5 Steps To Strategically Manage Your SEO Provider

Guillaume Bouchard has reinforced all I ever knew about business – communication is the key. In his article, ‘5 steps to strategically manage your SEO provider’, Bouchard looks at the big picture of outsourcing the Search Engine Optimisation function of your business.

There are 5 keys he believes to ensuring SEO goes as planned:

1. Educate your SEO provider about your business goals and also your business model – a critical point to this one, is that the business must HAVE a business model.
2. Agree Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before you start. Good logic, knowing what outcome you are aiming for will ensure a pathway to get there. Again, it reinforces the need for good communication from the beginning.
3. Have your own gatekeeper for both operational and strategic viewpoints. Clearing bottlenecks, being a single point of contact and managing both sides of the project. There needs to be someone who is responsible and accountable. SEO projects respond as a result of inputs from just about every part of the business and as such, everyone and no one is responsible – a gatekeeper is the only solution.
4. Know your SEO stakeholders - SEO is not just the domain of the operational staff; all areas from the Directors down must know what it means and what they need to do to make an SEO project a success.
   It would seem important to bring all the stakeholders on board from the beginning with good communication and access to those who actually make final decisions. The bottlenecks that can be avoided include:
   • IT superiority, some web developers don’t understand SEO or think their site has a bit of the field of dreams – if we build it, they will come (too bad if they can’t find it in Google).
   • Legal team – whilst it is necessary that everything put out to the public should be legally safe, timing is everything. There needs to be processes to keep the content moving through so rankings don’t slip.
   • Content writers – creative artists – don’t let their need for creativity let content become useless for SEO – have contingency articles and content ready for any other bottlenecks with legal/IT etc, if the need arises.
5. Protect and maintain SEO momentum which is the most dynamic activity for a business. Left to its own devices, for even a week with no review or input at all, and months of work can be wasted.

Essentially Bouchard cleverly helps businesses to understand the most important undertones to all SEO projects. Finally, the takeaway from this article would seem to be that communication is the key in successful SEO outsourcing.