Characteristics of Search Engine Optimization

One question I get asked a lot is “Are you more of a ‘technical SEO’ or a ‘marketing SEO’?” This question used to puzzle me a bit in the beginning as in my head the answer was pretty clear: I’m a marketer with a technical bent of mind.

This question then led me to think about some of the common characteristics that make a good in-house SEO. This helped me a lot too when making hiring decisions on what characteristics I should look for in an in-house SEO.

The other fact is SEO as an industry has matured over the years. As a result, what is expected out of an in-house SEO has changed as well. Companies don’t want to hire someone who can get them top rankings or create some monthly reports – that is a given now.

Increasingly, in-house SEOs are required to be more analytical and ROI focused. This evolution of SEO clearly demands SEO’s to have a good left brain and right brain combination. That said, there are definitely some peculiar characteristics of an in-house SEO, so let’s go over few of them.

1. SEO as a Thought Leader

Many times people outside the SEO world may not be able to visualize the business benefits you can drive from a successful in-house SEO program. An in-houser can open many new opportunities for a business and generate new streams of revenues.

Simply put: an in-houser can help people understand what SEO can do for their business. So in every conversation, in every meeting a SEO has the opportunity to display their thought leadership in search.

2. SEO as an Influences

As an SEO you have to be an influencer. Influencer of new ideas, new ways of generating traffic, new set of processes, and so on.

In every organization, big or small, there are certain sets of processes that people follow. To integrate SEO into that process, you need influence many stakeholders.

Remember, when you add something new like SEO to an existing process you will encounter resistance. What you need to do: communicate and influence many stakeholders. After all, you’re inserting SEO for the greater good of the business and those convictions can drive you to become an influencer of people or ideas.

3. SEO as a Salesman

Gosh, aren’t we always selling something? Moreso with SEO as you are selling ideas, ROI projections, tools, projects, or even agency partners or consultants. Most of the times in order for SEO to get a seat at the table you have to be that salesman and build your case why SEO is integral to your overall business objectives.

4. SEO as a Collaborator

Over the years I have realized that SEO is baked as part of a bigger project with tens or hundreds of stakeholders and you need a team to climb those big mountains. An in-house SEO works with different sets of teams, stakeholders, and business objectives.

In a typical day you could end up collaborating with tens of different groups – collaboration becomes the key. A classic example is collaborating with your IT team. Another example is baking your SEO part into an agenda of a larger meeting. Sometimes to get those 10 minutes in a meeting you need to collaborate closely with the product or project managers so that you can give your SEO “update.”

5. SEO as an Educator

So much of SEO is viewed as a black magic in the outside world that the onus is on SEOs to bring transparency to the process. Once what we as SEOs do is transparent and stakeholders understand why you recommend the type of changes that you do, it creates a lot of buy-in as well.

SEO education is essential to getting buy-in. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself doing multiple rounds of SEO training across the organization.

6. Analytical SEO

Marketing is analytical in nature and as marketers we base our decisions after looking at analytics reports and then optimize our targets. SEOs have to do forecasting, look at product or keyword level ROI, work with finance, do budgeting, and most importantly also work with your analytics group (if you’re at a large org). As with many things, you need to be clear when working with analytics on not just what reports you want but how to extract the data that will help you in optimizing your campaigns.

7. SEO as a Logic Builder

This is where the power of your left brain comes in and that is logic. Software developers and programmers use their strong logic skills to create software flows and endless loops of if and then statements as an example.

SEOs need to have a logical mind as you would be dealing with programmers and also working through the code yourself. Plus, if you aren’t from programming background, then start learning languages as you need to understand codes. Once you understand code, then you will start forming logic.

8. SEO with Patience

You definitely need boatloads of patience. Depending on the size of the organization, there would be times where a straightforward title tag change could take weeks if not months!

Then you have designers, IT, business partners, and all other elements that your SEO recommendations won’t just move at the speed you desire. In situations like these, you have to exercise patience and push through to ensure that even after few months your recommended changes are done. If there are some bigger projects, then multiply that number by 4!

9. SEO as a Synthesizer

SEOs make many recommendations (e.g., changing URLs, replacing graphics and Flash with text, adding new content, pagination), but not all of your recommendations will be implemented. There could be business or other (political) issues that could come in the way and your job is to synthesize different viewpoints in order to get SEO requests accomplished. This makes SEO a synthesizer of ideas and different viewpoints.

In Summary

The above reads like a long list, but SEOs do wear many hats both in an agency and in-house role. These were just some of my insights into characteristics (or qualities) of an in-house SEO. What would you add to the above list?

About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search consequences. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) object paid listings. In general, the earlier, and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more guests it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific perpendicular search engines. This gives a website web presence.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of back links, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
The acronym "SEOs" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopt by an industry of consultant who bring out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing movement. Because successful SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site and site content, SEO tactics may be included into website development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe website designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other fundamentals that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine disclosure.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, uses method such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the quality of user-experience with search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Web directory for Search Engine Optimization

Web directory for Search Engine Optimization

A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. Most web directory entries are also not found by web crawlers but by humans. The category is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.
RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of links to web sites.

Scope of listing

Most of the directories are general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But some niche directories focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence is the shopping directory. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.
Examples of well known general web directories are Yahoo!Directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.
However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, such as using automated submission of related links by script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.
Directories have various features in listing; often depend upon the price paid for inclusion:
•    Free submission – there is no charge for the review and listing of the site
•    Reciprocal link – a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory
•    Paid submission – a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link
•    No follow – there is a rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link.
•    Featured listing – the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage. Sometimes called sponsored listing.
•    Bid for position – where sites are ordered based on bids
•    Affiliate Links – where the directory earns commission for referred customers from the listed websites

Human-edited directories

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.
Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed web site. These options typically have an additional fee associated, but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.
Today submission of websites to web directories is considered a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get back-links for the submitted web site. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it cannot be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time consuming job and is often outsourced by the webmasters.

Bid for Position directories

Bid for Position directories or also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount. They are special in that the more a person pays the higher up the list of websites in the directory they go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors who browse the directory will click on the listing.

Search engine optimization method

The leading search engines, such as Google Bing and yahoo, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantees crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open directory project both require manual submission and human editorial review. Google offers Google webmaster tools, for which an XML sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.