I’m a member of SEMPO’s In-House Search Committee, and since I manage PPC efforts at Adapt Technologies and all our other marketing, I was asked to contribute some ideas for in-house best practices for managing SEM. Here are some suggestions, coming from what I’ve observed from working at an SEM agency as well as from prospects we talk to at Adapt:
- One person (or small group, depending on the size of your org) is the internal champion and overseer for all search initiatives. This ensures coordination of the messages and efforts, so that there’s one owner. I suggest something perhaps like a “search calendar” where planned messaging is slotted in (for PPC), new Web pages are listed (for SEO so that tags, content, and link strategies can be planned), etc.
The above practice will also help you check out the impact of “external” marketing efforts on your search. For example, you’ll likely see a rise in your PPC imps and potentially your clickthrough when you do off-line marketing like a TV campaign or PR push. Ideally, someone who has DONE paid search at the expert level – e.g. has written it, done analysis, bid management, a/b testing, etc. – and also knows SEO should be at the head of this group or should be the one person. This is not to say that your EVP of Marketing should be writing search ads, but someone in charge of your search efforts should ideally have experience in it.
- Schedule bi-weekly (or as frequently as necessary) meetings between departments involved in all marketing initiatives. Perhaps create a “search task force.” Having this “task force” would also include the Web development team (as applicable) so that they are prepared for potential surges in traffic, additional landing pages needing to be added to the site, changes to existing pages, etc.
- If you are working with an outside advertising agency, get a long-reaching media plan (if possible) to get insights into future venues, campaign themes, tag lines, and so forth. This way, your search marketers can plan out corresponding search campaigns (e.g. buy certain terms, plan appropriately themed creatives, etc.) Your agency is not likely able to change existing print/tv insertions based on search; it should be the other way around.
- Don’t forget about your PR people or your PR agency! They should be involved so that, again, your search marketers buy relevant paid terms, or like sites get contacted for inbound links when PR/media outreaches are scheduled. Search is a pull medium, and people will look up terms that they hear about in the press or in ads. You will want to ensure you’re on all searches which could be generated off-line.
- PR folks are probably good at figuring out link-bait topics, so set them loose on brainstorming themes for you. But you should ultimately own the linkbait messages so it doesn’t seem disingenuous for the PR agency to be posting stuff on your behalf.
- If you have the staff or the time, have a member of your analytics team dedicate a portion of their time to analyzing your paid search stats. Oftentimes, going beyond a simple analysis of “what keyword drove what sale” is needed, and it may take a skilled statistician to find trends or commonalities from which to make conclusions. Also, their insights would be helpful in analyzing, say, landing page test data, or for that matter, running the tests.
If you can’t get help from an analytics specialist, look into using a free or cheap analytics tool or log file analysis tool to get insights (like the Clicktracks free version, Google Analytics, etc).
- A training session from a smart, respected, insightful SEO consultant or agency about the technical aspects of SEO will likely be worthwhile for the development/production team. What are concerns of the dev team which may hinder search engine indexability? Best advice for content management systems, shopping carts, file structure of sites, what to do on redirects, etc…
- From this training, create a bible for your developers to follow (“Thou shalt not use meta-refresh,” etc.) so that these become your team’s best practices, and future development occurs with SEO concerns in mind. Train future dev hires on these best practices. Keep the bible refreshed with new developments as well; maybe bring the consultants back or do phone training once every 4-6 months for updates.
- Be aware of the poaching of SEM experts from your team – with the demand for search specialists, it will happen! Compensate them fairly and do not take them for granted so you can ensure greater retention of your team. You don’t want your brilliant SEM team taking their skills out the door!
While it’s not my area of expertise, there’s more pointers that I’m sure can be added for mobile, local, and video search too. Meanwhile, you can at least get started trying to coordinate and improve your in-house “basic” SEM management efforts with these thoughts.
