How to Build (And Structure) an SEO Team

SEO is a hard task to bash connected your own. So having a squad tin marque ranking connected Google overmuch easier.

But however bash you physique an SEO team? Is it worthy the investment? Where bash you find the radical you need?

Today, we reply each these questions and more. 

Should you physique your ain SEO team?

Is gathering an SEO squad adjacent worthy it? The reply depends connected your goals and budget.

Hiring a squad is close for anyone who wants to physique and standard their SEO portion besides grooming radical who volition go assets to their company. 

It is not for those who aren’t consenting to spell done the lengthy process of finding, hiring, managing, and perchance firing radical and going done the full process again.

It’s besides not close for those looking to minimize their in-house overheads, arsenic they’ll typically wage a $30K-60K wage per squad member, positive an further $2.5K to $4.5K per twelvemonth successful SEO tools. This means gathering a squad (1–10 people) volition scope from $32.5K to $300K+ per year.

Here are the benefits of gathering an SEO team:

• You get afloat power implicit your SEO.
• You’re not reliant connected 3rd parties for your business’s income from search, arsenic is the lawsuit erstwhile hiring an SEO agency.
• You’ll often prevention wealth (compared to hiring an SEO agency, which usually costs anyplace from $3K to tens of thousands of dollars per month).

On the different hand, hiring an SEO bureau means a batch little enactment uncovering and grooming employees, little overhead, and you tin person an adept travel successful and bash everything for you.

How to operation your SEO team

If you’ve decided gathering retired an SEO section successful your institution is the close move, you request to capable 4 cardinal roles. This doesn’t mean you request 4 radical (one idiosyncratic tin technically capable each roles); it conscionable means you request to fulfill these tasks.

Your SEO squad operation needs the pursuing four roles:

1. Manager/team lead
2. Web developer(s)
3. Content team
4. Outreach team

You request developers to fulfill technical SEO requirements, a contented squad (writers and designers), and an outreach squad to promote your content and build links. Lastly, of course, you request idiosyncratic to negociate each these radical truthful things determination smoothly.

Note that you don’t request to prosecute a elephantine squad to get this done. You tin prosecute 1 oregon 2 radical to bash galore of these tasks. It conscionable depends connected your fiscal resources and however competitory your keywords are. More connected that later.

How to physique an SEO team

Building an SEO squad falls into three steps:

1. Determining your goals and hiring needs
2. Finding your talent
3. Setting up your task absorption bundle to negociate it all

1. Determine your goals and hiring needs

The size of your squad depends connected what you’re trying to bash and however overmuch wealth you have.

The archetypal happening you should bash earlier hiring anyone is to figure retired your competitory landscape. You tin bash this utilizing Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and Content Gap tool. You’re trying to fig retired 3 things:

1. What kinds of keywords americium I going after?
2. How competitory are these keywords?
3. What roles bash I request to capable the most?

For instance, if you presently person a batch of contented but it’s not ranking, you’ll request to allocate much fund to nexus building, particularly if you’re targeting highly competitory keywords. But if you don’t person overmuch contented yet, your absorption should beryllium much connected gathering a contented team.

There are 2 speedy ways you tin usage Ahrefs to find your team needs:

1. Use the SERP overview successful Keywords Explorer to find if you need links

The SERP overview allows you to spot what pages are ranking for a fixed keyword and however galore links those pages have. You tin besides spot each leafage URL’s Domain Rating (DR) score.

Using this tool, you tin find if your pages request much links successful bid to bushed the competition. For example, if we instrumentality a look astatine the keyword “seo tools,” we tin spot that Ahrefs is presently successful presumption #6, with 1,389 backlinks from 450 referring domains.

The competitors beating america person thousands much links than we do, truthful this tells america that we may need nexus gathering to fertile higher for this keyword. (I accidental “may” due to the fact that Google’s hunt algorithm is complicated, and we tin ne'er accidental with 100% certainty that 1 happening unsocial is the origin of rankings.)

If you person a batch of contented already and—after reviewing your keywords—find, connected average, you’re not beating your competitors owed to a deficiency of backlinks, past you should prioritize putting unneurotic a nexus gathering team.

2. Use the Site Audit instrumentality to cheque your method SEO

Ahrefs’ Site Audit allows you to instrumentality a peek wrong your website’s method SEO.

When you tally an audit connected your URL, you’ll beryllium fixed a Health Score that shows you however steadfast your site’s method SEO is. This people is based connected a assortment of factors, including page speed, CSS and HTML, meta tags, and more.

If you tally an audit connected your tract and find that you person a mediocre score, you cognize you request to prosecute a developer to assistance instrumentality attraction of your method SEO issues. Better yet, you tin springiness them the audit report. They volition cognize precisely what they request to bash successful bid to hole your site’s issues.

2. Find your talent

Once you’ve determined who you need, you person to larn how to find and hire them.

There are galore ways to find radical to enactment for your company. These see searching online occupation boards, asking friends and family, going done endowment agencies, etc.

A fewer large options include:

1. Indeed or Zip Recruiter for wide occupation listings
2. ProBlogger or Mediabistro for uncovering writers
3. Upwork or Fiverr for hiring freelancers

You tin besides cheque retired immoderate of these occupation boards for marketers. This “job boards” nonfiction is written for marketers looking for a job, but you tin spell to the boards arsenic an leader as well.

Note that the prime of radical you pull from these occupation boards is straight related to the prime of your occupation listing. If your listing doesn’t dependable absorbing and enticing, the higher-quality candidates won’t adjacent apply. Feel escaped to get our SEO specializer occupation statement template.

If you request much assistance figuring retired however to prosecute large people, I powerfully urge the publication “Who: A Method for Hiring.” It was written by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, 2 serial entrepreneurs who developed a four-step process for finding, hiring, and retaining the champion talent.

3. Set up your task absorption software

Once you’ve recovered your squad members, you’ll request to support them organized and efficient. This is wherever task absorption bundle similar Trello or Asana comes in.

I’ve utilized both. But I similar Asana, arsenic it’s much robust. You’re capable to physique to-do lists, Kanban-style boards, projects for circumstantial tasks oregon teams, and more.

Here’s an illustration of the board-style task page:

Inside Asana, you tin make antithetic projects for antithetic teams wrong your business, which you tin spot successful the bottommost near country of the screenshot above. I person abstracted projects for abstracted businesses, arsenic good arsenic a “personal tasks” task for things I request to instrumentality attraction of that my employees and colleagues don’t request to see.

For your SEO team, you tin make a squad called “SEO,” past make projects for each SEO process.

For example, you tin make a “Content” project, which lone includes the contented squad and the upcoming, in-progress, and finished content; a “Developer” task to delegate tasks to and enactment with your developer; and an “Outreach” task for nexus gathering and contented promotion.

Here’s an illustration of 1 of the contented readying boards I usage in Asana:

From there, your SEO manager tin person entree to and oversee each project. They tin remark straight connected the tasks wrong Asana to support everyone moving. But I besides urge mounting up a chat transmission similar Slack for real-time connection that’s faster and little cumbersome than comments oregon emails.

Need much assistance with Asana? Here’s an fantabulous video overview connected however to acceptable it up and use it:

Final thoughts

Building an SEO squad tin assistance you “outscale” and outpace your competitors connected Google’s hunt results page. And having an in-house squad gives you a competitory advantage. This tin besides prevention you immoderate money—especially connected things similar nexus building, wherever links tin spell for hundreds of dollars apiece (if you wage idiosyncratic other for them).

However, it is simply a large committedness to prosecute and negociate an full department, truthful this method isn’t for everyone. Think agelong and hard astir which method is close for you earlier you marque a decision.

Want to larn more? Check retired immoderate of these different large guides to SEO:

• SEO Basics: Beginner’s Guide to SEO Success
• 12 SEO Best Practices That Everyone Should Follow
• The Only SEO Checklist You Need