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5 Things to Remember When Outsourcing Enterprise SEO By Nick Stamoulis, President and Founder, Brick Marketing Companies that are looking to outsource their enterprise SEO have to remember 5 things during the process if they want their SEO to succeed.

While the basic rules and best practices guidelines of SEO remain the same regardless of company or website size, larger companies face unique challenges when it comes to properly implementing an SEO campaign. Companies that are looking to outsource their enterprise SEO have to remember 5 things during the process if they want their SEO to succeed:

1. You need one person to serve as your liaison.

Heard of having too many chefs in the kitchen? The same holds true for SEO. One of the biggest challenges facing enterprise SEO is that it takes forever to get things done. A large corporation is going to have a lot of people that all play a role in the site’s SEO, but not necessarily all at the same time! By appointing one person, say the marketing manager, to serve as liaison between your company and your SEO provider, you’ll keep meetings focused and under control so things can actually get accomplished.

Think about it, does your IT director need to be there when you’re discussing keyword research? Does the social media manager need to weigh in on how you should restructure your internal linking? The liaison will be responsible for rallying the appropriate troops as they are needed in the SEO process. 

2. SEO is not a marketing Band-Aid.

SEO, no matter how great, will not fix what is fundamentally wrong with your company. If you don’t have your messaging strategy locked down, don’t understand every aspect of the competition or know what you want from Internet marketing, SEO is not going to tell you. Without a strong business foundation to grow from, any SEO efforts are just a waste of time.

3. Don’t be afraid to get creative.

This is a problem for many B2B companies. They don’t believe their industry is an interesting or as “flashy” as some B2C companies and their content reflects it! Oftentimes, we get so used to the ins and outs of our company and industry that we forget to think like our target audience. They aren’t privy to the insider knowledge that you have and, believe it or not, they want to know. Finding new topics for a business blog, video marketing campaign, guest blog post or webinar is only as complicated as you make it; don’t over think it! What are some unique perspectives you can take on your industry? If you are having a hard time, start asking coworkers and employees for their opinions and insights. Chances are your customer service representative and your web designer are going to have completely different takes on the same situation.

4. Keep everyone in the loop.

With enterprise SEO, there are a lot of people who need to be kept up to speed. Since just about everything you do online can be leveraged for SEO, everyone needs to know what is expected of them and what the next steps are. If you want your SEO to be as successful as it can be you have got to keep everyone in the loop, including your SEO provider! If someone doesn’t have a clear grasp on the goals and benchmarks you are trying to reach, they could inadvertently be working against those goals or be heading the in the wrong direction entirely!

5. Minimize the red tape.

While every company has a chain of command you don’t want to tie the hands of your SEO provider with too much red tape. If every blog post needs to get approved by 10 different people (going back and forth for revisions) you’ll never be able to get your content marketing campaign rolling. At some point you have to trust your SEO partner to do the job you hired them to do and give them the room to do it. Obviously, as the client you have every right to know what they are doing but don’t get in your own way by demanding the every link be approved before they go after it. Too much red tape and your SEO will never reach full throttle.