Search Engine Tigers

It seems as though more and more companies are starting to move SEM in-house, and as they do so they run into the same kind of situations over and over again.

1) The Perception of Inferiority

This occurs when management falls into either the absolute ‘rocket science SEO’ belief, or just simply the belief that because consultants charge obscene amounts of money for their services they must know a lot more than the people who’d be willing to work for the wages that the in-house staff are drawing. Sometimes the only solution to this is to let it happen (not that you can really stop it if there’s an executive champion), and watch for if there is an opportunity to learn, and if not, the company will realize that they just blew money on a resource that they didn’t need to. Ways to mitigate this perception involve keeping up communication with the executive team, assuring them that the in-house team is up to speed on the latest developments in the industry, and making sure that they are aware of the latest results from the in-house team’s efforts.

2) The Short-term Development Vicious Cycle

Since SEO produces long-term benefits, there is sometimes a tendency within a company to push development resources to work on the items that will have a more immediate effect, thus pushing the SEO tasks out further and further. Of course, this is only an issue in an environment where the development and SEM functions are separated, which is not that uncommon. Again, education is the best way to assure that the SEM items are given a fair hearing and are placed in the development queue.

3) Aiming for the Moon with a Bottle Rocket

The belief that since SEO is ‘free’ and a ‘one time thing’ with maybe some ‘minor adjustments’ over time, there isn’t that much need for staff, and as for linking, well there are automated solutions that do that for you aren’t there? Without an adequate staffing level to support the sky high targets of the SEM effort for the site(s), the chance of success (or the definition of success) is limited. This can then lead into ‘The Perception of Inferiority’, as the full job can’t be done without the full resources.

4) Departmental PPC Wars

If there are multiple departments that are involved with similar products that have competing keywords in PPC campaigns, there’s a good chance that, unless the campaigns are centrally co-ordinated, the departments will be competing against each other, with possibly undesirable results (or rather definitely undesirable results as far as the company as a whole is concerned).

5) The Helpful Developer

‘Ooh, they used H2 tags on this page. Obviously they didn’t realize that you can create custom css tags. Let me go in and fix that for them with a class=”prettyText” tag and put it up in production.”. Changes such as this can occur if the development team isn’t kept notified and informed of the reasoning behind the way the site has been put together for SEO purposes. Of course, a more formal change process would also help to alleviate a problem such as this.

6) Jack of all trades

In small companies the Search Marketer may also be the sole developer, website designer, and chief bottle washer. This invariably leads to a lack of focus in one area or another as a day is still only 24 hours in length no matter how many hats a person wears.

7) Beware the Emperor

The director that was a fuedal chieftan in previous life may set up their department as their own private fiefdom, rejecting or obstructing any inter-departmental co-operation. Different job functions that could be handled by other departments are redundantly replicated in their department, so as to give them control over that function. This can lead to Department PPC wars, and requires finesse or more likely executive management oversight to overcome.

Do you have any more examples that I’ve missed? I’m sure there are quite a few. Also, if you’re a SEMPO member feel free to check out the in-house committee as we’re always looking for input from people with in-house experience.

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