Enterprise SEO - Four Pillars to Making In-House SEO a Success

I began my career as an in-house SEO in 2006 and while I have worked in a few roles as Director of all of Digital Marketing for startups and for an agency. However, I prefer working as an Enterprise SEO in-house. While there are many pros and cons to working for agencies (which I covered in 2009 SEO Career - Agency vs. In-House SEO) I have really found my place and have had great successes in-house for enterprise organizations. One major factor in this decision is that I have just one client and (usually) one website to focus all of my energy and efforts on. In the case at Nordstrom, in which I was the SEO Manager, I had an entire team helping me manage many aspects of the site. As the site gets larger, more complex, more people and other teams to work with and more revenue generating it becomes imperative that there are more people involved with SEO that specialize in key aspects that make the channel successful for the business. The main reason is that there are four major pillars to making SEO a success in an enterprise organization. Those four pillars include:

1. SEO Mitigation - error management and/or technical SEO
2. SEO Analysis/Reporting - calculating assumptions and reporting on successes
3. SEO Project Management - determining growth and managing projects for SEO
4. Relationship Building for SEO - Championing SEO to stakeholders and other teams

Some larger enterprise organizations will have robust teams that support the big four, with addition of SEOs that have expertise in various fields (for example an SEO that is focused on local in the U.S. or perhaps outside the U.S. for a specific country, LATAM, EMEA, etc). Some medium sized corporations or startups will often just have one SEO Manager that acts as an individual contributor that will cover all four of the key aspects on their own until the organization supports bringing on more people to take on one or a few parts (that was me in my early years). Whatever the structure for the SEO or the SEO Team in a startup, medium sized company or enterprise organization the success of SEO within that company relies on managing all four aspects successfully.

I'll dive into each one a bit more to help explain how each plays a role in making an enterprise SEO successful.

SEO Mitigation - error management and/or technical SEO

Engineers will overlook what's best for SEO.
It's up to the SEO to mitigate any issues that might arise.

No matter how supportive companies are of SEO within the organization, there are always going to be issues that come up that will negatively affect SEO. Whether it be a video project that one team launches in which the videos are in an iframe with no JSON or Schema to support them or a set of pages that generate filter URLs causing duplicate content.. The issues not only need to be identified quickly before causing any possible damage or inadvertent spamming, but they need a solution that is fully acceptable (white hat) and prioritized with assumptions associated in order to mitigate the situation.

In my experience, Since SEO equals revenue for the business, I have found it best, in an enterprise situation, to get the teams responsible for key components of the website that effect SEO to become the bestest of friends to the SEO involved. In most cases the individuals responsible for these parts of the site value SEO and understand that if they play by the rules set by Google that they will be successful in their roles. The struggle they face, though, is that they just don't know what all of the rules are; and they shouldn't be expected to. While an SEO might not know what color a button should be and where in order to drive conversions; or what merchandise should appear on what pages linked to from top navigation that an expert hired does, those experts shouldn't be expected to understand SEO at the level that a highly technical SEO does. Therefore, those teams may have a difficult time understanding the impact some of their decisions can make both negatively and positively for SEO, and look to the SEO to help them understand.

The SEO tasked with technical SEO should insert themselves into meetings, gaining trust, and being viewed as an authority in SEO to help mitigate any potential issues within the enterprise SEO landscape. In addition, staying on top of the landscape of the site and how it pertains to SEO is key. Tools like Moz (for medium sized companies), Botify, Deepcrawl, Conductor and Brightedge  allows the SEO to really dig into the site to identify any issues. For smaller sites that don't have the large budgets for enterprise SEO simply using Google's Search Console is a great way to see into how Google is viewing the site. SEOs can manage parameters, identify server code errors (,404, soft 404, and 500), understand page indexing, incoming and internal links, schema markup and many important factors that Google takes into consideration.

Let's say an SEO identified a set of pages that are extremely valuable to the business in which they generate traffic from SEO but the average position is low as a result of issues with duplicate or very similar content, and even thin content (falling under Google's Penguin updates). Ecommerce websites are the biggest culprit of developing hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of URLs that are all similar to one another. Because of the way users browse of search for products in different ways, most product teams want to develop multiple touch points in which the user can access products. Let's use a simple heel shoe for example. A user that is searching for a specific shoe like a dress shoe with a thick block heel might search "block heel pumps" but they also might search "chunky heel pumps" or "block platform heels". Unfortunately you end up with search results that look like this:

All of these pages are from the same website that all have the same (or very similar) content on them because block heels, chunky heels and block heels for women are all essentially the same.

Most enterprise companies will have a dedicated SEO focusing on the technical side of the SEO, but smaller companies that don't have the budget for large teams will most often hire just one SEO in which that person should be spending a good amount of time monitoring and mitigating any issues that might come up.

SEO Analysis/Reporting - calculating assumptions and reporting on successes

Identifying growth for SEO and reporting on successes
 are key to gaining buy in from stakeholders.

Proper SEO should never be focused just on identifying issues and fixing them. A really good SEO and SEO Team will be more proactive than just reactive. In order to grow traffic and revenue from SEO a company needs to constantly innovate and add to it to grab new opportunities.

Keyword analysis plays a major role in identifying opportunity for SEO. Using a tool like Conductor or Brightedge allows you to plug in a few terms that are driving traffic to the site and suggest additional terms that the site may not show up for that are similar. By bucketing those terms you can develop a strategy around a set of high volume and additional long tail terms with a strong user intent to purchase that will grab searches you might not necessarily show up for. With these reports come average search volume that will give you an estimated number of how many times those terms are used in a search. By using these numbers, an SEO can calculate an estimated percentage of ranking that they believe the site could obtain the first month (and subsequent months as Google indexes and places the pages of site for these terms). This number with a break down from an estimated click through rate and conversion rate with average purchase number will allow the SEO to show what the value would be if a project for those terms were to be completed. A great example of this is a keyword analysis I had completed around search for car makes, models and the long tail high intent to purchase year make model (ex: 2012 honda accord). During my research I had identified additional terms around reviews, for sale, used, and more that all would provide value to the user, but the website wasn't generating much traffic from SEO for. Using this analysis in conjunction with a report on what traffic and revenue the site was generating for these terms I put together a presentation for the company's VPs and CEO. The numbers generated from this report were also used to report against after the launch of the project.

In addition to a Keyword analysis a good enterprise SEO will know how to draft up assumptions of revenue increase when any work around SEO is done. Even the fixes that are talked about above that mitigate SEO for issues. Using the duplicate and similar content mentioned before, knowing how to fix this isn't enough. SEOs know just by looking at the situation that the issue is a problem and by making the corrections there will be an increase in traffic. However, expressing what the increase in traffic will be when the issue is resolved is what is required by an enterprise SEO. By understanding how much the click through rate will improve with an average position increase the SEO can then calculate the current click through rate adding the percentage increase if the average position of those pages saw an improvement. From there the SEO would take the average conversion rate with average order value to show the estimated revenue increase if the correction were to be made.

The SEO isn't finished with estimations and assumptions. Most enterprise SEOs are asked "what happened with that project we did?" or "How did that fix we did impact the business?". Using tools like Google Analytics in conjunction with Conductor the SEO can then report against the assumptions originally set. Conductor even has a great tool in Searchlight for Business Cases in which you plug in your estimates and it will track performance for you. For smaller sites setting up custom reports in Google Analytics works, and monitoring average position for a set of keywords that include a common word (or a few) as well as pages in Google Search Console will work.

SEO Project Management - determining growth and managing projects for SEO

SEO isn't just about being reactive.
It's about being proactive with projects that capture new opportunities.

Using the keyword analysis an SEO will often complete a full evaluation of a set of terms that could potentially constitute a project. In my role at Classmates in 2006 I had developed two major projects around developing pages for schools (we called "affiliations") and a set of pages around people's names. The idea behind the two was to have a page show up in the search results when a user would search for their school or an old friend. We even set the pages up so that they would also show for users that would be trying to find an old friend from school in a specific city.

Knowing that we wanted to target those search terms wasn't enough for SEO. I was tasked with writing up a project brief that would detail out exactly everything that was needed in order to get any sort of results. With SEO, content is key so I had added requirements around content that was valuable to the user. Working with other teams we brainstormed what users might find valuable that the business would allow us to expose outside of being logged in. I even had our legal team in the room to weigh in on what was legally allowed to expose to the public. Unfortunately, there wasn't much we could use that was provided by users so we identified data driven content (ex: people with similar names from different schools, nearby schools, rival schools, etc)  that would provide value and would be unique to each page. Requirements around friendly URLs with a hierarchy (directory to file structure), breadcrumbs, etc all were added to the project brief. I was assigned a Project Manager who I worked closely with to ensure the project was moving along and all things SEO were being addressed.

At every enterprise company I have worked with in SEO I have developed major projects. From the names and schools at Classmates to location pages at usedcars.com and Nordstrom, and even the make model and year make model project from the keyword analysis example I mentioned earlier. Each and every one of the initiatives was set up with a Project Brief and managed through a Project Manager for SEO and overseen by myself.

Relationship Building for SEO - Championing SEO to stakeholders and other teams

Nothing will ever get done for SEO
if there isn't buy-in from other teams.

One of my favorite lines to say is "90% of an in-house SEO's success stems from relationships." I covered this a bit in my post in 2007 "In-House SEO Isn't Just Optimizing" in which I state:

But what I am most thankful for is the ability to communicate and work with other individuals within the company. While my main responsibilities may be to not only increase traffic to the website through natural search marketing, my success stems from the success of others.

I wrote that post during my time at Concur in which I was on a team that was extremely collaborative. We all seemed to help each other out with our roles even though we had specific responsibilities. There were a few people on the team that knew SEO and that I could bounce ideas off of. We would work together to come up with a plan. The team included the engineering team, designers, copy writers, and paid media channels. I specifically remember a project in which the directive came from above to create a community website around travel stories for our users. Using Eloqua as an email marketing tool we all sat in a room and developed a plan around user sign up with email touch rules that encouraged engagement. I was representing SEO, but was asked to provide ideas in all aspects, even the emails (which had nearly no value to SEO, though I snuck in some ideas around link sharing encouragement).

While I wrote my post while at Concur, my realization of how much the success in my role was reliant on others was years before while working at Classmates. I found myself in heated discussions with the head of engineering and often pushing the analytics team out of their comfort zone that wasn't getting me very far. I soon took the approach of  inviting key stake holders to lunch and even set up weekly happy hours every Thursday that the CEO would attend to help build relationships I needed to gain buy-in for SEO. I soon became everyone's closest friend and was able to work through issues identified without arguing. As a result, over 10 years later I am still very close friends with quite a few people I worked with and had the head of engineering speak at one of my conferences a few years back.

During my time at Nordstrom I set up the goals of the team around strengthening relationships with other teams and being viewed as one voice of authority around SEO. I encouraged each team member to communicate often and stressed the importance of grabbing a cup of coffee or inviting people on other teams to lunch from time to time. I even found by going to lunch with a few of the stakeholders they worked in conjunction with me to prioritize projects where the team had gotten empty promises or push back in the past. Had I not have built those relationships and gotten to know the people I would not have the friends I have now, nor the support that SEO needed during my time there.

I'm not quite sure how most enterprise SEOs structure their work, if they focus on the four key aspects that I mentioned or if they have other structures they have established that work for them. I do know that after nearly 20 years working in SEO that the success that comes from SEO stems from these four key parts. For without one or another SEO would be simply just rolling along relying on the brand that a company has established as authority. But to show actual growth in enterprise SEO outside of the usual industry trends and relying on social media or PR to do it, a successful SEO will have a keen ability to mitigate SEO issues,  analyse and report on SEO, develop and manage projects for growth and have strong relationships with others within the organization.

Update: SEO Issues - is it Penguin? Is it Panda? or is it me?

It was a little over a year ago that I posted the "SEO Issues - is it Penguin? Is it Panda? or is it me?" in which I detailed out the struggles I had faced with recovering a website that had been hit hard by Penguin and Panda updates. I had first identified which section of the site that was hit the most, and presented my findings to the head of the corporation's division. 

In the months that followed, there were projects quickly rolled out that were designed to fix the site, and to recover the traffic that was lost. After months of the site losing traffic and still getting penalized there was a light at the end of the tunnel in recovered traffic just before I wrote and published the blog post.

I am sure a lot of you who have read the article are wondering where the site is today. Sure, a quick hockey stick of recovered traffic is great, but did that traffic hold throughout the year? 

I am happy to report that traffic has held:

Traffic continued to grow throughout January 2013 (just after the jump in traffic in November 2012) and through February. The industry the site is in sees an overall rise in traffic and consumer interest to purchase from the last week of December through February with a downtrend through the rest of the year every year. While we saw the site follow this trend, in July we saw a boost in traffic. After careful research, it was determined that a Google Panda update confirmed on July 24th was the boost we needed. Ironically, what had taken the site down in the past was now helping the site improve as we continued to clean up issues remaining causing the hits from Panda and Penguin.

Most important issues identified:

1. Too many on-page links
2. Top level pages
3. No site hierarchy
4. An extremely high number of URLs
5. Duplicate content
6. Not enough unique content

In general - the site was not following the core of the Webmaster Tools Guidelines which is the Bible of SEO. If a site isn't following the core of what Google says, then there is virtually no hope for it.

As 2012 was focused on recovering from Panda and Penguin hits, 2013 was focused on cleaning up the remaining issues from parameters, thin content, duplicate content, finalizing the last pages to the hierarchy, and so on. I am happy to report that the site is now 96% complete of all issues, and the first of many projects are underway that are designed to grab new opportunity for the site. Traffic has seen increases in August, October, and another boost in December with continued growth as we are in the peak of our season again.

Courage is Grace Under Pressure

It was what was stated in the image I had added to my post along with the description of the pressures I had faced in 2012.

Throughout those grueling three months there were several Google Panda and Penguin updates. I documented each and every one of them in Google Analytics, and continued to answer questions, gathering data, and dealing with being under close scrutiny that the work I was doing was complete BS.

I sat in numerous meetings, some of which I walked out crying (I'm not afraid to admit it), being questioned about the road I had taken and why we weren't seeing results. There were people within the company recommending that they roll the pages back to where they were before, and even changing the URLs. I fought hard that they don't touch a thing. I sent an article posted on Search Engine Land by Barry Schwartz citing Google's patent that "tricks" search spammers.

But the article and my please fell on deaf ears...

It had gotten so heated and there was fear that nothing was being done while traffic was significantly declining that the company brought in yet another SEO consultant to look at the site objectively. 

It was a lot to bear, and lot to live through. Sadly, what I had experienced in the organization was not unlike the experience many SEOs face. We are constantly questioned and second guessed. Many coworkers and bosses will even take it upon themselves to learn as much as they can, only to find that there is a lot of arguing among the experts in the industry as to what is the "right" way to optimize, and what is "wrong". But for SEO there is no right or wrong way, only what works. My philosophy behind optimizing is to always follow the rules. Start with the guidelines, organize the website, provide information for the user and present it in a way that makes sense. No shortcuts, trickery, or "optimizing". It is a philosophy I fight for every day (and boy do I fight).

Today I am happy to say the tune towards myself and the SEO work that is getting done has completely changed. My Boss now gives me rave reviews, the company has belief in the work done for SEO, and the team (product and engineering) is extremely supportive with any issue or requests needed for SEO. We are a cohesive and supportive team, and the results from the work we are doing is paying off.

Many people in the industry have told me to look for work elsewhere. That not only included people in the industry and some of my supportive coworkers, but the person my Boss reports to had even recommended it. I will admit I had interviewed at a couple of places. What discouraged me was that I knew the work that had been done up until that point would eventually pay off. If I had left then credit would have been given to the next SEO hired, or worse, it would be ruined by someone focusing on getting instant results. Most importantly, leaving the team that is now supportive was just not what I wanted. I love working for this company (the benefits are good), and everyone that I work with is like family. I call us the "Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin." since we are a small office within a very large organization. We are a close family that support one another and they all seem to welcome my quirkiness.

Until Next Year

So until next year, I will be continuing my job and the work for SEO. I have big plans for the website, and will continue to fight for what I believe in for SEO. I will also try to get more informational posts on here as we continue our last bit of cleanup on the site and continue to see results. I am even contemplating writing a book (as I have been told I should for a few years now), but am still reluctant with all those great SEO books already on the shelves - most of which have been written by some very dear friends. Until then - keep optimizing, and fighting for what you believe in SEOs.

SEO Similar Content case study

In April 2007 I attended the SES in New York and took part in a duplicate content discussion panel. The panel talked about the usual content issues such as shingles, duplicate content, boiler plate, etc.
At Classmates I was working on a project that was one page design in which it had dynamically fed content resulting in over 40 million dynamically generated pages. The goal was to individually optimize these pages so that they would act as landing pages when a person were to search a specific word that was located in our database.
I spoke with the people on the panel and asked them how they would resolve the duplicate content issues on so many dynamically generated pages. They suggested setting up a system in which we could add content to the page individually, and just take on a few each week until they all had unique content. The problem with that was that we didn't have the man power to do this for over 40 million pages. The pages were user generated (meaning the user filled out the information for each specific page) and exposing the user content was against the privacy policy and also against our business model leaving the possibility of allowing the user generated content to be visible by the search engines in order to make the pages unique.

So back to square one - when the experts can't help you, what do you do?

So I went back to work after the conference and presented the dilemma to my copywriter. We started talking about duplicate content issues and how we can avoid the content getting filtered out with boilerplate content. Then I thought - "what breaks up the content for each shingle? Is it the code, punctuation, or all of the words counted without code or punctuation?"

So I decided to run a test case against the question...

We took one block of copy that didn't make sense and added a 3 word phrase not common in the english language to optimize the copy for that word. Then applied it to 3 different basic html pages (no css, no skin, no javascriptiing of any kind, etc)

1. Page 1 - the first page was the copy with the punctuation removed not a single quote, period, or comma as one solid paragraph surrounded by paragraph tags.
2. Page 2 - the second page was the same paragraph as is without the punctuation that was originally in the content broken up with heading, paragraph, and break tags.
3. Page 3 - the third page was the paragraph with the punctuation in it as it was originally written and surrounded in whole by paragraph tags.

Links to all three pages were added to the home page of a site that has been in existence for 5 years. They were titled "page 1", "page 2" and "page 3" so that they weren't swayed by the anchor text of the link.

It took a little over a week for the pages to show up in the Google index with Yahoo and MSN trailing by 4-6 weeks. Page 3 showed up first while page 1 showed up in the index shortly thereafter. When searching for the term that the pages were optimized for, Page 3 received rankings while page 1 did not show up. Page 2 was never indexed on Google or MSN, but did show up on Yahoo eventually.

After 3 months of page 2 not showing up in the index I changed page 2 and added punctuation in random places. The punctuation was in different places than page 3, and I removed the heading, paragraph, and break tags.

Just a few days after making the changes page 2 started showing up in the search results for the same term, and not as a supplement result. It was a unique ranking all it's own.

The result is that the search engines use punctuation to break up the content. So when optimizing a dynamic page that will create many dynamic generated pages it's good to use bullet points while keeping your sentences short, and adding the dynamic content as much as possible (without being too repetitive).