6 Ways to Integrate SEO Across Teams

When I first started working in digital marketing, I treated content like a canvas and splattered meta-data and keywords across it like Pollock. This is something I am not proud of since not only does it make me seem dated, but it also goes horribly against the best practices that are prevalent in our society today. If you’ve ever seen anything that said anything like, “Those who enjoy California vacations and those who love California vacations,” or something similar, what do you think? Please accept my sincerest apologies for the statement that “for the best California vacation, go no further than these California getaways.”

Fast forward twenty years, and I’m delighted to report that best practices for organic search engine optimization (SEO) have substantially improved, both for the marketer and the end-user. As we move towards the year 2023, it is more crucial than it has ever been to keep in mind that search does not occur in a vacuum. It ought to be a well-considered and well-integrated plan that runs throughout the entirety of the client experience.

Having trouble figuring out how to implement SEO? When it comes to collaborating with search engine optimization teams, agencies, or practitioners, we provide you with six important approaches to de-silo your organization’s search integration across the board.

Where Search Confronts Research, Personas, and the Journey of the Audience

Search traffic offers a wealth of qualitative and quantitative information on the requirements, lingo, and attitudes of your audience, among other things.

• When they refer to your travel service, do customers typically use the term “tour” or “vacation”?

• When looking for information about the college of their choosing, do high school students search for “ASU,” “Arizona State,” or “Arizona State University?”

• Do your customers use the terms “platform,” “tool,” or “technology” when they are looking for corporate software?

Using search data can help you determine what aspects of your message will be most meaningful to your audience. If you combine this with data from online surveys, interviews with key stakeholders, and other digital sources, you will have a solid (and quantifiable) base from which to build your personas and audience journeys.

Combine the efforts of SEO with UX.

Search and user experience teams shouldn’t be kept on distinct jobs, according to Rebekah Baggs and Chris Corak, authors of “SEO For Everyone.” These practitioners or teams frequently have some of the same objectives in mind, which include making sure the site is simple to locate, navigate, use, and enjoy. However, the way in which they go about the process of reaching their destination could be different.

Searching and… Participating in the Offsite Experience?

During the time of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, when I was doing SEO work, I did not foresee that I would have to start planning for SEO before the site experience had started.

Today, Google wants you to spend as much time as possible on Google.

Even before the consumer visits the site, search marketers need to give serious consideration to how their information is presented, digested, and shared. This is an absolutely essential step. Maps, movie listings, neighborhood listings, and product descriptions are just a few examples of this type of information.

Because the top search results itself provide answers to users’ questions, search marketers and content creators have an even greater responsibility to ensure that all material, pictures, and calls to action are optimized even before a user visits their website.

Google Search and Social Media

Over the years, the combination of search and social media has become one of my most favorite mash-ups. Finding out how search phrases and activity on your site overlap with social engagement conversions and customer care is a fascinating endeavor. The answer to this question is not found in a lovely venn diagram. This generally seems like a blot experiment that a psychologist would conduct, with several overlaps occurring in weird and surprising ways.

As the Great Resignation drags on and teams are saddled with an ever-increasing amount of work (despite having fewer resources, patience, and stamina), one strategy for mitigating the impact of this increased workload is to figure out ways for teams to work together, draw on the knowledge and experience of one another, and perform more tasks jointly outside of the SEO silo. LinkedIn, Pinterest, Medium, Twitter, and Meta are among the most effective social media platforms for search engine optimization (not to mention content dissemination, amplification, and atomization as well!).

Pull quote: Pinterest estimates that 444 million individuals from across the world use the site on a monthly basis in search of fresh ideas. As a direct result of their New Year’s resolutions, 88% of people who use Pinterest ended up making a purchase in the previous year.

SEO, Please Introduce Your Creative and Content Teams

It is the responsibility of content marketers and authors to ensure that the material is not simply copy that says “me” or “product.”

What inquiries does your audience have that need to be answered? With what rhythmic pattern? Where, and why? How (for example, a video as opposed to text or an app)? I can guarantee with a 99% degree of accuracy that it is not, “why are these features of this SaaS tool so delicious?”

Being creative is also an important factor. According to John Mueller, who works for Google, sometimes even seemingly insignificant alterations can have a significant impact on how people perceive your website. If you have something that is on a financial topic, for instance, and people come to you and say things like “oh, your material is okay but it’s presented in a way that appears extremely amateurish,” then that could represent how people view your website. And in the long term, it can be indicative of something that is also discernible through a search.

Inadequate design can result in high bounce rates and a short time spent on the site, which can have a negative impact on ratings. If search marketers are working on a goal or to-do list for the year 2023, they might want to consider adding “meet with the creative team” (over coffee or cocktails works!) to the list.

Both SEO and Video Work

Considering YouTube’s continued preeminence as a key search engine, you should also make it a priority to optimize your videos for search engine optimization (SEO). Videos should be optimized with care and reflect the level of sophistication of your business, both from a creative and a user experience point of view. Videos should also mirror your search keywords.

Keep your eye on:

• The channel’s promotional video, its featured video, and its various sections

• Channel name, description, and site connections

• A picture for your profile, a banner graphic, and a watermark for videos

• Files in the SRT format, tags, and hashtags

• Headlines and titles for thumbnails

It Is Time To Integrate SEO Into Your Website Now

To help phase your efforts, begin by identifying what terms and themes your audience is searching for. Then, create content that focuses on those phrases and issues, and use the data to understand which topics have the highest interest levels. Those should be the primary focus of your content activities.

In addition, when you incorporate SEO, using tools such as TubeBuddy, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and YouTube Search Predictions will assist you in determining what aspects of your implementation are successful and which are not.