No business owner can afford to trivialize the role of SEO in boosting brand visibility and generating leads. As per statistics, Google accounts for 79 per cent of the global search traffic (desktop and mobile), followed by other search engines like Bing, Baidu, and Yahoo. If your website doesn’t show among the top results of these search engines, your business doesn’t exist. Period.

An awesome SEO team can help you skyrocket your rankings and boost your online reputation. However, the SEO world is evolving at a steady pace. Each year, Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm. Keeping up with these changes is a tall order. Hence, it is critical to hire experts who have surfed the SEO waves long enough to spearhead your marketing campaigns. 

Read on to learn how you can build an all-star SEO team that will chart your course for success. 

1 Determine Your SEO Goals

Building a solid SEO team is not just a tricky decision but also a costly one. So, it’s important to assess your goals and carry out a cost-benefit analysis, allowing you to hire the best talent without hurting your marketing budget.  

Spending time to decide on the concrete SEO goals for your business will not only help you make an accurate estimate of the costs you will incur but also offer clarity to the new hires. Do you want to boost your top-of-funnel traffic by 50 percent? Do you want to increase the number of keywords you are ranking for? Or are you aiming at increasing your organic search visits? 

The size and nature of your goals will determine the type of skills your business needs. For instance, if your SEO goal is to boost top-of-funnel traffic and your brand position, you will require a small team comprising of an SEO strategist/technician, a content expert, and an outreach specialist. These team members will be able to achieve multiple goals while keeping the cost under control.

2 Begin by Hiring the Leader 

Every team needs a leader who can drive the organization’s vision and channel the team efforts towards achieving business goals. Your SEO team leader or the SEO manager should be a domain expert with a sound knowledge of the digital marketing sphere. Most importantly he/she should be a high-level strategic thinker with natural leadership skills.

This person as a digital marketer should be capable of developing SMART goals, managing other team members, and delegating tasks effectively. Besides possessing high-level technical expertise, your SEO manager should work closely with the team to create sound SEO strategies for your business. 

3 Get the Key Skill Sets On Board

SEO has always been a dynamic domain demanding multiple skills. It not only requires people with core expertise in a particular domain but also the ability to wear different hats when required. Therefore, an effective SEO team should be able to do everything from technical fixes to coming up with creative ideas to boost the site’s visibility. 

A great SEO team requires people with the below-mentioned skill sets. 

• Content Creation

According to the 2020 Content Preferences Survey Report, 67 percent of customers agree that offering relevant content helps expedite the buying process. Regardless of the industry, content matters to customers; and, what matters to the audience matters to search engines as well. 

That explains the significance of an effective content writer in your SEO team. Your content writer should be able to create high-quality and relevant content, enabling you to engage your audience through the marketing funnel. 

• Technical SEO and Data Analytics

An expert in technical SEO and analytics can help manage tasks, such as performing keyword research, writing meta information, avoiding penalties for spam tactics, analyzing the KPIs, and using the insights to hone your SEO strategies. 

• Web Development

A web developer is responsible for how a website looks. From updating your site according to the latest SEO standards to choosing the most appropriate web hosting solution, a web developer can do everything to keep your site up and running. You don’t require a full-time coder, but a person possessing this skill along with other core SEO skills will help manage those tricky technical SEO issues that surface now and then.

• Outreach Expert

Do links matter? Yes! Backlinks are an important indicator of your site’s popularity. No wonder, it remains one of Google’s top-ranking factors for websites.

An outreach specialist can help promote your content and acquire quality links, thereby improving your site’s ranking and online authority. Your team should have at least one person who’s an expert in link prospecting, analyzing backlinks, blogger outreach, promotion campaigns, and broken link building.

• Design

Though design may not sound like a core SEO skill, a good web design and layout go a long way in elevating your content, improving your site’s UX, and attracting traffic.

4 Equip Your Team with the Best SEO Tools

In order to perform their tasks effectively, your SEO team will require the best tools in the industry. Make sure your team has access to free and paid SEO tools, allowing them to analyze, monitor, and optimize all aspects of your website. Here are the top SEO tools you can consider investing in. 

SEO Tool	Applications
Google Analytics and Search Console	Basic site auditing, monitoring KPIs, and keyword research
Ubersuggest	Keyword research and content idea generation
Moz Pro	SEO toolkit to crawl and audit your site and explore link-building and on-page optimization opportunities
Ahrefs	SEO toolkit to audit your website, explore competitors, and research keywords and backlinks
SEMrush	SEO toolkit to discover your competitors, improve SEO, and boost rankings
Raven Tools	White-label reports for SEO and PPC
Longtail Pro	To identify and incorporate low-competition and profitable long-tail keywords

 

Make sure you have set a budget that leaves room for these SEO tools that will aid your team in everything from keyword to competitor research to site auditing. 

5 Build Accountability

Every marketing dollar counts; as a result, it is critical to estimate the ROI of your digital marketing efforts and promote a culture of accountability. 

Set up an appropriate tracking and reporting system to measure your team’s performance. Consider factors, such as your firm’s SEO objectives, the market opportunity, and the nature of competition to gauge your team’s SEO efforts. Building accountability at an individual and team level not only aligns efforts towards the business goals but also motivates each team member to excel in their role.

Summing Up

The SEO domain is constantly evolving due to the changes in search engine algorithms. Hence, every business (whether it’s an offline local grocery store or an online Shopify Plus store) needs a talented team of SEO experts to help them stay on top of these ever-changing algorithms and boost their online visibility. 

Use the tips shared in this post to build a winning SEO team that can put your business on the fast track to success.