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.

I polled the In-House session audiences at SMX West

and at Searchfest

and the majority of audience members in both places rolled up into Marketing, followed by Engineering and then followed by product.

Melanie Mitchell wrote a fantastic post in 2007 called Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations, where in part 2 she outlined what SEO operations might look like.

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

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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

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• 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

Disadvantage Apocalypse Now on dvd

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• 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

Advantage:

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• 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

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No matter what, someone besides you must “get it”

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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:

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   : Content management and publishing systems need to allow for optimization of page templates in different languages

2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
• Internal SEO forum:
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  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.

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How many people do you need?

In-House SEO resource staffing depends on many factors.  This is another question that is pretty tough to come up with a cokkie cutter answer to.  Following project management best practices, consider scope, time, and cost Last of the Living ipod

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.  Before you hire, ask yourself these questions:

SCOPE: What does the demand and/or project scope look like?

Q1: Will this resource or team be working with one property (site) or many? Remember the Titans dvdrip

• A: one property: probably one SEO, or maybe even a contractor instead of in-house. See Part 1 of The Ultimate Guide to In-House SEO: When to Hire In-House SEO vs. Contracted and Why
• 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.

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Q5: How many of these things are expected of this resource or team (listed from potentially less time consuming to more):

1. Press release optimization
2. Social account management
3. Marketing & competitive strategye. Reporting and analysis
4. Link building & partnerships
5. 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.

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TIME: What is your time period for using this resource?

Q1: Are you looking for short term wins or long term implementation?

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• 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?

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• 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

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More resources on In-House SEO Organization:

• In-Housekeeping 101: Where to Put Your SEO Department
• Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations

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Other parts of the Ultimate Guide to In-House SEO:

• What Just Happened?

• Part 1:  When to Hire In-House SEO vs. Contracted and Why
• Part 3 (upcoming): How to Hire In-House SEO and What They Get Paid
• Part 4 (upcoming): Who Does In-House SEO Work with and How?
• Part 5 (upcoming): What In-House SEO is Expected to Get Done and How to do it
• Part 6 (upcoming): In-House SEO Risks and the Hard  Times (This Ain’t Always Easy)