Working as an in-house SEO is a drastically different job than the role of an agency SEO or SEO consultant. I have worked in all three capacities in my two-decade career though I have spent more time as an in-house SEO than anything else. Despite the catchy-title of this article, I actually really like working in-house for a number of reasons. As an in-house SEO you will often be working with most departments in your organization and can greatly influence the direction of a company. You will also have access to way more data than an external SEO would. In my case I have led performance marketing since 2013 and am regularly working with Google Ads SEM data, Google Analytics data and often CRM and BI data. I can’t imagine working as an SEO these days without having that level of data. The other reason why I love working in-house is that you’ll be working on solving business problems, sometimes not even having to do with optimizing websites. You might work with business development one day or M&A. Or you might be working with product and operations by sharing data insights.
The Most Important Skill For In-House SEOs
Working as an in-house SEO is not for everyone however. To be successful you have to be good at working with others and influencing people internally. Many SEOs are introverted, myself included, but this is more of a skill than a character trait in my opinion. When I began my career, I was not comfortable working with others but as my career progressed I have become quite good at leading teams and working cross-functionally across all levels. Taking management training courses is one way to help develop these skills. I would argue that working well with others is way more valuable for an in-house SEO than it is to know every single thing about SEO. I don’t know everything about SEO. Nor do a lot of other successful SEOs. I focus on the task at hand and figure out how to make it work. Conversely, I have worked with brilliant SEOs in the past much smarter than myself who cannot work with others at all and thus are unproductive.
One thing I have consistently found to help advance my SEO agenda is to host company-wide seminars. These are often well-attended and help spur a lot of curiosity and discussion. I’ve established relationships with co-workers I had never spoken to previously simply by hosting a seminar. Educating your colleagues can help stimulate new ideas and cross-functional collaboration. I get a thrill out of doing these.
A related skill that is critical are presentation skills. If you are scared to present in front of people then you will either have to get over it or learn how to deal with it. I had a boss way back in 2006 who had us recent hires film ourselves presenting to each other then critique each other as we replayed the video. That was uncomfortable but lesson learned. I eventually signed up for Toastmasters when I was working in Santa Monica for The Search Agency which was extremely helpful. I highly recommend that.
Presentations must be geared toward the audience and not be needlessly complicated. Keep in mind that your audience will often be more of a layman or laywoman than other technically-minded individuals so you have to translate your geeky SEO speak into practical business dialogue.
One of the most annoying aspects to in-house SEO is people will often have their friends or outside “SEO experts” weighing in with generic site audits that they pulled from a Screaming Frog crawl. Another version of this is if the owner of your company or an exec receives one of those ubiquitous SEO solicitation emails then asks you about it. Everyone thinks they are an SEO these days. If SEO were that simple it would be a commodity that everyone would do well. The fact is that outsiders have no clue what it is like to actually work internally to get projects done and these outside opinions are not helpful as they lack context. My suggestion is to not take things personally as tempting as it might be and accept the things that make sense then deflect the rest of the noise tactfully of course, even though getting put in this situation is not really tactful to begin with.
Key Stakeholders For In-House SEO
In order to gain buy-in from key stakeholders you’ll need to figure out what their priorities and interests are then tailor your communications around that things in a way to advances your SEO strategy. This is probably the #1 difference between in-house SEO and agency-side SEO. On the agency side you’re probably working exclusively with marketing leaders or supporting an in-house SEO counterpart.
- CEO / COO / President / Founder
- Stay really high level here and have a strong vision for what you hope to achieve through SEO without getting too tactical unless you’re asked to.
- CFO / Director of Finance
- When it comes to finance executives, it’s best to stick with financial metrics such as estimated revenue growth or profitability.
- CMO / VP of Digital Marketing
- For the data-driven marketers, you’ll want to talk about traffic growth and/or conversion rates. If you’re working with brand marketers then focus on how SEO can help elevate brand awareness. Competitor analysis and rankings is also another area you can focus on.
- At some point you’ll have to submit annual budget proposals. It’s important to have a good handle on what the total marketing budget is and figure out how to fit your requests into it. You probably won’t get everything you want so be prepared to defend the must-haves and know when to move on.
- Chief Revenue Officer / VP of Sales
- You’ll want to focus on how SEO can help support the sales team whether it’s through increased lead generation or web traffic that converts to sales.
- CTO / VP of Engineering / IT Director
- Unlike the other departments I’ve mentioned above, you’ll probably not be talking about sales revenue here but more about efficiency whether it’s through SAAS costs, bandwidth usage, or even AI-based solutions. If you want to do fancy technical projects like using cosine similarity scores to create better item recommendations then you’ll need to clearly articulate your needs and why it’s important.
- Chief Product Officer / Product Managers
- Not every company has these types of roles but if yours does then you’ll need to focus on how you can build SEO principles into the product roadmap if you aren’t the product manager.
- Content Teams
- Unless your content team is well-versed in SEO content optimization you’ll have to provide clear guidelines and requests. If you want your team to cover specific entities or topics for semantic search then be sure to put those in your creative brief. You can even use your SEO content tools to help them see their relevance scores.
12 Tips For In-House SEOs
- Have regular check-ins with cross-functional partners
- This is a great way to build rapport with colleagues even if it’s not always about projects. This can happen in-person or remote. While working remote, one of my favorite weekly check-ins was with my head of infrastructure who lives in Florida. I gained so many insights from our check-ins while during a slow week we might just be talking about upcoming vacation plans. I had never heard of Florida’s Space Coast before but I was heading to the southeast for vacation so that was an insightful tip.
- Host In-House SEO seminars
- Take management training courses
- Even if you are already a people manager, management training can still be of immense value.
- Establish a network of external SEOs
- Working in-house can be lonely in that you might be the only SEO in-house or have a small team. Having an external network to talk shop can help validate and stay on top of the latest trends.
- Read industry blogs like Search Engine Land
- Attend SEO conferences such as SMX, Pubcon and Brighton SEO
- This can fall under the networking bucket. A lot of these sessions can be quite basic or repetitive but can also be a great way to pick up some good nuggets and meet other SEO industry professionals.
- I’ve also discovered several SEO vendors that I use to this day by walking the conference halls over the years.
- Treat your team and colleagues out to lunch
- Your colleagues are people first and foremost. While you don’t need to be BFFs with everyone, if you connect with people on a deeper level than just superficial work tasks then it can really help when you need to work with them.
- Or play pickup basketball at lunch. I used play a weekly pickup basketball game with a group of my co-workers at Backroads every Wednesday at the YMCA gym down the street. Not only was this fun and healthy, but it was a great way to get to know my colleagues. There was also a big group of colleagues that did yoga sessions on-site several times per week, which is another way to bond with colleagues. Having a common activity makes it easier to build rapport outside of just work projects. Then there’s happy hour, which is not really my thing but that can also be another way to build rapport.
- Be an expert on company BI data, not just search data
- If you want to get buy-in from key stakeholders then having a solid data-driven approach is the way to go.
- Never say “in my opinion”. Stay grounded in facts and data.
- Maintain side projects or freelance gigs
- Companies will sometimes frown upon side gigs but in this field I feel it is essential to being good at your job. I got into SEO by developing and managing my own sites. If I did not have these opportunities to test and learn then I would not be where I am today. Also, working in-house can be limiting due to roadmaps, resourcing, product fit, etc… so in order to stay sharp you’ll need other ways to keep your skills up to date. Side gigs are not really for the money but for the learning experience.
- Be pragmatic
- There is textbook SEO and then there is reality. The truth is that in order to be an in-house SEO you’ll need to learn how to compromise and work together with other stakeholders on solutions. Have the awareness to know which battles are worth fighting or not. Sometimes the resulting outcome may actually be better for all parties than originally intended.
- Be ruthless at prioritization
- Not every single thing from a generic SEO audit is going to deliver value. With finite time and resources you’ll need to learn how to prioritize otherwise you’ll run the risk of wasting resources and not accomplish anything. If I see a prioritization list start with Core Web Vitals (CWV) for example I’m going to hit the delete button. Unless your site absolutely cannot run on mobile devices then CWV is not going to move the needle in a quantifiable way for most sites. You can easily ruin your credibility by prioritizing something like that over more impactful tasks such as making your Javascript renderable or building out content modules.
- Become a Paid Search SEM expert
- Putting all of your eggs in one basket that is dictated by Google’s algorithm changes is pretty risky from a career development standpoint. There are no shortage of companies and industries out there that have been wiped out due to Google updates. Not all of which are necessarily the fault of an in-house SEO but you’ll be best suited if you’re more well-rounded than being a specialist in just one thing. Plus, managing SEM alongside SEO allows you to own a more holistic strategy for search. The user often doesn’t know the difference between paid search ads and organic results nor cares, so if the user is channel-agnostic then so should your search strategy.