One of the things I love about working here is the great team that we’ve built over the years. I feel team building is a business skill just like negotiating, communication, or even SEO. Unless hiring and recruiting is your full time job and responsibility it can be tough to identify needs, find applicants, and get good people in the door. This is magnified within the SEO industry. Just yesterday I was talking with Oilman about how hard it is to find good SEOs, especially if you want them on-site, which I always prefer.

To build a successful SEO team there are certain skills and individuals you’ll need. All of these would need to change based on the supporting cast you have from other departments and how many sites and/or projects you manage.

Here are some of the key ingredients:

• Senior Level SEOs
  • You’re going to need guys that you can count on to manage SEO campaigns, websites, projects, and just flat out get things done. The number of senior level guys you need will vary based on the number of sites you have or work you manage. If you want top notch results then you can’t spread these resources too thin. They need to be able to dedicate a significant amount of time on an ongoing basis to each site. These guys need to have a wide range of skills: SEO, technical, programming, communication, etc.
• Entry to Mid-Level SEOs:
  • These are your senior level SEOs in training. They can be difficult to find and wrangle into their roles but they also have their place within the SEO team. Their skill set will probably not be fully developed, but that is expected and it is part of your job to assist them in that development.
• Application Developers:
  • It is crucial to have some talented application developers and programmers on staff. Your company may already have an existing IT company with their own development staff. I don’t care. Beg your boss to give you the budget to hire at least one, if not more, developers to work solely on your SEO projects. If you know what you’re doing, you will always have work for them. As I’ve said before, good tools are an SEO’s best friend. They can make your team run more efficiently and help you get the data you need to make better business decisions. I’ll cover some my favorites in another post.
• Senior Level Link Builders:
  • It’s best to divide the work of link building and SEO since they are both so important and require siginificant focus, work, and dedication. As with the senior level SEOs, the number of senior level link builders you need will vary based on the sites you manage. It isn’t possible for one to person to effectively and consistently build links for a large number of sites. If you want things done right you can’t overload these key roles. It’s important that these employees have good sales and negotiation skills to work with outside vendors and clients, and organization, communication, and management skills to work with their entry level team members and interns.
• Entry Level Link Builders:
  • These workers are crucial to support the senior level link developers mentioned above. They can be entry level employees with little or zero previous SEO experience as they will be trained by their senior level team members. Ideally these candidates will have Internet experience, data entry, and research skills.
• Interns:
  • It’s always great to have interns around for the miscellaneous tasks that arise. Identify the talented ones and train them for a more senior level position. Get my coffee!

Here are some optional ingredients for the SEO team:

• Copywriters:
  • Half of SEO revolves around copy so it doesn’t hurt to have dedicated copywriters on the team. That said, this work can be covered by other members on the SEO team if they have sufficient writing skills. It’s also possible that this position already exists elsewhere in the company.
• Project Managers:
  • Up until a few years ago I didn’t realize how important project managers were. If there are enough SEO specific projects and a shortage of available project managers within the company you may be able to justify having a full time project manager within your team. That said, this responsibility may fall on you or your senior level SEOs, or you may share project managers with other departments.
• Web Developers:
  • Talented web developers are always needed. I listed this position as optional since it is typically a job role that falls in a different department (web or IT). That said, if your SEO department is churing out sites or it is justified another way you may have dedicated developers underneath the SEO team branch.
• Designers:
  • Same deal as the web developers. They’re crucial to the process, but they typically fall within a different department (creative).

Hope this helps. Think I missed anyone?