The functional SEO product team
Challenges and singularities of team formation for SEO as a product.
Since I published my last article giving a general overview on the product mindset being applied to SEO I’ve received great feedback and response from the community and was provoked on elaborating further on a few key questions which I’ll be assessing in a series of articles.
I don’t intend to pass as a great industry expert, but I’ll try and show my line of thinking as to promote this discussion across the Product Management and SEO board and give my contribution to what I think is a way to improve User Experience on the web as a whole — this is actually what I believe to be most Search Engines goal (aside from making a profit, of course), and it should also be ours as SEOs and Product Managers.
In the first article of this series I’ll go ahead and pinpoint structural challenges (such as organizational aspects) and what I believe to be an ideal scenario for doing SEO as a product from a team formation standpoint.
Always begin with why
I think it’s counterintuitive to elaborate on SEO product team formation before answering the question as to why doing SEO in a Product Team versus other more traditional approaches. The answer I was able to come up with is this:
Product builds scalable solutions to leverage the power of SEO by allowing 10x impact without committing 10x resources and this is the main driving force on the execution mindset. SEO product solutions do not aim to address micro-specific search intent as they most seek to create an environment where the product itself seamlessly addresses 80% of value creation — the other 20% is created by the product infrastructure which allows other functional areas to collaborate.
From previous experiences, the Pareto principle applies and even though 80% of value creation is usually done with 20% the effort, is the last 20% value creation that actually differentiates a Top-3 competitor.
The standard product team formation
A standard product team formation dictates that a functional team has at least one of each of the following roles:
- Product Manager (a.k.a Product Owner): owns the subject, ensures that information flows freely across team members and is responsible for aligning business value creation with the product vision — in other words, ensures viability
- Product Designer (a.k.a UX/UI Designer): ensures that customer needs are being addressed and, in our case as SEOs, that there is also value creation from a search behavior standpoint — in other words, ensures desirability
- Developer (a.k.a engineer): ensures that the solution is shipped in a way that value is actually being created, both for users and Search Engines — in other words, ensures feasibility
But, as you may have already figured out, SEO is a peculiar subject and other skills are more than welcome to help the team create this value — and accelerate execution. There are roles that are really subject-specific — which I’ll get into in a second — but there are also other functions already well-known in the Product Management world that are important in this context, such as:
- UX Writer: is the person responsible for a more strategic and structural point-of-view for on-product content mostly regarding text for proper page comprehension and accessibility. This person usually works closely with the UX/UI Designer and helps establishing proper copy
- Data Analyst: usually, DAs help with report creation and metrics follow-up and this is specially important within the SEO scope — if this person is not in your team, the Product Manager should be doing this type of work
- Data Engineer: as SEO in your company matures, this role becomes more important. This person is responsible for ensuring the appropriate data architecture which in turn maximizes the value created from information you might have (or would like to obtain)
- QA (Quality Assurance): this might be especially important for SEO since a make-or-break change might affect your results drastically. Nevertheless, this is work that could be done by engineers throughout development and will be as good as their technical knowledge regarding SEO requirements. I do believe that the Product Manager should acquire this knowledge and also help with testing when appropriate, as well as ensuring that the team is at least familiarized with SEO principles
SEO-specific roles in a product team
As I said before, there are subject-specific roles and this is where the Product Organization might start getting a little different as to what you might be used to. I’ll dive deeper into these functions in this section and will later on elaborate on possible organizational structures to accommodate them to paint a picture of what I believe should be an ideal formation.
(note: even though talking about “ideal formation”, it is important to understand that this is dependent on SEO maturity; hence, depending on where you are, less might be more. You don’t need to — and I don’t think you should — start with this level of complexity all of a sudden)
Since SEO is dependent on Web Crawlers there are still key aspects that need to be taken into account, which I dissect on the following schematic — which I’ll be getting deeper in following articles:
This is to show that there is knowledge that won’t be covered by a traditional product team per se. In this manner, I do find the following roles to be extremely important in a functional SEO product team:
- Content Specialist/Strategist: this person is not necessarily responsible for the content creation, but should have the ability to coordinate with the Content vertical in your company (usually under Marketing or Branding) or even directly with 3rd party suppliers/agencies for the production of content that is pertinent to the macro on-product content strategy. It’s a plus if he or she already knows about keyword and search-intent optimization, but I expect this to be easily learned — if this person is not in your team you should get close to the Content vertical in your company to fulfill these needs
- SEO Technical Specialist: this person should be a full-time problem & opportunity seeker for the basics of SEO. From rich data to link depth, this is the person that is the most able to “hack” your product to ensure the most value is extracted from what’s already been built. This person might also act as an internal consultant to design and engineer alongside the PM — if this person is not in your team, be ready to take-over as a Product Manager (this will be expected of you)
How it all comes together
This is one of the most challenging questions. We know that hypergrowth can only be achieved by leveraging multiple areas of expertise at the same time; on the other hand, the same thing that allows this type of growth in SEO is the one thing that might create inefficiency and misalignment not only between team members but also across the organization as a whole, which is the multifunctionality of the team and interdependence between functional areas that are usually not accustomed by the product management methodology and/or specifics of the subject.
The following schematic is a visual representation of what I believe is a strong Product Team with enough expertise to tackle SEO challenges and accelerate the execution by leveraging technology, user experience and humanized content creation — which in turn creates value not only for Search Engines but also for the end-user by optimizing their engagement for earlier stages and lower intents (awareness and branding).
Nevertheless, this by itself is not bullet proof since the SEO product team is usually not the only team optimizing the Product. It surely is more complex than this since there are many people with different goals trying to reach their KRs and objectives which in turn can result in negative impacts for SEO and vice-versa — if not well-aligned. To be able to elaborate a bit further we need to go deeper into where the SEO product team should lie across the organization.
An overview on Matrix Organizational Structures (with a twist)
The theory behind Matrix Organizational Structure is widespread and widely adopted (I recommend going deeper into the problems behind this type of structure, just out of curiosity). What — in my humble opinion — this type of structure lacks the most is on how to ensure that information flows freely for teams that heavily depend and also impact on one another, as is the case for SEO, and in this sense guarantee proper collaboration.
One way of reinforcing the importance of collaboration across squads (which is another fancy name for Product Teams) around a certain goal is adding another layer of management that is popularly known as a Tribe, as it is described on this article on the Spotify product culture from Atlassian — which is widely adopted across the Product Management community — but what happens when you try and create this sort of collaboration across tribes, and not only squads?
I would really like to say that I have a straightforward answer to this question, but I’d be lying. This is where things start getting non-obvious.
Such as in guilds that a certain individual can contribute in more than one workgroup, this can also happen for tribes; meaning: one tribe can influence and impact more than one other tribe at the same time and this must be accounted for when working with SEO (and other foundational themes such as Infrastructure) if your goal is to maximize the creation of value.
I personally believe that SEO should be near other Top of Funnel squads (such as CRO — Conversion Rate Optimization) as they usually tend to amplify their reach by working together and also avoid cannibalization between goals, since higher traffic rates might result in lower CRO; so this would put them in the same Tribe. Nevertheless, this Top of Funnel tribe probably will mutually impact other tribes that are closer to the business context.
I think this is easier to understand with an example: let’s say you work in a marketplace targeted at Pet supplies. The Top of Funnel tribe will focus on bringing traffic and qualifying the prospects in order to turn them into qualified leads that will eventually buy your products. On the other hand, there is probably a squad somewhere looking for ways of maximizing your revenue by creating other streams — let’s say they want to provide services, such as pet-sitting — and this in turn is a new way of creating value for your core-SEO, as well as it is important that SEO is involved in order to maximize the reach and impact of this new revenue stream.
One more example, following the same scenario described above, could be the interaction with a team working on payment solutions — let’s say they want to offer interest-free installments which in turn might be an important and exclusive business value proposition which could also be leveraged to maximize reach since this is something that users might be actively searching for. I bet that the payment solutions squad won’t be thinking about it from this point of view.
In other words, even though SEO is a top of funnel subject, its reach can be amplified by orders of magnitude when working closely with other teams that are closer to the business needs. This can be done by creating the culture of the SEO squad being involved whenever appropriate, or it can also be ensured by some sort of organizational arrangement. From previous experience, the latter can be done by a “simple” vision alignment between leadership across multiple areas putting SEO as a company priority (or not a priority, if that’s the case) but this is a message that must be constantly reminded as to establish trade-offs and accelerate decision making when needed.
I’m actually looking to learn more about ways of ensuring this type of exchange without the constant need of reminders and if you’d like to share your experience on organizational arrangements I’d be happy to hear about it.
Conclusion
There is no cake recipe, but there might be shortcuts. First, understand the reason as to why you want to approach SEO within a product team. Second, reflect on the appropriate team formation to ensure these goals are achieved. Third, make sure the role of the SEO team is clear across the organization and make it possible for collaboration.
I do believe that the product mindset being applied to SEO is something that should be discussed more often and even if you think that nothing I said here makes sense, I’m already glad that this reflection is happening and that I’m able to contribute somehow. I really want to hear about other experiences so if you’d like to share, please write to pedro.carmo.seo@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to follow-up.
In the following article I’ll be giving my two cents on how I see the role of on-product content for SEO and how 3 basic principles might help you draw a content strategy to leverage your SEO. Feel free to subscribe to know it beforehand.
