The Art of SEO, 2nd Edition

Identifying the Site Development Process and Players

Before you start the SEO process, it is imperative to identify who your target audience is, what your message is, and how your message is relevant. There are no web design tools or programming languages that tell you these things. Your company’s marketing, advertising, and PR teams have to set the objectives before you can implement them—successful SEO requires a team effort.

Your SEO team should be cross-functional and multidisciplinary, consisting of the team manager, the technical team, the creative team, the data and analytics team (if you have one), and the major stakeholders from marketing, advertising, and PR. In a smaller organization, you may have to wear all of those hats yourself.

The team leader wants to know who the target audience is. What does the marketing team know about them? How did we find them? What metrics will we use to track them? All of this is key information that should have an impact on the project’s technical implementation.

Advertising messages need to be well thought out and prepared. You do not want your team bickering over whether to optimize for “hardcore widget analysis” or “take your widgets to the next level.” Advertising serves multiple purposes, but its most fundamental purpose is to compel people to take a specific action. What action are you hoping to compel people to take?

The PR team has to take your story to the media and entice them into writing and talking about it. What message do they ...