SEO In-house Blog

In-house SEO Startup Guide

Starting up an in-house SEO program can be filled with challenges and opposition. One way to reduce the bumps in the road is to equip yourself with the knowledge of what's to come so that you can pave the way to a smooth ride ahead. 

Over the past year I have written a series of articles that make a great in-house SEO startup guide, starting with deciding where to put SEO in the organization and ending with how to reach synergy with your key stakeholder - IT.

Even if you've been doing SEO in-house for a while, it might be good to take a step back, figure out what you could have done to pave the way for success, and take action on all of the steps you missed as you were getting started.

• In-house keeping 101: Where to put our SEO Department - where you put SEO can have a huge impact on the success of your in-house SEO program. Read up and plan wisely. If you're still unsure where to put your SEO, consider in-house seo consulting to help you assess where to put SEO in your company.
• Hit the Ground Running with in-house SEO - It's a great checklist for who you need to meet with to get SEO top of mind, bought into and identify who is going to be your opposition. This is an excellent article for hiring managers to use in preparation for their SEO's first day.
• Tips for your First Days In-house - tips for what to do and look out for during those first few days as an in-house SEO.
• Nobody Likes to Hear Their Baby is Ugly - one of my favorite articles that depicts the reality of what people are thinking when an SEO comes in and says you need to change everything to rank high in search engines.  Get tips for how to tell IT that their pride and joy really is pretty ugly.
• When the Honeymoon Ends - when you first start SEO at a company, people take interest and want to talk to you. Life seems amazing, but you need to realize that it's just the honeymoon phase of in-house SEO. Learn how to make the most of the honeymoon and pave the way for a smoother ride down the road.
• The In-house SEO Life Cycle in Full View - Get an overview of the entire In-house SEO Life Cycle. Figure out where you are at today, and learn what you can do to propel yourself further in the life cycle to reach synergy - the ultimate happiness for an in-house SEO.

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Struggling to pull things off in-house?
Get advice and mentoring from an in-house SEO Expert who has been there, done that several times. We'll figure out what you can do to influence right people, get customers, gain priority and keep SEO top of mind.  Contact Jessica for in-house SEO mentoring.

Wondering what might be missing in your SEO strategy?
Get an SEO audit, accountants have auditors and so should SEOs.

In-house SEO Jobs by Email

I've been hearing about a lot of in-house SEO jobs and thought I would send them out by email, along with other news and updates relevant to an in-house SEO.

I have two jobs that i'll be sending out this week, so if you're interested in knowing what's out there, sign up. Over time i'll disguise it with other useful articles and such so management won't have a clue that you're really interested in the job alerts!  :)

To get information relevant to in-house SEO, sign up for In-house E-mail Alerts

SEO 911 - "We fell out of Google"

The other day I got a call from a frantic in-house SEO because they are quickly loosing organic traffic and their pages fell out of the SERPs. "What do we need to do?" asked my friend. We talked through the basic analysis to do in her moment of crisis.

What to do when you fall out of Google SERPS:

• Gather your referring traffic by day for the search engine that has dropped you from favor. This will give you insights into when the issue started and how rapidly your traffic is falling. It's especially important if you  don't monitor SEO traffic on a daily basis.
      
      
• Gather your bot crawl data, by day so that you can understand if the bot traffic has become irregular in the same timeframe. Perhaps they're getting stuck in the code somewhere.
      
      
• Identify which pages seem impacted. Is it the entire site? Or, is it a specific subdirectory? It's much better if it is only a subdirectory.
      
      
• Check to see if your pages have actually disappeared from the index, or just fallen in rankings? I've seen rankings for some keywords fall 100+ positions, that is something completely different than falling out of the index.
      
      
• Gather all the changes you launched on the site in the last 30-90 days and look  for anything that could have impacted SEO, including links to pages that have disappeared. If you aren't a strong SEO with technical expertise, than gather this for a consultant to review.
      
      
• If there was a recent redesign, verify the URL didn't change. Don't ask the developer, you as the SEO need to check for yourself. I've seen IT swear it didn't change, yet research found it did. When in doubt, go to the Wayback Machine and find a page that links to the page(s) that have      disappeared.
      
      
• Mine the search engine's webmaster tools, such as Yahoo! Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Central for anything unusual or suspicious. Look for error codes, excessive duplicate content and links found. Google's Webmaster Central also has a place for messages. I haven't heard of anyone getting a message, but it's worth checking.
      
      
• Make sure the page is not in the robots.txt (it has happened to big brands before), and also make sure that a robots "noindex" wasn't added to the page.
      
      
• If you      do all of the above and still can't figure it out, it might by time to reach out to an expert consultant for analysis. Emergency SEO analysis isn't cheap, so decide what you're willing to spend to save your SEO efforts – a few hundred dollars won't cut it. A few thousand dollars will get you started, but it could take more than that depending on the issues.
      
      
• If you don't have someone to reach out to, contact me at jessicabowman [at] gmail dot com and I will connect you with people I trust for Emergency SEO analysis. They aren't cheap, but they're good.

 

What additional advice do you have for someone reading this post in a moment of frenzy? 
They will thank you immensely for the advice!

 

I'm for hire! And am going to kick out some cool stuff for In-house SEOs

As you know by now, life at Yahoo! wasn't pleasant this week and I'm happy to report that that their in-house SEO program is now so good, that I was laid off!

I knew that my job would be done when an in-house evangelist wasn't needed anymore. On the way out I got hugs from engineers… it was a job well done. 

I am now entertaining offers for in-house SEO positions.

In the meantime, I'm quite excited about what's coming next. While I now have a great notch on the belt, I'm going take a few weeks to act on the projects that I've been wanting to do for the in-house community for a while.

What's in store for the in-house SEO community:

• Everyone says I need to hang my own shingle, and I turn down a lot of consulting requests, so now is your chance to work with me, check out the in-house SEO training & consulting services.

• There are a few unfilled in-house training needs that I'm going to address. Expect me to be pinging you guys for thoughts.

•  SEOinhouse.com will be coming in March/April. I have a few an ideas for the domain's phase one, but was wondering what the community thought would make the site a must-use resource for in-house SEOs.  Let me know your thoughts at:  seoinhouse at gmail dot com

•  Now that I'm publicly looking for an in-house SEO job, I'm going to invite you to an up-close-and-personal view of what's out there and what it takes to get the really great gigs. Stay tuned!

•  And if time permits… I'm going to get off typepad, ditch this ugly red blog template and get a proper looking blog. :)

I want to thank ALL my industry friends who have checked in, responded so quickly despite busy schedules, and sent job leads and sent oodles of encouragement. Even Rand Fishkin answered my call in the midst of his Oprah limo excitement – he had just taped his Oprah debut. Now that's a good friend!! I can never thank you all enough!

What should go on SEOinhouse.com?

In-housers, I have a question for ya... What should go on the domain SEOinhouse.com?

I've owned the domain for a while now and have an idea of what I want to put on it,  but it occurred to me that you may have other ideas that would make it even more useful for you.

If you had the chance to influence what went on the domain, what would you want on the site?

Email me at seoinhouse at gmail dot com

Friendly Reminder: Vote in-housers to SEMPO Board of Directors

Hello in-housers, just a friendly reminder to go vote for the SEMPO Board of Directors. 

If you are a SEMPO member, a ballot should  be floating around in email.  As a refresher, there are 3 in-house nominees and 8 positions, so let's try to get some in-house recognition.

In-house nominees for the SEMPO Board of Directors include:

• Duane Forrester, Microsoft
• Tanya Vaughan, HP
• Jessica Bowman, yours truly! Blogger at SEMinhouse.com

If you only vote for 2, do pick Duane and Tanya. They've been doing a stellar job on the board of directors, so let's keep 'em in there. 

Thank you in-housers!!

Vote In-house Search Marketers into the SEMPO Board

Calling all in-housers that are SEMPO members, please take a moment to vote in-house search marketers to the SEMPO Board of Directors this week.

There are 8 people on the board, and to date I believe there have only been a maximum of 2 in-house search marketers at a time. With in-house growing at such a pace, let's make it priority to get in-house needs represented.

We have 3 in-housers in the running:

1. Tanya Vaughan, Hewlett Packard
2. Duane Forrester, Microsoft  ...he's my competitor, but he's good for SEMPO
3. Jessica Bowman, Yahoo! Inc. ...yes, it's a shameless plug  :)

Let's continue making our mark in SEMPO... At the very least, vote for Duane and Tanya - they've been doing an awesome job representing in-house search marketing.

It takes 5 minutes. Voting ends Feb 15 at 5:00 pm EST.

Voting Details arrive via Email | View Nominee Profiles