Managing SEO for a large web site isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ve got major technical challenges, such as dealing with content management systems, optimizing for thousands or millions of keywords, multiple domains, often in multiple countries, constantly changing content… and those don’t even factor in the major “people challenges” of training and managing diverse teams, dealing with competing stakeholders, placating meddling executives… and the beat(ing) goes on. In this session, our panel of experts have all wrestled with SEO for huge websites and won, and share their unique insights and battle scars.

1. Industrial SEO SMX TORONTO 2011

4. THE NEED FOR INTERNAL ALIGNMENT NVI *credits to SEOinhouse.com for some of this content Role Why alignment is needed Execs & upper management Ultimately responsible if projects have SEO Failures Hold people accountable for working with SEO properly Should not move things forward if SEO wasn’t involved Sales, Marketing & PR PR needs to spread the message globally, SEO is a key strategy to get there Worldwide sales need the stability of leads generated by SEO Marketing knows that SEO will be it’s #1 ROI acquisition tactic Usability Create search engine friendly user experiences for all countries Create ideal information architecture for SEO for main / country sites IT Develop with multi-lingual, search engine friendly technologies Test every release for SEO best practices and ensures proper QA Editorial Adapt content based on search volumes for each country Ensure a steady flow of local content globally Legal Need to develop a worldwide policy Need to ensure they don’t become a roadblock for any content SEO director Ensure SEO is involved early and for the duration of all web projects Give alignment and direction to the AOR and all local agencies

7. INDUSTRIAL SEO… IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCED NVI Activities IN-HOUSE OUTSOURCED TO SEO AGENCY Keyword research Done internally anywhere the company has SEO qualified & culturally aligned staff Any location where internal resources are not available (or targeting this market is useless) Onsite SEO Gatekeeper of current structure + validate and roll out changes and recommendations Ongoing site reviews for the hub site (key learning can be localized by the in-house team) Offsite SEO Develop mechanisms to attract links Validate links gathered by the SEO agency On a retainer with a strong offsite SEO agency Social Media for SEO (Content + SNO) Ensure that a minimum of creative content is produced for the hub & country-specific sites All pushes on multi-lingual social news sites (Digg, Reddit, SU, Meneame, Scoopeo, Mixx) Usability Gatekeeper & evangelist of a global style guide across all countries Initial global style guide creation & guidelines Reporting & Analytics Benchmarking sent internally to all countries and stakeholders (+ identify opportunities) Support the in-house team to develop the consolidated dashboard and install tracking IT Roll out recommendations by the SEO team and choose SEO-friendly technologies Evaluate SEO friendliness of technologies and support internal IT team on implementations Lobbying & politics Evangelize towards the staff, but mainly towards upper management Create a strong bond between in-house SEOs and the agency team to build momentum