Pubcon had their In-House SEO session today. I’ll tell you a little secret, I was one of the first in-house SEO’s over at Wholesale Central

Like many SEO’s I didn’t really even know the what the term meant when I started, I was a new IT person, and I was trying to figure out ways to help the website make more money. So I researched the industry and it occurred to me that if they were easier to find on Google, they would get more visitors and more money. Google was in the process of beginning to dominate search, but hadn’t completed the decimation yet.

The first thing that I found that was significant to the learning process was Webmaster World Thinking about that site just gives me a headache now. But, at the time it was my bible. In particular, this post

I used to show this post to people, give it to my friends who were interested in my crazy new career, link to it for witless n00bs. It still works (except for the part about submitting to the search engines). Its missing the social piece that Myspace ushered in, and brought direct linking back as a viable strategy. It doesn’t address the compelling nature and thus need for rich media. But nonetheless, if you go in the direction Brett tells you to (content first and continuously), you really can’t go wrong.

Anyway, thus digressed, back to In House SEO - here’s the big problem with it

Your Boss thinks he knows how you’re doing by going to google and searching.

Of course, your boss is not completely wrong. He employs an SEO in order to raise his rankings in the search engines. Unfortunately, he’s searching what he thinks is the main keyphrase, while you are patiently garnering links for hundreds of longtail links, saving him a boatload of money on PPC and trying to keep programmers and web designers from destroying what position you already have in the rankings.

You’ve got to show your Boss the real bottom line. At most companies, the revenue picture is pretty muddled. Its not easy to separate out the revenue you have brought. You have to set conversion goals for yourself, running in parallel to the SEO/SEM efforts, that demonstrate the value of what you are doing both in quantitive and qualitative terms. My clients never dig this idea, but I prefer most of all to get customers to give up their email — I don’t really care so much about the future potential of those email addresses, honestly, its huge but what I’m trying to do, is show the boss, that I am bringing humans who think enough of the site to hand over personal details. Similar conversion goals, are to download a whitepaper, or register a profile. Comments on blogs are an excellent conversion goal. When you can produce this kind of distinctively human feedback, you are well on your way to earning more for the site and raising your ranking.

Your Co-Workers Don’t Listen to You

Every consultant tells his client the same thing. It goes like this:

I can already see an effective strategy for you, Mr. Customer. But, I need your entire team to buy in to this. I’m going to offer recommendations with some background and context to them, so people will get an idea of the principles I’m trying to instill. But, all I can do is give recommendations. If you don’t follow them, they won’t help you very much.

And the customer assures you that he’ll make sure its followed up on (HE’S LYING AND HE DOES NOT KNOW IT! ITS FUNNY BECAUSE ITS TRUE)

As an In-House SEO, you have the same spiel, but you are usually muttering it to yourself, after getting at yelled at by your thickheaded boss, who was yelling belligerently so he could end the conversation quick enough to make his tanning appointment. Bosses often yell because it takes too long to listen to an employee’s views. I’m not making that up, either.

You can’t really get the IT staff to listen to you. You end up forwarding and cc’ing all your emails to the boss–Kissass! in the hopes that he’ll pick his head up off the desk long enough to make sure that thing he pays you sixty grand a year for actually happens.

You can get the web designers to listen, mainly because they consider SEO to be part of their necessary skillset, and they hope to pick it up from you for free. Use that to your advantage.

And if you can do something good, and demonstrate the goodness of it to people. That helps. I got myself made editor of Wholesale Central’s relevant DMOZ category before I ever even told them I had become their SEO. I showed them why that was a good thing, and to their credit nobody put the brakes on some brand new guy doing guerilla web marketing for their precious baby website. In other words: you are your greatest resource. If you are in a position where you “need a lot of help” to make it work, you are in the wrong place. The one thing you can always do without some Linux primate’s assistance is build quality links. A report of quality backlinks speaks wonders for your effeciveness. I sent a personal letter and scored an About.com link - I leveraged my DMOZ editorship to virtually run the niche (DMOZ doesn’t mean much at all anymore) - and at that point I didn’t care so much that the primordial Dreamweaver monkeys would rather do the whole site in Flash. You can route around resistance and still succeed and you are going to have to.

The guys at pubcon want you to get on your knees and go find “stakeholders” who can become your “angels” I’m hoping you’re not that kind of pantywaist suckup. The people holding “stakes” are about one bad morning away from plunging them into your heart. I want you to go out there and bring the NOISE to that website, with quality links, publishing content elsewhere that pulls visitors to you, competitive analysis, killer paid placement that puts organic search to shame, and above all a commitment to connecting with the human beings behind the “unique visitors” that will make your site a success.

Once you do that, then it won’t be so hard to get support technicians to read your emails.

Recent Posts related to This One on Other Blogs:

Pubcon Session: In House SEO

Bullshit Doublespeak (orignially titled SEO In House Spotlight)

Professional SEO In House 7 Critical Questions

EDIT: There is one set of “stakeholders” who you can deal with. Salesmen. Salesmen are usually two types of people, yet strangely both figured heavily in the movie Jurassic Park.

or

Yep, they boil down to sneaky little thief or rampaging monster whose thirst for blood is never slaked. But, from the In House SEO’s perspective they have one thing all over Fussy McHTML Pants

They like it when the site is #1 in Google.

They don’t even care what its #1 for. It could be “Banana Flavored Trombone” and they’d get on the phone with Victor in Santa Fe, telling him to fire up Google and search for “trombone…something, I cant remember” Salesmen believe every bullshit claim thrown at them so make sure you throw some, they will be your biggest cheerleaders.