SEO has turned into a very cross-discipline skillset where you absolutely need to be able to communicate and break through team barriers. If I’ve learned anything in the past few years of building and managing teams, it’s that creating harmony between “technical” and “creative” teams can make or break your campaigns. I know, I know. You’re probably sick of reading content focused on building teams, and probably want tactical and strategic ones instead. But tactical and strategic won’t work unless you have a solid core in place.
SEO is a mix of creativity and science, and there are certain harmonies that needs to occur in the lifecycle of the campaign between multiple team members and the client themselves to help the chances of success.
In a typical client relationship, you probably have at least 1 of each of these types of key players on the project:
- The Strategist- Mainly responsible for roadmap creation and developing the overall strategy to meet the client’s goals.
- The Technical SEO- Responsible for working with the client to make sure the website structure and technical initiatives, changes or migrations are sound to prevent any performance or visibility issues (and so much more).
- The Client Point of Contact- The main person you’re working with from the client side, whether it’s an in-house SEO, marketing manager, etc.
- The Client’s Development Team- The team that ultimately needs the hard-sell on any platform or website changes for SEO/marketing purposes and typically responsible for implementation.
Each of these individuals has a specific focus and discipline, yet each of them is integral to the strategy roadmap succeeding or failing. You’ll notice up above that each team member has their own “goal.”
The question is, where are the communication points and hand-offs between the teams, and how do they succeed as a team while needing to work independent of each other? Ask yourself the following questions…
Are you reviewing goals as a team? Not just the client’s goals either. Review each individual team members goals, and making sure each team member is aware of the responsibilities of other is key. It also helps with accountability and timeline management.
Do you have a fluent liaison? In a perfect world, marketers, developers and technical leads would speak the same language and be able to convey the importance of why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s fine, but the difficulties occur when marketing can’t push the development team to make changes because they can’t see the advantages from an SEO standpoint. Is there someone on your team who can work both sides of the fence to make sure digital strategy is pushed through and explained on the client side? Do you have someone on your team with enough fluency in all skillsets to break down those barriers? Can that person also understand and express technical limitations on the client side to the strategists? Having someone like this that can float will help all sides understand each step in their own “language.”
For changes that impact the website, communication tends to fall with the technical lead, or the consultant with the technical background that’s working directly with the client POC. Having the team work together as one unit allows there to be fluency between your agency’s internal teams when a strategist isn’t deeply invested in certain aspects of technical changes or implementation, or vice versa. Keep the communication constant, and encourage team members to read and invest themselves in each roadmap that is delivered to the client and ask questions if they’re unsure what things mean that may not be in their skillset.
Is the client your internal champion? No? Then make them one. They’re going to be the ones that help strengthen your voice within their own teams if you’re struggling with getting initiatives or changes pushed through. Spend time educating them, so they can educate their teams where you may not be able to.
Do you have open communication? There needs to be conversation about what the middle ground is with content campaigns. From a structural standpoint, you may be working with some limitations on the client’s CMS with certain directory structures, locations where content can sit, capabilities of the client’s development team, homegrown platforms, etc.
Are you SURE you have open communication? SEO strategy isn’t just content, and there are some projects or engagements that are heavier on the technical side than the creative side to start. With multiple team members working on the same campaign, there needs to be a stopping point in the first couple of weeks where there’s an open forum about issues on the technical side, what’s being seen in the competitive landscape, where they’re performing or failing, etc. Because all of this impacts the next few months of work up ahead.
Do you analyze roadmaps for soundness? Sometimes creative strategies aren’t sound from a technical standpoint, and giving feedback on someone’s creative work can feel almost like insulting their baby. Any kind of roadmap that has technical intricacies, such as launching landing pages, microsites, projects utilizing HTML 5, etc. should be reviewed from the necessary team members. Remember, having a sound structure is often overlooked, but it is key to overall success. If you’re planning on hosting something on the client’s domain, open up communication with their internal development team and your technical lead to make sure everything is sound and won’t cause issues down the road with crawling or indexing.
As a strategist, your end goal of branding, link development, engagement or shareability needs to fall in line with the technical’s milestone timeline and goals, which also needs to be in sync with the client development team’s timelines.
I’ve seen instances where a CMS is homegrown and publishing content required having it go out in sync with bi-weekly development cycle, which was typically information the technical SEO lead or consultant would have and something the strategist may not. Another instance of communication not being synced may be when there’s migration or changes that directly impact the URL structure while content campaigns are occurring.
Backtracking to consolidate equity is often tougher than getting everyone working together on the same page to begin with.
Managing a team that has both technical leads and strategists can be challenging because both sides have very different skillsets, but creating that bridge between them is essential to roadmap success in the long-run.
What challenges have you faced if you’re running a multi-discipline team?
