So an SEO should definitely have social skills?

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Maggie : Absolutely! Good SEOs are always able to explain highly technical topics in a way that even people without proven technical knowledge understand the relevance of the measures.

SEOs in companies, which areas do they traditionally work with or which areas should they perhaps work with most intensively?
Maggie : I think the first interface is always IT. Because many of the things SEOs want implemented have to be done by IT. These include, for example, setting up redirects or canonicals and the hreflang tag. The problem, however, is that IT usually doesn't give SEO a high priority.

Why is that?
Maggie : Well, I've seen a lot of different things. For example, I've seen IT in a company so powerful that they wouldn't let anyone tell them what to do – especially not someone from marketing. But it's also common for management or the board of directors not to recognize the high priority. Often, this is because SEO isn't currently a major traffic driver, and the potential isn't recognized. The problem with SEO is simply that you can never truly causally attribute a specific effect to one measure in isolation.

Are there any other important interfaces?
Maggie : Product management is also an important interface. It's always beneficial for SEOs to know early on when product lines are being discontinued completely or when new product lines are being added to the product range, resulting in new landing pages. So, when a new URL is created, a URL is being discontinued, or a URL is being redirected, it's always beneficial for ghana phone number data SEOs to have a say in the process.


Fig. 1: Maggie at work.
You've worked with clients of varying sizes so far. Can you say that most of your clients already have in-house SEO expertise or even in-house SEO teams? And if so, roughly how big are these teams?
Maggie : I've seen teams of 20-30 people working in-house on SEO. But I've also worked with companies that didn't have anyone internally dedicated to SEO. Then it was usually someone else who took over, usually from marketing or even PR. If there's no one in the company who fully covers this area, working with an agency is usually more difficult. So, there should always be at least one person dedicated to internal project management who regularly checks on the status quo and prioritizes interfaces like IT and product management.

So what would you like your customers to do to ensure you can deliver the best service with Claneo?
Maggie : We always have the best experiences working with clients when there's a direct contact person who, ideally, also has the authority to make decisions. So, there can be multiple contact persons within the company for different topics, but ultimately, one of them has to be in charge.

Personally, I also believe that an agency is best deployed where companies have the most internal weaknesses and are unable to cover certain topics well enough. An agency can then act as a sparring partner to help iron out these weaknesses.