One of the most significant challenges of running a business is finding the right people. It’s particularly challenging for very “niche” businesses or companies looking to fill a highly complex, specialized role.
On the marketing side, SEO and digital marketing have changed the way many companies do business. For many, it’s no longer sufficient to simply task an employee to handle marketing, as well.
Sometimes it takes a dedicated person, if not a team of people, to handle marketing from concept to completion. Businesses of all sizes are taking a closer look at their digital marketing and some are naming SEO campaign managers to oversee those efforts.
In the world of digital marketing, and SEO campaign is the process of creating several web pages that are all focused on the same keywords. The point person, or campaign manager, oversees the process.
Whether your organization chooses to appoint an SEO campaign manager from your in-house marketing team, hires an additional person to assume the role, or works with an agency to handle your digital marketing efforts, this person holds an important place in your business’ overall marketing strategy.
SEO Campaign Manager vs. Marketing Manager: Some Important Differences
Marketing managers have a broad oversight, with a wide range of responsibilities related to marketing, advertising, and communications—the smaller the marketing team, the greater the range of projects the marketing manager is handling at a given time.
A traditional marketing manager is responsible for:
- Developing a company’s overall marketing strategy as they relate to the company’s objectives, goals, and mission
- Coordinating marketing campaigns for all departments
- Supporting sales and lead generation efforts
- Organizing and executing special events
- Serving as the “face” of the company at networking events
- Monitoring the company’s marketing budget
Meanwhile, the role of an in-house SEO manager is focused on technology much more than a traditional marketing management position. The SEO manager is often a direct report to the marketing manager. They have a much narrower focus and are generally responsible for:
- Overseeing research of SEO to help digital marketing team run effective campaigns;
- Optimizing company’s website, social media platforms, and other content
- Assuming a project manager role for all digital marketing campaigns
Keyword research and following trends are a big component of the job. Those keywords are then used to develop content strategies and tracking methods. The SEO campaign manager oversees both of these initiatives.
Now Hiring: SEO Marketing Manager
Job responsibilities vary from company to company, but an SEO Marketing or Campaign Manager directly oversees a company’s Internet marketing efforts. This job description typically includes:
- Website, social media, and content optimization
- Managing website content
- Building/nurturing the company’s online community
- Negotiating backlinks
- SEO strategy
- Campaign organization and planning
- Website monitoring and user analysis
- General digital marketing project management
- Keyword research
- Market analysis
- Oversee SEO teams
Education: An SEO Campaign Manager usually has a degree in business, marketing, or computer science
Experience: This type of position is very results-driven. An applicant should be an SEO expert and have a proven track record of growing an organization’s standing in search rankings. They should also understand coding language like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
But a Campaign Manager doesn’t just handle web design, upkeep, and content strategy. This person is tasked with looking beyond websites for other ways to use content marketing to expand a company’s digital presence—think short-form content like social media and blog posts (which can also fall under the long-form category), and longer-form content like white papers, e-books, reports, and other “thought pieces”.
Steps to a Successful SEO Campaign
For those who have assumed the role of SEO campaign manager, here are a few steps to rolling out a successful SEO campaign:
1. Define your goals and SEO strategy.
What do you want to accomplish with the campaign? More importantly, how do you plan to accomplish it?
2. Complete Keyword research.
Identify the important words and phrases as they relate to your campaign, then embed them into your content. Always keep the user’s experience in mind—they find you using keywords, so make sure your website and other online marketing campaigns (i.e., blogs) contain the most important words that relate to your company.
3. Audit.
Then audit some more. Search marketing is data-driven, so you must constantly track your efforts so you can assess what’s working and what’s not. Are users finding your site? Are they engaging with each page? Is the site user-friendly? If you’re coming up lower than you’d like to in search rankings, take a hard look at what you’re doing and take steps to improve it. One way to do this is to conduct a technical SEO audit, which is a way of building a site that makes it crawlable to search engines. Crawling your site means you access every URL on a website and gather info on those URLs, which helps identify and troubleshoot issues.
4, Create content.
This is the fun part. But where keywords were once the driving force behind content creation, today it’s more important to have relevant, finely-crafted content that appeals to a wider readership.
5. Build links.
Internal linking is a good way to expand your page’s reach and increase its effectiveness. Linking a particular word or phrase to another page on your site helps users obtain more information about a word or subject. This means users are going to more pages on your site, thus spending more time on your site, which will boost your page’s Google rankings.
6. Check.
Then check some more. Monitor your open rates and watch your link building rates. Always tweak your subject lines, recipient list, and content so everything stays timely and fresh.
What traits do you look for in an SEO campaign manager?
