You want to tri­umph over your com­peti­tor. You want to see your bounce rates go down and see pos­i­tive gains in rel­e­vant traf­fic. Watch­ing a site go from neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive means more rev­enue, more jobs, new prod­ucts, and the poten­tial to even rev­o­lu­tion­ize an indus­try. So what’s stand­ing in the way? Well, it might be you.

Often the hard­est bat­tles for search engine opti­miza­tion experts isn’t with Google algo­rithms or for search rank­ings, but with the com­pa­nies that hire them. Despite being hired for their exper­tise inter­nal issues with process­es, pri­or­i­ties, or peo­ple can severe­ly hin­der SEO out­comes.

What prob­lems must you solve to stop sab­o­tag­ing your own SEO suc­cess?

1. Silos

A site audit is quite reveal­ing. It can almost tell you how your com­pa­ny came to be and what your inter­nal struc­ture is with­out even check­ing. Why?

SEO issues are often a direct reflec­tion of the inter­nal struc­ture of a com­pa­ny. How they are addressed, what and how SEO plans are imple­ment­ed all point to the company’s inter­nal archi­tec­ture – the good and the bad.

Inde­pen­dent silos that don’t over­lap are one of the most preva­lent chal­lenges in SEO imple­men­ta­tion. Because most com­pa­nies don’t have a CDO, or chief dig­i­tal offi­cer, SEO tasks usu­al­ly fall between the efforts of the tech team and the mar­ket­ing group.

This means that no one group is lead­ing the effort. Each silo only has part of the pic­ture and more so, part of the knowl­edge. In return, either team can unknow­ing­ly cre­ate issues.

Mar­ket­ing may send over a design that is fraught with SEO issues because it rep­re­sents their brand in a way they think is best. Where the tech­ni­cal team may decide to ignore brand fac­tors in favor of an eas­i­er tech­ni­cal solu­tion.

In addi­tion, none of these teams spe­cial­ize in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. Which means no one with all the knowl­edge of how every item affects you web­site vis­i­bil­i­ty. No one is over­see­ing all the work to make sure it is being done accord­ing to best prac­tices.

Silos work for cer­tain inter­nal process­es and not for oth­ers. SEO isn’t a ver­ti­cal effort, but a hor­i­zon­tal one cov­er­ing many areas often han­dled by sep­a­rate teams. Cor­rect SEO imple­men­ta­tion requires one team hav­ing full knowl­edge, a full pic­ture, and the full exper­tise to over­see the strate­gic effort.

Solution?

Because the cur­rent Google algo­rithm touch­es so many aspects of a web­site, in front and behind the scenes, it’s ben­e­fi­cial to have a team that can co-ordi­nate efforts. These peo­ple will inform on strat­e­gy, help pre­vent issues from being cre­at­ed and can help make inter­nal teams make the best choic­es when unsure.

Whether it’s an inter­nal SEO that works with your exter­nal agency or an inter­nal depart­ment; hav­ing some­one with exper­tise who can watch over the all aspects of your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plan is the best way to achieve suc­cess.

Caveat: The only way this can suc­ceed is if your SEO team is giv­en the abil­i­ty to not only over­see, but also direct. Should they be telling your writ­ers how to write? No. Should they be telling you that if you write that arti­cle it needs to be over 750 words, have a prop­er title tag, descrip­tion, and URL along with the best prac­tices to add these? Yes.

2. Prioritization

Often when an SEO does a site audit or comes up with a strate­gic dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plan, the com­pa­ny isn’t pre­pared to imple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions. Though there can be many rea­sons, typ­i­cal­ly this is due to the issue of resource allo­ca­tion.

With­out prop­er resource allo­ca­tion, pri­or­i­ties are no longer the pri­or­i­ties out­lined by your inter­nal SEO team or exter­nal agency. Pri­or­i­ties become tied to avail­able resources and usu­al­ly few are direct­ly giv­en to the SEO team. Typ­i­cal­ly this caus­es a mis­align­ment between what needs to be done and what can be done.

Mod­i­fy­ing SEO plans hap­pen all the time as there is rarely an ide­al envi­ron­ment to imple­ment a plan as hoped. How­ev­er, when the SEO plan is mod­i­fied it means you’re stray­ing from the best plan and are now uti­liz­ing a “what we can imple­ment” plan. This will get you results, but not the best results.

Solution?

Make sure when you being a plan or receive an audit that you have allo­cat­ed X per­cent of your devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing team’s time to address the issues pre­sent­ed to you and to imple­ment the strate­gies giv­en. Organ­ic traf­fic is worth its weight in gold. Don’t piece meal your plan togeth­er.

3. Processes

This often is com­bined with the issue of pri­or­i­ti­za­tion, but deserves its own men­tion. When attempt­ing to imple­ment your SEO strate­gies those plans either fall to dif­fer­ent teams with their own process­es that don’t sup­port the end goal or it requires the SEO team has to work with process­es that don’t sup­port their efforts. Either way, what needs to hap­pen doesn’t.

Inter­nal process­es are often road­blocks that make get­ting any­thing done dif­fi­cult to impos­si­ble.

Want to add that con­tent? Mar­ket­ing has a month back up for approvals.

Need to fix that tech­ni­cal redi­rect issue? The tech­nol­o­gy team doesn’t have room in its sched­ule.

The SEO spends more time fight­ing with your team to get some­thing done than doing the work because the process­es to get that work done don’t exist.

Solution

SEO can lit­er­al­ly change in a moment. What worked last night might have changed today because of a Google update.

A “wait and we’ll get to it envi­ron­ment” will impair suc­cess. If you want to achieve suc­cess, your SEO team must be able to make quick changes and not have to wait through lengthy approval cycles.

So not only does the team, inter­nal or exter­nal, need to be able to set work pri­or­i­ti­za­tion they must be able to have access to the process­es to accom­plish this work. Some­times it’s direct access, oth­er times it just the C‑level exec­u­tive in charge of a team mak­ing sure every­one knows what process­es are need­ed, so they can be put in place for imme­di­ate action should a change occur.

4. People

It hap­pens all the time. An SEO agency is hired and peo­ple inside the com­pa­ny get ner­vous and go into pro­tec­tion mode.

No agency wants to come in a take an inter­nal SEO’s job or have one removed. In fact, most SEO agen­cies will work with your team to help edu­cate and inform them, so they can bet­ter assist the over­all effort. The more the mer­ri­er (and the eas­i­er the suc­cess­es become the more resources that are avail­able).

The issue is often the exec­u­tives in charge leave the exter­nal agency in the hands of the peo­ple inside their com­pa­ny that see the SEO agency as a threat to their jobs. This can result in sig­nif­i­cant push­back by the inter­nal team. The SEO agency is put in the posi­tion to spend their time, not work­ing, but prov­ing they know what you hired them to do.

Solution

There are no sim­ple solu­tions, but there are actions you can take to min­i­mize this issue.

First, make sure the team is prop­er­ly intro­duced to your agency, so the agency can explain why they are there and how they want to help.

Sec­ond, do not allow team mem­bers to direct­ly con­front your agency with “proofs” why “X” or “Y” needs to be done a cer­tain way. Arrange a month­ly or bi-week­ly meet­ing where you can dis­cuss all items that are unclear, so the team and agency can estab­lish a help­ful dia­log sur­round­ing work and meth­ods, not chal­lenges to exper­tise.

Third, don’t rely on your team’s inter­nal report­ing to tell you what is hap­pen­ing with your SEO cam­paign. Estab­lish­ing your own check-in with the agency leads ensures you’re both on the same page, that you know what is hap­pen­ing, and why it’s hap­pen­ing. This can be a 10,000-foot view, but if you do not have that view it is easy for mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions to occur.

SEO isn’t an exact sci­ence. Min­i­miz­ing mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions and estab­lish­ing a help­ing hand rela­tion­ship with your agency will go a long way in eas­ing people’s minds and remov­ing this road­block.

5. Fear of Change

If you want organ­ic traf­fic, you may have to make major changes to your site, your inter­nal process­es, or both. SEO teams don’t make sug­gest­ed changes light­ly – they do it because they just think this needs to hap­pen, it is because every­thing they know about Google’s algo­rithms tells them that your site can­not suc­ceed in its cur­rent state using it cur­rent meth­ods.

For instance, a process called lazy load­ing means all your con­tent below that point will no longer be read by Google. And did you know Google has a page lay­out algo­rithm the deval­ues your site if you use too much space “above the fold” for adver­tise­ments or graph­ics?

There are 500 main points of the algo­rithm and thou­sands of sub-points. You are pay­ing your SEO team to know these and how to best address them. They are not telling you that you need new host­ing, a new site, more con­tent, bet­ter site archi­tec­ture because they just think it needs to be done, they are telling you it because they know it needs to be done.

A prop­er SEO expert will be able to inform you about how your site’s tech­ni­cal make-up is reduc­ing your web­site vis­i­bil­i­ty, or how an orange but­ton won’t covert as well as this green one, or that using infi­nite scroll Isn’t a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence for most sites and that it is not well inter­pret­ed by Google.

So when they tell you to change that but­ton col­or, remove your infi­nite scroll, or improve your site speed, they are telling you because their ulti­mate goal is to see you suc­ceed.

Solution?

If you prop­er­ly vet­ted your agency, trust their rec­om­men­da­tions. It can be dis­heart­en­ing to be told you need a new site. It can upset inter­nal staff to find out that the tech­ni­cal choic­es they made, while slick, are pre­vent­ing the site from being seen by poten­tial cus­tomers.

Your web­site is just a tool to make sure peo­ple see what you are sell­ing or pro­vid­ing. Don’t let fear of change pre­vent you from mak­ing bet­ter choic­es that boost your bot­tom line.

Summary

Road­blocks pre­vent your SEO team from reach­ing your strate­gic goals.

You can hire the best SEO agency or con­sul­tant in the world, but if they can’t imple­ment a plan, have no over­sight, or are unable to cre­ate change because of inter­nal issues, then you’re essen­tial­ly tying their hands behind their back. They will still find a way to make pos­i­tive gains, but you won’t get all the gains you might have had you addressed your inter­nal chal­lenges.

Min­i­mize road­blocks and you will find more gains than you thought pos­si­ble.

Are any of these issues mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to reach your strate­gic SEO goals?