What Is SEO Management?

SEO management is the process of creating and executing your business’s search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, and managing your organic search engine presence. SEO management encompasses a diverse range of SEO strategies and techniques, including local SEO, on-page SEO, user experience optimisation, blog content, and backlinking. All of these elements can be placed into three core pillars of SEO: content, technical, and links.

SEO management is a continuous process, as search engine algorithms and search trends are ever-changing. Therefore, ongoing SEO management is needed if you want to get the best possible results.

Every business and every website are different, and so is every SEO campaign. However, achieving exceptional results from SEO management requires skill and careful professional judgement to identify which SEO strategies and techniques will offer the best return on investment (ROI), and directing the most effort towards these.

Most B2B businesses, especially those with a small or no in-house marketing team, will outsource SEO management to an SEO specialist in the form of a company or consultant. Even a well-resourced or larger business may lack in-house SEO expertise due to the specialist skills and tools that are required.

In this article, we explore the key pillars of SEO management, common SEO management challenges faced by B2B businesses and SEO management best practices.

What Are The Key Pillars Of SEO Management?

SEO management is a complex process that involves several interlinking strategies and techniques. SEO can be divided into three key pillars: content, technical and links. These pillars help to structure SEO activities and provide a framework that can help to direct your SEO management activity toward successful outcomes.

The three key pillars of SEO management are:

1. SEO content
2. Technical SEO
3. Links

SEO Content

There has long been a saying in SEO circles: “content is king”. Content is a central part of SEO, and it will be a major feature in most SEO strategies. Both traditional search engines and AI answer engines consider content as a key indicator of a website’s relevance to a query. 

Your website content — including page copy, blog posts, FAQs, and even images and videos — will have a huge impact on your website’s search engine rankings, traffic, and conversions. 

Content has been a critical part of SEO for many years, but its importance has increased markedly during the last few years. Search engines including Google consider content to be one of the most important determinants of search engine visibility  — both for its traditional search function as well as the new AI Overviews. Your website content — including page content, blog articles, and FAQs — has the potential to make or break your SEO.

The SEO management process guides your website content by understanding what your target audience are searching for online, and creating optimised content to match the search intent. Creating and optimising website content involves three major stages:

• Keyword research – Your SEO consultant will identify relevant and attainable keywords to target as part of the SEO campaign.
• Content creation – Your SEO consultant will write engaging content that is optimised for search engines and answer engines, to support your website’s organic visibility, traffic, and conversions. 
• Content strategy – Your SEO consultant will consider seasonal requirements, search trends, and changing business requirements to build a content strategy. This will involve publishing new content, as well as updating, refreshing, and optimising existing or older content.

What are the main types of website content?

Whilst text, images, and video are all important types of content when it comes to SEO, at VIP IT, our SEO management services focus on two main types of content:

• Website pages – These include your website homepage, service pages, and product pages. These pages are generally used to target high-intent commercial keywords that directly describe your product or service. These keywords are often used by search engine users when they are actively looking for a product or service.
• Blog posts – Blog posts aim to educate, inspire, and inform your target audience about a subject area. Blog posts are generally used to target informational keywords, such as questions or “how to” topics. These keywords are often used by search engine users who are researching a topic, and who are not quite ready to buy. However, these keywords can help you connect with your target audience early in the buyer journey, so that you can build trust and authority.

What does content optimisation look like?

Optimising your website content for search engines and answer engines is critical to getting your brand visible and driving traffic to your website. When your SEO consultant optimises your website content, they are telling search engines and answer engines that the content is relevant to queries containing certain keywords. Content optimisation usually includes the following:

• Structuring the content so that it is easily digestible, logical, and comprehensive
• Ensuring the target keyword is present in key locations, including the h1 tag, subheadings, body text, and SEO title
• Making the content authentic, authoritative, and unique by incorporating real-life experience, evidence of niche expertise, trust signals and authority signals (Google EEAT)
• Updating and refreshing content so that it remains relevant, accurate, and engaging

When it comes to modern professional SEO management, the days of keyword stuffing and “black hat” practices are long behind us. Trying to game the search engine results pages (SERPs) by tricking search engines into ranking your content when it contains little or no real value will only hold your website back.

At VIP IT, we always follow current SEO best practices, and remain up-to-date with changing search engine and answer engine trends through continued professional development (CPD). Liam is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Chartered Marketer, which is the mark of a professional marketer. When you choose to partner with VIP IT, you can rest assured that your business is in safe and professional hands.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is very much a behind-the-scenes process, and largely invisible to those without expertise. Despite this, it plays a critical role in SEO management as it helps a website be visible in search engines. Websites with good technical SEO are more accessible, crawlable and indexable by search engines, making it more likely that they will be displayed in the search results.

Technical SEO is the most advanced of the three key pillars of SEO, and it should be handled by SEO specialists with the required expertise and experience. Even businesses that wish to retain some of their SEO management in-house will turn to SEO specialists for technical SEO. Making a mistake can have ramifications including significant losses in search engine visibility and de-indexing of website pages.

Technical SEO supports your content optimisation efforts, because it ensures that content is easily accessible to search engines and potential customers. Improving accessibility, crawlability and indexability mostly involves resolving issues that are present on a website. These issues range from the relatively straightforward — including heading tagging and broken links — to the more complex, like website load speed and user experience.

The somewhat prescriptive and checklist-like nature of certain aspects of SEO has led to many businesses turning to AI and automated solutions to resolve website issues. However, this neglects to consider the potential damage that following AI-led technical SEO recommendations can cause. The real skill when it comes to technical SEO is being able to determine the priority of each identified issue and assess whether resolving it risks causing further issues or harm to your SEO. Moreover, many aspects of technical SEO go beyond fixing single issues and relate to wider all-encompassing areas such as user experience and website performance, which can rarely be addressed solely by a checklist-driven approach.

Links

Links remain a valuable signal to search engines and your website visitors as to the trustworthiness and authority of your website. Websites with a good volume of relevant backlinks from trustworthy websites will often outperform those with few backlinks. When you gain a significant number of backlinks to your website and its content, it suggests that the content is valuable enough to be linked to and therefore is likely to deserve inclusion on page one of the search results.

Links and backlinking have developed a bad reputation, mostly as a result of the practices of a few link building companies who attempt to sell huge volumes of backlinks to businesses from questionable websites, which offer no value to their visitors. These practices have the potential to harm your SEO efforts as they place your website at an increased risk of a manual or algorithmic penalty. At best, they will have no impact on your website’s SEO, which is a waste of resources that could be committed to quality link building, technical fixes or content creation.

It is important to note that not all backlinking or link building activities are spammy. There are effective ways to build links to your website that are in-line with best practice and will help to support your SEO management efforts. While they can be more expensive and difficult to secure, the potential rewards are greater. Professional SEO management services will seek to secure quality backlinks from reliable and trustworthy sources through directories, blogger outreach, and digital PR. Executing digital PR campaigns often involves working with a PR agency, which has additional cost implications, but if you are looking to secure quality backlinks, it remains a proven route to success.

SEO Management Challenges

SEO management is a complex and ever-changing process. Your business may make good progress before encountering a significant challenge that damages your hard-earned organic visibility and website traffic. Whether you are managing your SEO in-house or you are outsourcing it, you are likely to encounter several challenges, from securing resources and responding to Google updates to sustaining content creation and analysing data. Overcoming these challenges requires a robust SEO strategy and a professional approach to SEO management.

There are four main SEO management challenges that we come across in our work as SEO consultants:

1. Securing resources for SEO management
2. Responding to Google updates
3. Sustaining website content creation
4. Analysing SEO data

Securing Resources For SEO Management

Although the ROI of SEO management is significant and research has shown that SEO has one of the highest ROIs of all marketing channels, securing resources for it remains a challenge for many businesses. Competing priorities can mean that SEO is sidelined in favour of other marketing channels such as social media and exhibitions/trade shows. While SEO is a less “visual” marketing channel than many of its glossier counterparts, the results that it brings by targeting high-intent potential customers when they are actively searching for what your business offers should not be underestimated.

Many businesses will try SEO at some point, but few truly commit to the SEO management process. Instead, businesses tend to view it as a project with a defined time period, which neglects the fact that SEO is very much an on-going process and that the best results and highest ROI will come after a sustained period of professional SEO management. Securing a long-term commitment to SEO can make all the difference to the results.

Responding To Google Updates

Google is constantly evolving, with a continuous stream of updates designed to improve its search experience. Across a typical twelve-month period, hundreds of updates are made to Google’s search engine algorithms. While some are smaller updates with a limited impact on the SEO management process, some are significant and these can impact the visibility and keyword rankings of websites across all sectors.

Recent significant updates include the March 2024 core update, the November 2023 core update and the much-publicised helpful content update in August 2022. Each update targeted different aspects of Google Search, with the aim of reducing low quality and unoriginal results, promoting high quality content and user experience, and identifying content that is not helpful to searchers respectively. There is a theme that runs through all Google updates: they are all about improving the search experience for Google users and ensuring that they receive helpful, accurate and reliable answers to their queries.

In order to effectively respond to Google updates, you need to follow an SEO management process that supports Google best practice and follows the core principles of SEO, which despite hundreds of Google updates annually, do not change. By staying informed of the purpose of each update, you will be well-equipped to respond and make any necessary adjustments to your SEO strategy.

Sustaining Website Content Creation

Content creation is just like SEO management, in that it is very much an on-going process involving continuous work. Similarly, the greatest rewards are gained by businesses that are consistent. Many businesses can create some good content once in a while, but unfortunately this is no longer enough in the modern and ultra-competitive SEO landscape. The websites that succeed are those that produce consistent, quality content.

While the precise frequency of content creation varies from sector to sector depending on the intensity of competition, you need to be consistent. Whether you usually publish two blogs per month or six blogs per month, you need to sustain this to get the best results. Page content must also be created, updated and optimised. Overall, a significant amount of SEO management time is dedicated to content creation for good reason as it has such a bearing on SEO results.

The greatest challenges when it comes to sustaining content creation for most businesses are time and resources. Many businesses lack the time to create content. It is rarely a quick task and will often be sidelined by day-to-day business priorities. This is of course where outsourcing your SEO and committing to SEO management services can help. However, if your business lacks the resources to outsource, careful planning and preparing your content in advance can help to deliver the consistency and quality that is required.

Analysing SEO Data

Understanding your SEO performance involves analysing a lot of data. The challenge is knowing which data is important and how to analyse it so it can guide your SEO strategy. You are likely to have SEO data from many sources including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, keyword ranking software and your competitors to name but a few.

The high volume of data that a business typically collects is both a benefit and a drawback. You will need to prioritise your data sources and create a dashboard to display the key statistics that are important to your business. Some businesses will create custom dashboards that draw data from key sources into an easy-to-use, at-a-glance view of their SEO progress. Meanwhile, others may turn to specialist reporting software to create and maintain a helpful window into their progress. Whichever route you choose, as long as you make staying on top of data easy and hassle-free, you will be well placed to analyse your SEO data and use it to guide your SEO management activities.

SEO Management Best Practices

Managing SEO is a resource-intensive task. Although the precise SEO management strategy varies from business to business, there are a number of best practices that you can follow to give your business the best possible chance of SEO management success.

There are four key best practices to aim for when working with a professional SEO consultant:

1. Secure the necessary SEO expertise
2. Invest for the long-term
3. Focus on quality
4. Drive continuous improvement

Secure The Necessary SEO Expertise

Every successful SEO management process is backed by specialist SEO expertise. It ensures that you have the guidance and insight necessary to formulate and execute a successful SEO strategy. Whether you decide to build an SEO team in-house or outsource your SEO to a company that provides SEO management services, getting the expertise in place from the start will leave your business well placed to make the most of the opportunities that SEO management presents.

Invest For The Long-Term

The most successful SEO campaigns are those that are based on an on-going approach to SEO that allows the SEO management process to be used to its full potential. SEO has never been and is never likely to be a short-term marketing channel. You invest in SEO for the long-term, much like you would invest in a piece of machinery or plant equipment. SEO can deliver valuable inbound leads and sales that make your website the engine of your business’s growth.

Focus On Quality

Many businesses invest in some form of SEO management, but few focus on quality at every stage of the process. Good SEO cannot be rushed, and taking the time to follow proven processes and frameworks will pay dividends in the future. Businesses that can deliver quality content, a great user experience and value to their website visitors will be best placed to secure the all-important leads and sales that drive growth.

Drive Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a powerful strategy for every area of a business and SEO marketing is no different. The on-going and long-term nature of SEO management means that you have an opportunity to test, measure and learn from your SEO tactics over a long period of time. In doing so, you can make small continuous improvements to each area of your SEO strategy. Even though small improvements may seem insignificant at the time, they quickly compound, resulting in impressive results for your business.

Grow Your Business With Professional SEO Management

So now you know what SEO management is, but how will you use it to deliver long-term growth for your business? You might be considering growing your existing marketing team to deliver SEO management in-house or outsourcing your SEO to a specialist SEO company. VIP IT offers professional SEO management services that can help your business grow and acquire the all-important inbound leads and sales that it needs. We take a long-term partnership-based approach to SEO management, whereby we work closely with clients to develop a bespoke SEO strategy that takes account of your current website, business sector and business goals.

Our SEO management services are delivered by our founder, Liam. Liam is a Chartered Marketer with nearly 10 years’ experience of delivering successful SEO management for businesses within both the B2C and B2B sectors. His experience spans many sectors, from technology and law through to financial services and manufacturing. Liam is a B2B SEO specialist and has delivered B2B SEO services for both UK and international clients.

If your business is looking to increase its online visibility, website traffic and leads/sales, why not secure a free digital marketing consultation with Liam to find out how he can help your business make the most of SEO management?