Stuck between SEO and a hard place
January 13, 2009 – 11:24 am by Hugo GuzmanOften times, as I sit across the table from a perspective client that is currently in charge of spearheading in-house SEO for their company, my mind begins to wander and I start thinking all kinds of strange thoughts:
“Is this person wondering if we’re going to come in and make their job obsolete?”
“Does this person think that they’re just fine doing SEO on their own?”
“Is this person angry that I’m in their office talking about their area of expertise?”
“Does this person want to slap me in the face for having the gall to come into their office like this?”
In all seriousness, though, it’s important for in-house folks to buy into the idea of working with an outside vendor for SEO; or at least certain facets it. Mind you, the particular in-house person in charge of overseeing SEO might not be the final decision-maker in terms of signing checks and choosing vendors, but he or she will likely have a major say in who the company decides to work with.
For this reason, it’s important that vendors clearly outline their position, setting clear line of demarcation in terms of what will be handled in-house and what will be handled by the external SEO provider. For example, here at Zeta, we will often identify the areas of strength that the in-house person/team has demonstrated (keyword research, press release optimization, analytics and reporting, etc…) and make sure that we do not include that in the scope of that program.
This accomplishes two main goals:
1) It helps to keep the costs low for the client, ensuring that they don’t pay for something they don’t need
2) It helps ensure in-house SEO stakeholders that we’re not there to take their jobs and that we simply want to act as an extension of their team.
Sometimes, this means that we might only be contracted to work on very specific lines of service, like link-building outreach or analytics benchmarking. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.
After all, SEO is not a package deal. It’s a dynamic discipline that requires a bit of creativity and cooperation.
10 Responses to “Stuck between SEO and a hard place”
Hugo, as an in-house SEO i can say that it definitely takes two to tango.
Yes, to some degree we are suspicious of external suppliers coming in but absolutely not for the reasons you think. Most in-house SEOs are pretty secure in their jobs and there is simply no chance of an external supplier ousting us from our jobs. Why? Because as you observed, we’re the mouthpiece for the business and the business looks to us for our professional opinion. To put it another way we are seen as family and blood is thicker than water.
Furthermore we are paid to protect the business and not expose it to risks, and one way or another, employing an externals supplier is a risky cost that we are obliged to interrogate and mitigate as much as we possibly can. If we dont, we’ve failed at our jobs.
Personally, what generally gets my goat up is the arrogance of other agencies who think that perhaps/maybe/somehow they can usurp us, or even worse, that *is* their actual undisclosed goal. To enter a business meeting in such a confrontational way is unproductive and betrays a lack of common sense - (i’ve met plenty of agencies like that) - that would put me off working with that supplier anyway.
Usually, communication failure and confrontation is also down to the lack of skills possessed by the sales person representing the supplier. SEO is a strong product which sells itself yet when meeting an inhouse SEO, nine times out of ten, agency saalespeople really cant hold their own in a chat about search marketing and so the meeting can breakdown to become a pointless exchange.
Agencies/suppliers should recognise that whilst a conflict of interests is on the cards, the very fact that an in-house SEO has invited you in for a discussion suggests that they are aware of the fact that there is room for improvement, or there are areas of resposnability they struggle to manage as effectively as they’d like to. It makes sense to get someone else to do these things.
When attending a meeting with an in-house SEO, rather than spin off the usual spiel about how “we’ve checked your website” and “we’ve seen that you dont rank for important terms in your market”, open the conversation with, “we’re an SEO company with these key strengths and we’d like to discover ways in which we can work together. Are there any areas of your strategy that you feel are weak, too time consuming or difficult to support?”
Any agency that starts the conversation like that has got my attention. What is more many have got decent business from me and i am proud of the agency partners i work with. I regularly outsource certain projects and strategic elements to companies that demonstrate reliability and innovation in areas i have no time to get involved in. Remember, we are usually one person who’s skills are spread very thinly throughout the company. If you take the time to tailor your pitch to a higher level of expertise, far from being a barrier to your business we can become a facilitator for your products throughout our company!
Thanks for your great post - mind if write a response on my own blog? You’v inspired me. Can i post the link here when it’s done?
By Jonathan Allen on Jan 14, 2009
Thank you very much for your candid response, Jonathan! And by all means, go ahead and write a response and let me know when it’s up.
thanks again!
By Hugo Guzman on Jan 14, 2009
I agree with Jonathan. As an in-house SEO, most of the search agency pitches are so weak and the sales staff of the agency so uninformed about search that it is hard to take most large agencies seriously anymore.
Recently an agency made a pitch and the sales staff told us we should misspell keywords in our meta description. When I politely pointed out that this tactic might not be effective, the agency replied that their head SEO was a speaker at SES so we should trust them.
As Jonathan pointed out, agencies can really help out and prove to be effective partners with in-house search teams but they need to bring their A-game if they want to play with the big boys.
By Jeff on Jan 14, 2009
Great read guys… Please send me a message when you post Jonathan.
By Eric Fransen on Jan 15, 2009
Working in both arenas I think what each of you have said is absolutely spot-on.
I guess at the end of the day, people cannot do and be all things, and building relationships that are trustworthy and produce great results works in everyone’s favour.
I think managing the relationship from the word go - setting responsibilities, parameters of work, areas of integration and overlap, specialist areas, etc - can all help improve that synergy that we might hope for when merging in-house with agency.
Thought provoking post Hugo (and Jonathan!)
By Ben McKay on Jan 15, 2009
Good post and great comments!
One thing I’ve found when working with companies (mostly in a training or consulting manner) that already have somewhat of an SEO department is that typically those in charge of the dept. do know a lot, and have a good handle on the ins and outs of SEO.
Sometimes it’s simply a matter of validating their knowledge to their own managers or the CEO that makes my consultation the most valuable. For some reason, many companies don’t have enough faith in their own people, but if some supposed “SEO expert” says it, then it must be true!
By Jill Whalen on Jan 15, 2009
Hi Hugo
This is an impressive post on a whole number of levels.
Blog articles that talk about their customers, inspiring a level of trust and engagement, and clearly shows how it should be.
Good stuff, thanks for sharing.
By matt lambert on Jan 15, 2009
Thanks for all of the great feedback!
By Hugo Guzman on Jan 15, 2009
I’ve been guilty of being part of that agency that comes riding in to “save the day”– largely because the CEO or some other executive thought we were special because we spoke at SES or SMX. I have deep appreciation for the in-house teams at the clients we work with– they know their business well (and all the SEO expertise in the world is NOTHING without understanding of the client’s business), plus they get to focus on just one client– themselves. Fortunately, we don’t have a need to increase billable hours or try to wrestle responsibility away from the in-house team– that would be both suicide and not smart!
By Dennis Yu on Jan 16, 2009
Hugo - here’s my reply. I think it chimes with another post of yours about how companies are looking for partners rather than vendors. Definitely rings true for me.
http://jc1000000.blogspot.com/2009/01/agencies-bring-your-game-in-house.html
By Jonathan Allen on Jan 20, 2009