The document discusses aligning internal teams at B2B organizations for SEO success. It notes that business units, IT, and others often are not involved in website redesigns from an SEO perspective. To solve this, the document recommends educating all teams about SEO, aligning SEO and business goals, using issues-based marketing, training teams, and clear communication. The key is focusing on risk mitigation, value creation and business growth over just rankings. Proper alignment can help avoid drops in traffic like one organization experienced after launching a new site without fully considering SEO.

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#C3NY
WHO REALLY HAS TIME FOR SEO?
ALIGNING INTERNAL TEAMS FOR SUCCESS AT A B2B ORGANIZATION
Matt Crowley
Director of Optimized Services, MoreVisibility
Greg Tucker
National Director of Digital Marketing, RSM US LLP

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Greg Tucker | RSM US LLP
www.linkedin.com/in/gregtuckerwww.linkedin.com/in/matthew-crowley
Matt Crowley | MoreVisibility

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Do your business units ask how your customers are
searching for you online?

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Do they ask for keyword lists related to new
services they will be offering?

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Does your IT team ask about the SEO impact of new
changes to the website?

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Was the SEO team involved when you re-designed the
website?
Really involved?

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Here’s a typical story about a website re-design.
Well, most re-designs.
Almost all re-designs.

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We’re Re-designing!

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!
With taxonomy changes…

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!
With taxonomy changes…
And URL Changes…

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!
With taxonomy changes…
And URL Changes…
And content changes….

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!
With taxonomy changes…
And URL Changes…
And content changes….
We’re also consolidating some of our other domains…

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It’s just a reskin!
We’re Re-designing!
With taxonomy changes…
And URL Changes…
And content changes….
We’re also consolidating some of our other domains…
That won’t impact SEO. Right?

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SEO Task List!
SEO Task List to the Rescue!

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Schedules are Packed
SEO Task List
Everyone’s Calendar

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Public Relations
Design Assets
Advertising
IT
QA
Security

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Who has time for SEO?

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Update Title Tags
Update Description Tags
Update XML Sitemaps
Implement Redirects
Traffic MonitoringSEO Task List
-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000

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-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Organic Sessions
Site Re-launch!

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-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Organic Sessions
Site Re-launch!

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-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Organic Sessions
Site Re-launch!

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-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Organic Sessions
Site Re-launch!

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-
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Organic Sessions
What happened to our traffic?!?!

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X Update Title Tags
X Update Description Tags
X Update XML Sitemaps
X Implement Redirects -
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Traffic MonitoringSEO Task List

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1650
1700
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2000
2050
1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
Average Annual Hours Worked (U.S.A)
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
8.8% decrease since 1950

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This is just one story, out of many.

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How do we align the business so that
it spends time on SEO?

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It’s not by sending these…

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Or these…

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So how do we align the business so
that it spends time on SEO?

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SEO
So how do we align the business so
that it spends time on SEO?
growing the business.
W

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We need to provide guidance and help
the business understand the value &
need of what we’re doing.

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It’s about Risk Mitigation, Value
Creation, and Business Growth.

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1. Telling the story about the re-branding of RSM US LLP
A Story about Rebranding

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So, how do we provide guidance on
Risk Mitigation, Value Creation, and
Business Growth?

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Education
Alignment
Issues Based Marketing
Training
Communication

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Educate all team members that can make an impact by showing them the
opportunity of getting change right, and the potential consequences of getting it
wrong.
Educate the business on the impact first and the tactics second.
Educate the marketing team on employing a user-centric mentality when creating
content.
Educate the marketing team about tracking the performance of key topics/words
relevant to your business.
Provide both positive and negative case studies that show potential outcomes.
Education | Strategy

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Create presentations that are customized to each department or team that you will
need help from. Each presentation should clearly define:
• The value to that department of what you are doing.
• The potential consequences and missed opportunities of not doing anything.
• How what you are doing can positively impact business growth.
Keep a record of the times that important recommendations weren’t implemented
along with the negative impact (or missed positive impact).
Ask peers in the industry, your agency, or compile research yourself on positive and
negative case studies related to the objective you are trying to achieve.
Show data that gets as close to revenue as possible, combining your knowledge of
tools like Conductor, SEMRush, et al. with your knowledge of the business.
Education | Tactics

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Alignment | Strategy
Identify your organizations goals or strategic objectives and map your SEO objectives
back to each of those goals, showing how your work will support the organization in
achieving its goals.
Align your web metrics with content objectives and business objectives, so that you
can report effectively on how you are helping the business achieve it’s objectives.
Present your findings in terms of both risk mitigation as well as growth opportunities.
Outline resource needs and constraints ahead of time, so that everyone is aligned on
the resources needed to be successful.

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Alignment | Tactics
Set recurring meetings with business units to ensure that performance reports align
with their current strategic objectives and shorter term campaigns.
Include digital behavior questions into client and market studies.
Create and present documentation to your business units that detail how you are
aligning goals for the customer journey with leads and loyalty.
Hold bi-annual meetings with your business units to discuss their personas and how
those personas are currently consuming information.
Provide documentation that aligns your content marketing initiatives back to your
vision statement and broader strategic company objectives.

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Issues Based Marketing | Strategy
Remove the jargon from your content by focusing on issues based marketing.
Identify the key issues that your potential clients are facing and circulate information
to the business units about how you are working to be found as a solution to those
issues.
Open up dialogs with your teams about using the same language as your potential
clients.

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Issues Based Marketing | Tactics
Demonstrate, with examples, how issue based content can be broken up to meet
objectives at each stage of the customer journey (not one white paper fits all).
Proactively provide your internal teams with data (i.e. search volume, rankings,
competitive insights) on how their products and/or services are being searched for
and whether or not their content uses the same language.
Constantly question what words your clients are using – ask your best client what
they are thinking about and pay attention to the words (not your words, theirs).

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Training | Strategy
Setup proactive training programs that focus on small, specific, and actionable items
for each business unit. Customize all examples to each business unit.
Setup a re-training program that keeps track of who attended previous trainings and
when they were held. Re-train the same team members at a later date, testing them
during the presentation.
Train key stakeholders within business units on how to find out the types of words that
their customers are searching for online (“light” keyword research).
Educate the marketing leadership team on SEO drivers, benefits, and risks at least
annually (if not bi-annually).

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Training | Tactics
Develop a custom training program that includes:
Creating content for the web, focused on a user-centric approach.
• Hold a “101” training for anyone involved in content production.
• Hold an “advanced” training for those that are heavily involved in content production.
Webinar style trainings that are customized to each team you are presenting to.
• These should be for all relevant teams including PR, IT, Legal, et al.
Cheat sheets and handouts for the team to use after the training.
• Writing for the web best practices.
• Topics and keywords related to each business unit that are tied to search behavior.

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Communication | Strategy
Ensure that SEO is involved during regular conversations by placing it on an agenda,
and making sure there is dedicated time for the SEO team to speak up when relevant
issues arise.
Regularly communicate with your SEO team about the goals and objectives of the
business (and each business unit) so that they can align their recommendations
accordingly.
Focus on communicating SEO needs in terms of businesses goals such as “risk
mitigation” or “business growth” rather than “rankings” and “search volume.”

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Communication | Tactics
Develop a proactive communication plan customized to each business unit so that
there is some standardization in how you are presenting your new recommendations.
Clearly communicate risks for not thinking about SEO when implementing new
changes to the website. Provide documentation on past issues (and successes) and
their impact to the business proactively, not just reactively.
Hold cross functional team meetings on SEO that involve multiple business units and
departments. Facilitate the communication about SEO across the company in an
environment that is focused on business growth.

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“How are people searching for my brand?”
“Can you create a keyword universe around this new line of
business?”
“We just acquired a new company, can you tell us how to
merge their domains?”
“What is the best path to accomplish our goals?”
The New World

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Education
Alignment
Issues Based Marketing
Training
Communication

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5 Key Takeaways
Educate the business on the impact first and the tactics second.
Align your web metrics with content objectives and business objectives.
Proactively open up dialogs with your business units about using the same language
as your potential clients.
Setup proactive training programs that focus on small, specific, and actionable items
for each business unit that use customized examples.
Regularly communicate with your SEO team about the goals and objectives of the
business (and each business unit) so that they can align their recommendations
accordingly.

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Addendum: A Couple of Examples

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Keyword Ranking
Questionnaire

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Company: Anonymous (International Multi-division B2B Organization)
Overview: This organization launched a responsive redesign of their website
including URL and content changes. A detailed SEO plan was in place for the
transition.
Issues: The new site was launched without implementation of several critical
items. During the post-launch assessment, it was discovered that the site was
launched with problematic declarations in the robots.txt file and did not have the
proper URL redirects implemented.
Results: Site-wide drop in overall traffic by 85% MoM
Negative Case Study