes): Being immersed inside the company gives internal SEOs a greater understanding of how processes and platforms inside the company work, as well as a day-to-day engagement with the product and its customers’ needs.
Long Term ROIApocalypse Now psp : Internal SEOs will often have a better ROI over the long term. Depending on the amount of work that needs to be done to get your search traffic program up and running, don’t expect immediate returns. But do expect your in-house SEO to be worth many times more than you’re paying them once the system is running and implementation is constant and successful.
Long term function: Oftentimes companies hire agencies or consultants for audits. They implement all or part of the audit, sometimes with continued consultancy from the agency or consultant, and generally the relationship eventually thins out or ends. But the organization and its product are a dynamically and constantly renewing mechanism, and as the org changes and updates are made to the product and its online relationships, the educated key players move, and the SEO implemented becomes lost or overwritten, which will result in losing your competitive edge. In short, SEO is not a once-and-done operation (unless it’s a once-and-done project). Otherwise, it should be an ongoing part of your marketing mix.
: Be careful not to go overboard. Determine what your search traffic opportunity looks like in terms of dollars (stay tuned for determining opportunity in PART 4 of this guide: What You’re Expected to Get Done and How to Do it), and then figure out if it’s worth more than your SEO costs (for the pay-rate of in-house SEOs, see Part 2 of this Guide: What does the In House SEO Organization look like?)
Short term projects: If you need immediate, short-term results, hire a consultant or agency.When you bring SEO in house, much of the initial work is around forming processes and relationships, optimizing content management systems, building the reporting needed, and basically setting up the system for long term results.
Cutting Edge SEO: As with everything, this is a generalization – there are plenty of cutting edge in-house SEOs. But beware that being in-house does mean that much of your time is spent on politics, systems, education, and running that well-oiled machine. Oftentimes this leaves less time for staying on top of the very latest SEO trends, especially when it comes to practice with hands-on implementation. The larger the company, the more likely you’ll be recommending rather than doing.
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More resources on when to hire In House SEO vs. a Consultant:
Eric Lander, Anthony Long and I were talking at SMXDungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God ipod about how we’d really like to know more about who we’re presenting to when we get up on stage at a conference and talk In-House SEO shop. It helps us to know what people in the room want to know more about, rather than just blindly pushing our own thoughts.
So we asked a lot of ad-hoc questions of our audience, and based on people who were awake/alive enough at the first morning session after Searchbash to raise their hands, here is the jist of what we learned about the people in the room:
. Chris Hardy is a San Francisco photographer whos 25 years as a photojournalist have given him the advantage of building up a truly impressive portfolio of celebrities, politicians, athletes and so much more. And the man has an unbelievable talent.
I was on my way home from LA yesterday, waiting to get off of a packed plane at 11:30 PM, on hour 16 of my day, checking Facebook for anything interesting that didn’t take any significant brain power to process. I discovered through Chris’s status update in my feed that he has a blog. Usually anything Chris has to say is funny and often a little offbeat, so I clicked through to read his most recent post - a story behind this fabulous Paris HiltonKicking & Screaming dvdripCars divx photo. The story was so compelling that I immediately went straight to the previous blog post and by the time I was home from SFO I had read every single one.
Being a news photographer put Mr. Hardy at the forefront of all kinds of action, and he seems to have an impeccable talent for getting a shot that tells a story in-and-of itself. This small, but growing collection of Picture Stories
is an eye-opening glance into the potent gaze of Clint Eastwood
a hot coffee that you’ll surely spit all over yourself while reading these posts, and spending a few minutes of your weekend with these riotously entertaining narratives. Picture Stories will be the first non-technical or marketing feed in three years that I will be adding to my myYahoo feed collection. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!Rails & Ties pspDoomsday divx
The mind of a good SEO is always thinking ahead. Why? Lets examine this: Thanks to the (sometimes not so) subtle love/hate relationship between search engines and SEOs over the years, Search Engine Optimization has been changing to become less about on-page optimization and more about finding opportunity
, building something that amazes the pants (or yellow shoesThe Untouchables ripdaybreakers hd ) off people, and then doing your on-page optimization. Without the amazing opportunity part, what do you have? A well-optimized page no one cares about. Ick.
. When you use outcome-based thinking, you’ll be ready to reach your goals very efficiently and with the willing and eager cooperation of others.” Look at any of the SEOs that have been in this business before SEO became a household name. Greg Boser, Michael Gray, Bruce Clay
. People like them who saw the value in search engine optimization in the nineties are people who saw, well, the future, and grabbed it before it had a chance to get an inch past the fingertips of their well prepared little hands. They recognized the potential opportunities Bad Santa buy for growth and innovation and of course, the ever important money part.
The SEO/Venture Capital Connection
If it’s not obvious already – this is exactly why SEOs and Venture Capitalists need to be better integrated. I know a few opportunistic
SEOs who saw this bridge already and have been making very successful efforts to cross it. What better partnership than an innovator and a forward-thinking money-maker?
BUT, before you go signing the papers with the first VC or SEO you meet, everybody hold your horses. Be wary that not all VC’s can identify great web innovation when they see it, and not all SEOs know how to find and capitalize on web opportunity either. Do your homework. Research your potential partner’s past successes, have lunches, get to know the other person. You know that feeling when you walk out of a four-hour brainstorming session elated, excited - like you’re onto the next best thing since Mark Cuban introduced The Benefactor
? Ok, maybe better than that, but it’s that energy, enthusiasm and synergy of the people you’re brainstorming with that really makes this elation happen. You know that feeling? That’s exactly what inspires innovation. That’s what you need in a VC/SEO relationship. And there are lots of those connections to be had out there. Or should I say, there’s plenty of opportunity.
And while you’re at it, SEOs, change your title. Unless you just want VC’s looking for meta tag help. You’re a strategist, a traffic magnet, an innovative
web futurist of sorts. Of course, unless you’re just willing to stick with the code side of things. No problem with that, somebody’s got to do the legwork. For the rest of us, please be sure to invite us to speak at the next VC conference. You’ll be glad you did.
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And on that note, here is one of my favorite videos on The Art of Innovation by Guy Kawasaki. Grab a coffee and have a look - it’s well worth your time.
Laura Lippay is the Director
of Technical Marketing for Yahoo! Media, where she and her team
are responsible for determining monetizable SEO opportunities across dozens
of the top internet properties in their verticals and working with internal
product teams to act on them. Laura is also responsible for evangelizing
search engine optimization and building the in-house program to ensure
long-term SEO success. This includes automating SEO output, streamlining
processes across multiple teams, educating constituents, and discovering,
analyzing and acting on data-driven SEO recommendations. Laura conducts
regular SEO
training at Yahoo and has been a speaker at Search
Marketing Expo and Search
Engine Strategies conferences. Prior to working at Yahoo!, Laura was
the SEO specialist at CNET Networks,
where she helped develop the in-house SEO program. Previous to CNET, Laura
was manager of interactive media (loosely subtitled The Goddess of Chaos
and Harmony) at The Linus Group, a
Bay Area marketing firm. And before she got into the online space
Laura traveled the country as a performer
for The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.
