Being an Effective SEO within your Organization Tony Adam

1
Being an Effective SEO within your Organization
Tony Adam

• November 11th, 2008

2
About Tony Adam - How I got here?

• SEO Manager _at_ Yahoo!
• My Background
• Technology Consulting, Sales, BizDev, etc.
• SEO Evangelism
• Program/Project Management
• Where youll find me
• http//tonyadam.com/blog
• http//twitter.com/tonyadam

3
How do you start being effective?!

• Get an understanding for the People you work with
  and interact with.
• Find out who the business stakeholdersare in
  your organization.
• Know what projects are in progress and if there
  is any opportunity to create SEO Projects.

4
Take a moment
It is extremely important to understand the
Company Culture
5
How do you learn the Company Culture

• Are you in an organization that moves quickly?
  Slowly?
• What are the personality types? How do you
  interact with them?
• Who can you approach to move your agenda?
• Be patient and grow thick skin.

6
Build Relationships and Partnerships

• Create relationships with the right people.
• At Yahoo!, we call these people our SEO BFFs.
• Partner horizontally with anyone and everyone.
• Ive found working with Standards teams are your
  best in.
• Make Friends
• Hang out with people
• Have Dates
• Drive Bys!

7
Be Everywhere and Get Integrated

• Integrate into Processes
• Planning Strategy (get on the release calendar)
• Design Development (Review Meetings,
  Guidelines, etc.)
• QA (Ensure things are built correctly)
• Go to Market (Blogging, Social Media, PR, etc.)
• Leads Review Meetings are VERY important!

8
Set and Manage Expectations

• What do you plan on achieving and can it be
  quantified?
• When are you planning on getting it done by?
• Be clear about the expectations.
• Pick your battles wisely.

9
Creating SEO Guidelines

• Build SEO Guidelines into Product Development
• Content Copy
• User Experience Design
• Engineering/Development
• General Guidelines
• Review Product Specs

10
Broaden Your AudienceReach Everyone

• Train the entire organization on SEO
• Push out SEO Knowledge through
• Internal Blogs
• Internal Wiki
• Newsletters
• Setup Office Hours
• SEO Hours

11
Be Passionate and Evangelize SEO

• Be passionate, bring tons of energy get people
  excited about SEO.
• Get SEO into every conversation possible.
• Find people that will be your Mini SEO
  Evangelists within your Organization
• Talk about Success Stories

12
The Quick and Dirty Key Takeaways

• Understand the Company Culture
• Build Relationships and Partnerships
• Get Integrated into Processes and Manage
  Expectations
• Create SEO Guidelines
• Train and push knowledge to everyone possible
• Show your passionate and get people excited

13
THANK YOU!

• Tony Adam - SEO Manager at Yahoo!
• tadam_at_yahoo-inc.com
• Where to find me
• http//tonyadam.com/blog/
• http//twitter.com/tonyadam
• Text follow tonyadam to 40404
• tony_at_tonyadam.com