BUILDING AN SEO CULTUREBuilding a culture around the science of seo, to increase efficiency and profit.

BACKGROUND

• Most talked about topic in the seo track at Pubcon 2008.

– Other large sites Yahoo, MSN, Live, Tribune, and many large agencies have in-house seo training

• Education (how)• Transparency (why)• Feedback (risks)

• We have 4 large sites so we need SEO evangelists.

• Agile Method• I implemented this with the last team I worked

with.• Team members have expressed a desire to learn.

WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW THE SCIENCE OF SEO?

• Agile culture thrives on cross trained teams and optimizing the process.

• Empower the team to make seo observations, troubleshooting, ask questions, and QA.

• Help project managers and planning teams understand implications, risks and how seo fits into the project.– Example: images

• Learn the science, not the art (10,000 hours).– Suggested reading, The Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

• Myths, facts and theories, and empowering with education.

• Not one way training, it goes both ways.

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE

• Designers• UX and Coders• Developers• Content Teams• Project Managers• QA• Anyone making a decision about the site.

– What may seem like simple changes to the site (ie. how malts are derived) will change the ecosystem of the site.

GOALS OF THE CONVERSATIONS• Overall goal

– Create a culture that has a common goal and focus; to minimize risk, seo concerns and errors, and by doing so increase traffic and sales.

• Designers/UX– Understand how page layout affects seo.– How the search engines interact with the design of a page.

• Developers– Understand how choices positively or negatively affect seo.

• Content– Understanding how the search engines digest and rank content.

• Project Managers and QA– Understand how projects affect seo.– Understand how seo can affect projects. – Knowing what to look for when testing after a launch.

PLAN TO REACH OUR GOALS

– Bi-weekly discussions • Topics

– Seo terminology– Onsite and offsite seo – Linking– Technical audits– SEO Tools– SEO when doing QA – Social media and seo– Other search engine channels

» 18 other channels that the search engines have besides the primary organic results.

• New seo industry developments• Test cases• How can we implement it on the websites?