What type of skills would a good candidate need to possess:
- Excellent research skills
- Copywriting skills
- Technical expertise
- Quick learning skills
- Detail-oriented
- High tolerance for change
- Affinity for solving complex puzzles
- Multi-tasking
- Willingness to experiment with different solutions
Depending on your company size, you may need someone who can deal with large numbers of documents. Possibly, even thousands of products, which can include multiple regional or local influences, security walls, registration walls, paid subscription walls, editorial guidelines, and management egos.
And most of all in-house search marketing requires a leader with consummate ability to manage change.
No matter if the company is large or small. Any search marketing project requires integration, support, and involvement across all departments of the organization.
I find that the best plans will, overtime, combine search into the daily workflow through a series of orderly changes. This serves to reduce stress and resistance from everyone involved.
In-house search marketing systems require a number of support points.
Here's just a few:
- Wiki knowledgebase
- A search hub
- Ongoing training
- Standardized reports
- The best tools
- Technical and editorial checklists
As well as search engine policies and authoring guidelines so that everyone can participates in unity.
Search Engine Optimization marketing team.2
Training your staff
To achieve a cost-effective in-house search engine marketing production, you will either need highly experienced or a very well-trained staff; there's just no way around it.
Fortunately, there are a number of resources and training options available today.
Your choice of options will depend on several key factors:
- Company size
- Existing IT staff
- Editorial staff
- Search marketing staff
- Product diversity
- Level of competition
- Current search marketing experience
And maybe even staff consolidation under one roof.
In some cases, the best option may be to hire a search marketing training expert for the sole purpose of training your in-house staff on-site.
You're going to find there's a huge knowledge gap when it comes to the different types of experience and competency of the candidates' in the search marketing industry.
When it comes to standards, licenses, or authentic certifications available in SEO and/or SEM advertising there's few if any I would endorse.
There is also a serious shortage of valuable and trusted search marketing professionals with the experience required to fulfill these tasks within a large in-house search environment.
I have also found that Search marketers who may have worked at eBay, Yahoo!, or other well-known companies within a "search marketing" capacity will have a very focused and specialized skill-set. One which is typically centered on the paid search environment with little or no SEO skills or vice-versa.
You can always opt for on-the-job training. However, for a company seeking immediate in-house search marketing capabilities, this can cause unnecessary delays, redundancies, and expenses.
A third option is to utilize online or off-site search marketing training resources.
Whichever route you choose, the bottom line is that those companies that take search engine marketing training seriously in the years ahead will remain strong and competitive in their market.
