If you are an SEO professional, especially the in-house SEO person, you probably felt more than once that no one else cares about the SEO success within the company. It’s understandable when a person from the off-line advertising department don’t show any interests in the SEO, but you kind of expect a person working in the digital marketing, web design, content editors, and IT to care about it at some degree as their work impacts SEO performance greatly. What’s worse is that the corporate executives still consider SEO as a part of web design and IT departments… really stuck in the Y2K era of website operation.

Perhaps, it’s time to educate them about the SEO, the value it has on the business, and how other departments’ work impacts SEO. I have provided many “What is SEO” sessions and training to non-SEO members of clients’ company, and am happy to tell that it’s been the best way to get the buy-ins and support from them. You are not going to train them to become an SEO expert. The session should cover enough to make them realize the connections between their work and yours and to get their support for your SEO initiatives. In order to make your session/training effective, keep it simple, and focus on what’s related to each department or person rather than to use the same content for everyone. For example, explain why each webpage should have a unique content during the session for the content team, and minimize the talk about the technical side of the SEO. If you are meeting with the executives, show the value of SEO using the organic traffic performance, especially the conversions on the website.

Having them doing their work with SEO in mind, they are actually helping themselves by avoiding the re-work, which happens often when the SEO is the after-thought from the website and content production process. Really, it’s the “Win-Win” scenario for everyone.