While a company’s SEO team might have a lot of the knowledge regarding SEO and what’s needed to properly optimize a site, it’s the non-SEO teams interacting with the website itself who perform most SEO actions.
The influence that a non-SEO team has on SEO value may come as a surprise, but the fact is that SEO professionals often don’t have access to much of a website’s content to make changes directly, particularly for larger enterprises.
How SEO Teams Actually Perform SEO Tasks
At a smaller business, SEO teams will be able to do more of the many things that are required for good SEO, including link building tasks and optimization for content, along with making changes to the website’s code.
Things will become more challenging for SEO professionals with larger companies, including corporations. SEO teams won’t be able to do as much for these businesses because they have minimal control over the website, with the exception of the title tags and meta descriptions that users see in search results.
The SEO team will make recommendations and put out fires as they try to get other non-SEO professionals to perform certain actions that can benefit SEO. Therefore, the SEO team is important.
Some ways your SEO team may influence a larger business could include:
- Developing a solid SEO strategy for others to integrate into their operations
- Develop keyword strategies for content writers
- Manage those writers in some cases for SEO-optimized content as part of a content strategy
- Advise writers and others on internal linking strategies for content
- Identify and address any technical problems, write required fixes to implement, and test those fixes
- Identify broken pages and recommend existing URLs to redirect those pages to and test when the redirects (also known as 301s) go live
- Provide training for non-SEO teams to help them learn the fundamentals of SEO
- Provide risk assessment and requirements for specific changes to the website
As you can see based on this list, much of an SEO professional’s tasks entail strategizing and advising for others, while it will be up to many of your other teams to implement those recommendations.
Content teams, developers, designers, and coders, among others you might have working directly with your site, will be responsible for actually performing many of the tasks the SEO team wants done.
What Your Non-SEO Teams Will Do
There are many different people that a larger business will have behind the scenes. The various team members could include:
- Web and UX designers
- Developers
- Project managers
- Product managers
- Writers
- Merchandisers
- Sales teams
- QA testers
- Video producers
- Social media experts
In many cases, all of those individuals and teams will be the ones who put SEO strategies into effect and help boost the website’s rankings in search engines. It’s important for non-SEO employees to have a good understanding of the specific roles they’ll each play when it comes to integrating SEO.
The Necessity of SEO Training for Every Team
Non-SEO professionals will need various tools and training that pertain to their role in SEO implementation. Giving your developers and other professionals the resources they need to practice good SEO can, in turn, help you get the most from your SEO teams, and the latter will be more content in knowing that their advice and recommendations are being heeded and properly incorporated.
Having a training program in place for each of your non-SEO employees can help ensure they’re prepared to handle the SEO tasks specific to them. Subsequently, you’ll be able to avoid or at least properly address potential drops in traffic if all of your employees can work together to mitigate any risks that might arise.
Because of the impact that non-SEO teams have on SEO, these employees can be invaluable assets to your SEO strategies. Combining the efforts of SEO and non-SEO teams will help you get the most from all of your employees.
