Any successful cause, country, or
company has a strong leader behind it. Leaders can inspire people and motivate
them to rise like a phoenix.
The 20th century saw great leaders
like Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and many others. In
the business world we have had notable leaders like Henry Ford, Sam Walton,
Jack Welch, and Steve Jobs, to name but a few.
All jobs have a leadership component
built into it in some shape or form. Search engine optimization(SEO) is no different. In fact, search engine marketing (SEM)
and SEO is an innovative field which requires solid leadership.
SEOs, especially in-house SEOs, face
many battles daily. Good SEO leadership skills can help you and your SEO
program succeed.
We can draw parallels between the
qualities of leadership and how SEOs can use those qualities in every day role,
be it at an agency or in-house. So here are 10 top characteristics of leaders
and how they can be used by pro SEO's.
1. Lead by Example
An essential leadership trait is
leading by example. Be the example in both deeds and action so you can
inspire followers to do the same. SEO can be one of those skills where you can
put into practice what you preach.
If you’re an in-house SEO, you can
zero down on a particular business or department that feels neglected or is
small compared to rest of the business. Working with this team could be easier
as they would welcome any help that they can get with their SEO. Generating
results for this group is a great example of “small wins” and can prove you,
the SEO, to be the one leading by example.
2. Integrity
In business and day-to-day life,
it's important to lead a life of integrity, and to be known for it. Al Pacino’s
character Frank Slade in "Scent of a Woman" said it best: “He won’t
sell any one out to buy his future and that my friend is called Integrity.
That’s the stuff leaders should be made of.”
A classic example of integrity in
SEO might look like simply refraining from renting or buying links to produce
short term SEO results. In the long term it might even backfire and harm your
SEO success as well as personal reputation.
We have to look no further .To save
yourself and your company from this type of situation, it's important for SEOs
to have that ethical approach to link building, and integrity plays a huge part
here.
3. Collaborating
Many great leaders could attest that
creating a culture of collaboration is essential for the success of any cause.
That could be the nation, company, or even a small project at an agency.
Collaboration plays a huge part in
bringing everyone together and letting the best minds work together to find a
solution to a problem. Over the past decade, collaborative management style has
grown in importance. SEO’s are at the forefront of this collaborative style of
management as in order for any SEO program to succeed you would need not just
input but meaningful contribution from many teams.
Whether it's developers, IT, your
project managers, or designers, SEOs need to bring everyone together to your
common cause and collaborate with each stakeholder. After all, a strong SEO
program whether be it in-house or at an agency is hard to succeed without
everyone moving in the same direction.
4. Celebrating Wins
In his book “Winning”, Jack Welch
said “Great Leaders know that successes need to be celebrated.” Celebrating
your wins can act not just as a motivational tool but also bonds teams
together. Camaraderie between teams allows leaders to pose bigger
challenges to them and motivates everyone to work toward their common
goal.
SEOs should celebrate every win with
their extended teams whether be it with IT for pushing their project up the
queue or QA for ensuring they didn't reject any changes, or with designers who
let go of their usual graphic heavy style in favor of a more textually based
design. These wins can be in form of anything like a lunch, after work beers,
or even a more formal appreciation email.
You can choose any mode of
celebration you prefer, but remember to celebrate your SEO wins. After all, no
win is small enough to not celebrate.
5. The Big Picture
Leaders are known as visionaries for
a reason. When everyone else is mired into the nitty-gritty details it is the
leaders who see through that and comprehend the big picture. The iconic Steve Jobs proved that time and again by
revolutionizing so many industries.
SEO’s also having it in them to look
at the bigger picture by envisioning how their SEO program could look in a year
or two years time. Sometimes it could be picking a number from thin air like
increasing x number of new site visits through long tail terms or
generating y number of revenues through SEO.
It isn't uncommon for an SEO to
start their gig and get pulled in many different directions. Working through
the daily grind while keeping an eye on the big picture tends to work the best
for long-term SEO program success.
6. Consensus Building
Great leaders build consensus among
their followers before making any decision. The more you practice this trait of
consensus building, the better you get at it.
An SEO needs to practice consensus
building almost daily – otherwise your SEO efforts won’t come to fruition.
A classic example could be inserting
SEO in a development process. If you don't build consensus among all
stakeholders on how critical it is to insert SEO at the planning phase, then
chances are SEO would be an afterthought. And we know how expensive that can
be, and what a missed opportunity.
Any page level or server level changes
in SEO also need to have the blessing of different teams. As SEOs, you need to
be the consensus builder.
7. Empowering
Many “leaders” talk about
empowerment, but it usually ends up as nothing more than a bold statement.
Empowering means giving folks the tools and letting them run with it and make
the decisions. That of course has an effect on results as empowering team
members brings ownership and accountability (or so you would hope!).
The best way to empower others is to
train other people within relevant parts of the company in how to use SEO tools
relevant to the area where their job intersects with yours. There are many
avenues for SEO training, ranging from formal in-house
training to brown bags to a more informal SEO chat during lunch hours.
Another way to empower your wider
team, especially IT, is through sharing your SEO tools like webmaster console,
analytics reports, your linking tools anything that you use. One of the tools
that I let my IT use was Xenu Link Sleuth. Instead of simply showing them screen
grabs of your SEO tools why not share the tools with other teams and you should
see a marked difference in excitement and engagement on their part.
8. Making Swift
Decisions
While others waste time pondering an
issue, great leaders are known to collect all data and then make a swift
decision. That decision can be as big as bailing out an entire car
manufacturing industry or rather small as killing a certain project in your
company.
A leader has to make hard
decisions. SEO also needs to be able to make swift decisions, whether
it's in the form of a budget or a list of SEO changes you requested. Not
all your SEO requests will be acted on so those are the times that you would
need to make a swift decision about which project is a high impact activity and
which request you can do without.
9. Resolving Conflicts
The bigger the leader or the bigger
your team the more conflicts you will encounter. A leader needs to walk a
balance between resolving conflicts without making any team feel unwanted or
feel biased.
Reams and reams of paper have been
dedicated on the subject of managing and resolving conflicts as an essential
part of leadership. For SEOs this can mean when marketing is in conflict with
IT or designers are in conflict with you the SEO then finding the best solution
possible to resolve conflict.
A common conflict is with designers
and IT, where they want certain things their way in terms of graphics and SEOs
the other. In those cases, developing conflict resolution skills can be very
helpful.
10. Creating Culture
of Transparency
Leaders strive to create
transparency in their organizations as it engages the whole company.
Transparency also creates trust in their leaders.
An SEO has a big part to play in
creating transparency into the exact processes and changes you will need to
follow in order to drive SEO growth. SEO often has a voodoo magic reputation
and SEO’s characterized as “snake oil salesman”, so it is imperative that SEO
be transparent with their processes and methods.
A great way to achieve transparency
is by publishing to your team or stakeholders you’re working with all the
changes you will be working on during the course of the project. This onus of
creating SEO transparency falls on SEO and in the process you should be able to
convert the skeptics into believers.
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