So, you know that SEO should be integrated with other marketing channels, right?
You know that SEO is a cross-functional channel and really needs to work with other departments in order to get the best results from the channel.
You may have wondered: what’s in it for the departments that, do indeed, work with SEO?
Let’s delve into this. Let’s delve into this.
When SEOs work with other marketing channels, or indeed, non-marketing departments, it’s not just for the benefit of SEO.
I know it might seem this way. It’s usually SEO that seeks to work with the various departments because we need them. So it always comes across as though the departments are working with SEO purely for the betterment of SEO.
This isn’t the case.
Let’s use an example here –
Let’s take your Sales department as the example.
What’s the benefit of your Sales department working with SEO?
Well, for one, SEO can help to identify content opportunities from sales-related datasets.
With our marketing knowledge and our awareness of the target audience you seek to acquire, we can propose pages, or even hubs, to help the sales department with their sales process.
Having preemptive or qualifying questions automatically means there’s content that can be created to address them.
This content can easily sit on your site, as a page or even an entire hub – for Sales-based FAQs, for example.
Sales can direct potential clients/customers to this area of the site where they can have their queries met.
You see, something, we, SEOs, know, is that people will always search for information.
This is true, especially when people seek to carry out further research on a product/service before committing to it.
Why not use this intel as an opportunity to provide the answers to questions, thereby enabling Sales to better manage the customer acquisition process – both offline and online?
It’s much better for a potential customer to have you in mind throughout their purchase journey than another brand, right?
If you’re confident with your offering and already have your Sales department equipped with servicing potential customers, why not further support them with digital assets, or indeed, additional digital assets?
Why not further support them with SEO?
This is the value of having a cross-functional discipline.
SEO is a discipline that reaches far beyond the optimisation of your website.
I tell you this, if you still believe SEO is only about keywords, rankings and links, you’ve barely scratched the surface of what the discipline can do for you.
SEO is optimisation. Optimisation is improvement. Improvement isn’t limited to your website.
The more you can have other departments and marketing channels working with SEO, the more you can grow your business.
This is not hyperbolic.
SEO can help to realise the goal of every department in your business that has a touchpoint with your website.
It doesn’t matter whether the departments are marketing or non-marketing, it doesn’t matter whether the departments are acquisition-based or not, SEO can help them.
Just as they can help SEO, SEO can help them.
They, firstly, require integration.
Let’s take your Customer Service department as another example.
Let’s say CS has a problem with an influx of phone calls.
The vast majority of this influx is pertaining to a specific issue that customers are facing.
If they are calling about this issue, you can bet that they’ll be searching for an answer to the issue.
Why?
Because a phone call is an extension of search – by way of information sought after.
Go with me on this –
What do search engines do? They provide information to queries, right?
Whether people query on search, or query via a phone call, they still query, right?
Any department, in your business, that aims to serve users, or customers, can benefit from working with SEO.
So, you see, the cross-functionality with SEO, is not a one way street.
From this, from my rhetoric right here, if you have an inkling that leadership within your business needs more awareness of SEO, you may be right!
SEOs may be getting push-backs from key departments that they need to improve the site’s visibility, and these pushbacks may be centered around the idea that the departments do not see how working with SEO benefits them.
Isn’t this such an unfortunate way of thinking?
For an SEO, it’s highly frustrating!
It’s a circumstance that an SEO has to spend an enormous amount of time and energy combatting.
It’s a circumstance that really needn’t be.
It’s a circumstance that leadership can help avoid.
Believe you me, when cross-functionality with SEO is streamlined, you get to do some really sexy marketing work.
You get to unleash the potential of SEO, a potential, which is only limited by the creativity of its practitioners.
The two departments I mentioned earlier, for example, are excellent sources for keyword research. I’ll elaborate on this another time.