SEO is a discipline with ramifications across many teams in an organization. From web development to UX & design with Marketing, content, and PR, it becomes difficult to understand what impact it can have on a website and how to bring the best of success to your lead generation via SEO. Understand the challenges and get ideas on how to structure, communicate and evangelize SEO throughout your organization.

2. Thanks to our Host & Sponsor!

3. Amsterdam SEO Meetup
➔ A forum to exchange, reflect and share about SEO and related disciplines
➔ For newbies, curious and experts
➔ Working in startups, SMBs, corporations, agencies, freelancers, etc.
➔ Monthly meetup with talks, networking and beers/drinks
➔ Always looking for:
HostsSpeakers SponsorsTopics

4. SEO in Your Organisation
Baptiste Hausmann

5. Have you ever heard…?

6. “Oh, you are the new CEO Specialist?”

8. “SEO is only about keywords, right?”

10. “I don’t want to hear about SEO anymore. I write a
beautiful story, then an SEO tell me to change
everything with keywords that don’t make sense.”
- a content-writer

12. “Well, I’ll just redesign the navigation bar, no one
will notice”
- a web-developer

14. I have heard of all this!

15. About me: Baptiste “Baba” Hausmann

17. SEO can be...
● Suffering from its (past) reputation
● Incorrectly understood:
○ How search engines work
○ Scope
○ Results it can (or cannot) bring
○ Touchpoints with other disciplines
● Brought in an organisation without a thorough reflection on how it fits in
their overall strategy

18. Challenges of SEO
in an organisation

19. 1. Place of SEO
2. Communication
3. Evangelisation

20. 1.
Where does SEO live?

22. Where should SEO
fit in an organisation?
What are your ideas?

23. It depends...

24. SEO: marketing or technology?
● A blend of both creative marketing and technical development
● Has ramification with many other disciplines:
○ Web developers need to follow SEO best practices to avoid issues that could prevent search
engines from finding and understanding the website content as intended.
○ UX and design teams need to follow SEO best practices to avoid eliminating or changing
content that is driving organic website traffic.
○ Content and editorial teams need to write with search engines in mind so that people can
easily find that content through a Google search.
⇒ Highly dependent on the organisation strategy and whether the website is the
product

25. It will determine the team’s focus
● SEOs that live with marketing tend to focus more on content optimization
and have a more difficult time getting SEO fixes prioritized.
● SEOs that live with product/engineering tend to have an easier time getting
large-scale, big-impact SEO fixes deployed.
If a large website only focuses on on-page & content, they are missing high
opportunities.

26. Place in Organisation - Where?
Cross-functional team tasked with the
organization’s website as a whole
Incorporating in Product Team, consider:
1. Website complexity
2. Release cadence
3. Tech stack
Part of the marketing team
Often lacks tech resources and support
Focus on the creative/content aspect

27. Place in Organisation - Whom?
⇒ Specialist or Generalist?
⇒ Analyst, Content Strategist/Marketer,
Data Scientist, SEO Engineers, etc.
⇒ Need for SEO agency if in-house SEO
team?

28. 2.
Clear Communication

29. Communicating with multiple stakeholders
It’s about “talking the same language”.
➢ Understanding different mindsets to make progress;
➢ Vocabulary;
➢ Managing expectations;
➢ Reporting on wins & fails.

30. Communication - Tips & Ideas
➢ Establish trust - e.g. don’t communicate about fixes/things you don’t know
for sure
➢ Create workflow/process to monitor any changes on the website
➢ Ask for feedback
How can I work better with you & your team? How can I better support you?
➢ Share performance/impact of the projects you are working (worked) on
➢ Never assume: “it should be simpler for {role}, let’s do it this way”

31. 3.
Evangelisation

32. SEO is not...

33. Evangelisation = Spread the SEO Gospel

34. Spreading the SEO Gospel
➔ SEO Is Everyone’s Responsibility
◆ Marketing/PR/Content
◆ Web development
◆ Paid advertising
◆ Customer support
◆ Sales
◆ …
➔ What you think of SEO isn’t wrong, it’s only outdated
➔ Not only about spreading the SEO Gospel, but also learning from
colleagues

35. Spread the SEO Gospel - Ideas
➔ Workshops with all involved stakeholders on basic concepts
◆ “I SEO what you did there…”©
➔ Demonstrate how things work behind the scene (i.e. show rather than tell)
◆ Show & Tell
➔ “How To SEO?”©
: Knowledge Base
➔ Share what you’ve learned at Conferences and Meetups 😇

36. Evangelisation = Bring SEO in the Culture

37. Evangelisation - Ideas
➢ SEO Is Everyone’s Responsibility
○ Find your SEO Champion in each team
○ Encourage self-taught SEO for the non-SEO marketer
○ Lunch talks with people outside your team
➢ Frequent SEO happenings
○ “Did You SEO Know?!”©
○ SEO points/Leaderboard (link of the week/month, top content, higher conversion, best practices, etc.)
○ SEO Hackathon
○ SEO Tops & Flops of the quarter
➢ More subtle..
○ Recognize their efforts: high-fives, saying it out loud
○ Funny t-shirts

38. And you?
What is your biggest struggle with
bringing SEO in your organisation?

39. Baptiste “Baba” Hausmann
letsdoit@seosmann.com
WhatsApp/Telegram:
+49 163 975 3357
meetup.com/Amsterdam-SEO/
Q&A