How to create a cross-functional SEO and PR team for your company

In an age influenced by powerful algorithms, the intersection of SEO and PR is critical, yet often overlooked by corporate leadership.

This partnership has its challenges. PR isn’t always aware of the complexities of SEO. Because SEO is so focused on shaping the customer experience, it can overlook the human story that PR tells.

By leveraging the systematic prowess of SEO and the storytelling of PR, companies can tailor integrated marketing campaigns that resonate in ways that influence behavior. Here's how:

Why integrate SEO and PR?

The combination of SEO and PR is surprisingly untapped in the corporate environment.

• “In an in-house enterprise SEO structure, the more the PR and SEO teams communicate with each other about best practices and strategies, the more effective links to the site will be,” says Jesse MacDonald, Global SEO Strategist at IBM .

McDonald is an active expert contributor to the SEO community (as a guest speaker, author, award judge, and podcast guest), has a deep understanding of modern SEO practices, and has worked in an enterprise environment. going.

SEO and PR can impact the ever-growing online media landscape, including news, search engines (Google, YouTube, etc.), blogs, podcasts, webinars, social media, and more.

Integrating SEO and PR amplifies the results of both for the following reasons:

• Certain PR techniques can build powerful off-page user experiences that impact organic visibility.
• Search engines, media, and blogs are important touchpoints in online consumer purchasing behavior, influencing purchasing and content consumption behavior.
• PR and SEO can create funnels that drive leads and sales online.

At any stage from the time a buyer learns they have a problem to the time they make a purchase, your audience can use search engines to answer their questions.

According to the Hubspot Consumer Trends report, search engines are 86% effective at finding answers online.

But corporate communications teams have their own goals, and moving up the rankings isn't their top priority.

Dig deeper: 6 steps to a successful enterprise SEO strategy

Challenges of corporate SEO + PR collaboration

Digital marketing teams face challenges when integrating SEO and PR:

• PR has purposes and methods that don't necessarily include search engines.
• For many PR teams, SEO is a black box and difficult to incorporate into PR campaigns.

As Dana Tan, Director of SEO at Under Armour, pointed out:

• “A big hurdle to overcome in siled companies is educating PR teams about SEO capabilities.”

When different team members across departments work together toward a common goal, they become a cross-functional team.

There is dysfunction in cross-functional teams, whether it's SEO or PR.

Behnam Tabrizi, an organizational change coach at Stanford University, studied 95 teams in 25 companies and identified four factors to avoid dysfunctional cross-functional teams.

• A leader with end-to-end responsibility: There is a single team leader who can facilitate team collaboration towards a goal.
• Clear goals, resources, and deadlines: Create seamless teams with overlapping resources and deadlines based on an integrated strategy and aligned around a common goal.
• Project success is the main focus: PR teams have priorities that conflict with SEO priorities. Establish a common strategy for your team to work together.
• Always reevaluate: Run a post-mortem with your SEO and PR teams to understand what worked and what didn't.

How realistic is cross-functional SEO for enterprise SEO teams?

• “I would say this is an ideal situation for a large company. My experience and what I've heard from others is how teams are typically organized and siled from each other, so they can be cross-functional. “Collaboration is very difficult,” McDonald said.

So what is a cross-functional SEO team?

What is a cross-functional SEO (CFSEO) team?

A CFSEO is a temporary or long-term cross-functional team focused on using search engines and other media to achieve business or marketing department goals.

CFSEO teams are measured by their impact on business performance, rather than by key metrics such as rankings or number of Jira tickets submitted, for example.

A CFSEO team can consist of collaboration between any internal team, including digital marketing, SEO, PR, content, developers/engineers (this is most common in enterprises), and leadership.

When digital marketing managers work with content marketing to request content on a topic, they optimize the content for search engines. This is cross-functional.

When SEO professionals optimize content for keyword integration, this is done cross-functionally.

These teams can be strategic and powerful tools for achieving business, departmental, or team goals.

How to align your CFSEO team for PR

The CFSEO framework aligns PR and SEO teams to achieve important business outcomes. A framework is the process of aligning different tools and models to achieve common goals and key results (OKRs).

Configuring intent

In this step, find out why SEO and PR work together. This is achieved by setting common goals and key results that both teams are accountable for.

• “For SEO and PR to work together, they need to align around a common business goal,” says Keith Good, who previously held director and senior positions in SEO at IBM and Cox Automotive. Such cooperation is impossible.”

strategy building

Locate the content message in the mind of an archetype customized to the medium and medium (i.e., who is saying what, where, and about the content/company).

Start hypothesis testing

Identify assets and test different media and messages that resonate with your audience. This technique should include on-page, search engine, and media placements (news, podcasts, blogs, etc.).

Expansion with ERMS planning

Based on the test results, we decide what action to take for each technique.

Using CFSEO alignment maps

The CFSEO alignment map is a tool that simplifies the connections between the four stages.

This map can be used for any strategic collaboration in SEO, but when used in PR, the tool requires additional sub-elements.

Here are the steps to use the map:

Step 1: Set your goals

Set goals based on quarterly planning cycles. Ideally, the team leader should be very familiar with her SEO and PR. This lead could be he SEO Product Manager.

Use goals and key results that both SEO and PR are responsible for. OKRs are a popular tool for aligning teams to business or functional goals in a human way.

According to Goode, these goals should align with the goals of the business or marketing department.

A CFSEO team working with PR and SEO can be a powerful tool for building customer funnels. Set goals for users, not improving rankings.

Step 2: Build your strategy

Design strategies by analyzing where consumers are and what they are saying at each stage of the customer journey. Identify what your audience wants to learn and where they will go to learn about your solution.

This strategy framework is suitable for collaboration between SEO and PR, but choose the right framework for your company and situation. Frameworks should integrate channels rather than completely silo them.

A hybrid strategy should cover these areas.

• prototype: Who are you talking to?
• keyword: What answers and solutions do they need?
• message: At what stage in the customer journey, what kind of UVP do you have, and how do you solve problems (assets)?
• sauce: Who do you trust as a source of information?
• media:What kind of media are you using at this point? Podcasts, bylines, news, expert resources, search engines, and more.

After identifying strategic activities, it is important to identify joint resources and risks that require team collaboration.

Here are some frameworks or tools that can help you brainstorm your strategy.

• Search experience map: Map keywords, media, and messages to each stage of the customer journey.
• Rand Fishkins impact map: Consider how websites, search engines, and media contribute to the customer's journey from identifying a problem to finding a solution.

Integrate existing strategic frameworks, such as an influential asset marketing (IAM) strategy that leverages your company's useful assets (research, tools, processes, etc.) to secure media coverage.

Step 3: Set up your key results

Once you understand how your customers are learning about your solution and your strategy has been identified, set your key results. Selecting key results after analyzing the situation provides realistic goals.

However, in some cases, a test project may provide insights to improve the accuracy of your goals. Therefore, step 4.1 appears as an optional step after hypothesis testing.

Step 4: Start hypothesis testing

Select techniques and hypotheses to test and measure their impact.

The technique consists of:

• organic assets.
• Messages about assets that are relevant to your audience.
• Media placement.
• Search engine keywords.

Your hypothesis is how you expect these techniques to affect your key results.

However, each test alone does not have to yield all important results. Several techniques work together to drive overall results and goals.

Run as many intensive tests as possible in one quarter.

Every time you run a test, expect it to fail on the first few attempts.

Goode advised doing a post-mortem after a test to understand and improve your next test.

Step 5: ERMS action plan

Using an ERMS model simplifies the evaluation of method results and prioritizes action plans. ERMS stands for

• lose: This technique doesn't work, so move on.
• reduce: This technique gave results, but consumed too many resources for the results.
• maintain: The technique performs as expected and may become an ongoing project.
• scale: This technique yields the desired results and, when scaled up, can help achieve the desired key results.

Test your messaging, media, and media with your ERMS system without changing your assets.

let's start

It is not without its challenges to find a reason to create this union, create an integrated strategy, develop tests and build collective action.

Accelerate collaboration with CFSEO alignment maps and use tools like Influential Asset Marketing (IAM) to deepen your strategy and drive successful outcomes.

Dig deeper: How SEO and digital PR can maximize brand awareness