How To Build A Remote Team For SEO – The Ultimate Guide

Intro

In the pandemic lockdown scenario, many businesses adopted remote working as the way ahead to grow their business and stay connected with clients. As lockdown curbs were relaxed post the pandemic, they continued to adopt the remote working model, which helped them control costs and remain more competitive.

It also gave them an opportunity to hire the best talent from across the globe in specialized fields such as digital marketing, content creation, SEO, etc., which play an important role in the organic growth of a business.

One of the key learnings over the years when it comes to digital marketing is the importance of SEO, and its role in generating good quality leads for your business.

Simply put, SEO is the art of optimizing your content, be it your website, blogs, videos, or even podcasts, in a way that search engines can easily index it and show it when there are search queries for it.

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However, search engines are constantly optimizing and updating their algorithms, which makes SEO pretty challenging. So when you think you know precisely what Google or other search engines are looking for, an algorithm update will need you to get started again sometimes. SEO is a long-term marketing strategy with the benefits of being reaped by a business for many years.

To make your SEO strategy work for you, you might need to tweak your content as per the latest algorithms. For that, you should be familiar with the basics of SEO and how it operates. That can easily be accomplished with a team of SEO experts.

The good news is that even your SEO team can be remote and collaborate online to ensure you are right there when customers are looking for you. Setting up a remote team has its challenges and benefits, so to get you going, we share some of the benefits of hiring a remote team.

The first benefit of hiring remote workers is that there will never be a talent shortage. You can pick the top candidates from all over the world. Hiring workers from nations with lower living expenses will lower your labor costs. Plus, with platforms like Wishup offering remote assistants for various roles, building a remote team becomes hassle-free and secure.

Additionally, studies show that remote workers are more productive than those working in offices because of fewer meetings and interruptions.

When building a remote SEO team, the industry you operate in, the profile of your customers, and your SEO strategy will influence how you can build your remote SEO team.

Here are eight guidelines to help you establish and grow a remote SEO team:

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Hiring the SEO Manager

The SEO Manager will be in charge of generating keyword ideas for your company. The person in this position will choose which blog posts need additional links and promotion and optimize the posts to rank higher on Google.

Google uses 200 indicators to determine a page's ranking. Creating backlinks is just one of the SEO factors Google considers when deciding how to rank a blog post. The ranking of your post will also be determined by other factors like keyword density, click-through rate, user intent, and time spent on the page.

The SEO Manager will ensure that the team considers these indicators while optimizing the marketing content.

Organize link and research teams

Your link-building team will do the outreach necessary to produce links to your content. For instance, if you plan to publish one article per week, you can keep 5–6 linkers and give them the freedom to optimize content until it achieves the highest possible search engine ranking.

However, your link-building team will require email addresses to contact people. As a result, you will require a research team. The research team's task will be to locate emails so the linkers can conduct the necessary outreach to build links quickly. Because the task is time-consuming, you must assemble an expert team of researchers.

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Hiring a Content Manager

The Content Manager's responsibility is to oversee the writers and guarantee that the submitted blog posts are "in-line with the brand." This consists of two crucial elements:

The Content Manager must first have the ability to edit blog posts. It includes making sure all posts have a consistent "voice" and are using proper grammar and punctuation.

The next responsibility of the Content Manager is to possess in-depth knowledge of the company's offerings and rivals.

Often, the authors won't be aware that they are mentioning a direct or indirect rival in the post. They might also be unaware that the post might or mightn’t highlight a specific product feature. Therefore, hiring a Content Manager would ensure the copy is polished before it is sent to the SEO Manager.

Employing Content Writers

Finally, there are content writers or bloggers. Naturally, to grow, you must create only high-quality content. To write for you, you can hire virtual assistants.

Some team members will need to serve in multiple capacities if you're just starting or don't have a sizable budget. In this situation, hire a content writer to benefit your business because they have many skills and abilities. Pay special attention to content writers that can create good headlines.

Setting up your remote SEO team

Your ability to successfully set up a remote team will depend on the structure of your team. For instance, remote SEO teams located in one country will have different considerations than teams dispersed across multiple time zones.

Not all remote teams have evolved in the same way.

As a result, individuals on those teams may have varying expectations and experiences with remote working. Therefore, structuring is crucial when creating or growing a fully remote SEO team. It is also important to have a solid employee onboarding training and an initial one-on-one meeting with the new employees to ensure they are settling into their new remote role.

Picking a training medium

Your team can receive the company SEO training in various ways. Your preferred medium will influence your team’s learning style.

Among the options are

Live Sessions.

You can schedule routine team meetings for training via video conferencing using this training medium. Most initial sessions can be led by the SEO Manager, who is most likely the most seasoned SEO expert with the best SEO proposal.

Online Training

Consider using an LMS - Learning Management System for Customer Training to create a self-paced online course.

The advantages of this strategy include making more structured lessons and updating them as necessary with ease. Additionally, it will let your team learn at their own pace.

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Creating a system for evaluation and responsibility

Your training program will be more successful if it has some mechanism for evaluation and responsibility.

Here are some strategies you can use:

Quizzes and Tests

Despite being a conventional strategy, it works. Once you have finished a lesson, think about non-graded quizzes. It will support learning and correct errors. In addition, you can get insights into the amount of knowledge retained by administering tests regularly.

Projects

You can create simulated or "real-life" projects where your remote employees are asked to demonstrate the lesson learned. For example, you could teach a keyword research lesson and ask the trainees to find fifteen new keywords that a website should target and explain why.

This is also true whenn you are running business on various platforms like WooCommerce and eBay; each platform has difference SEO strategics, therefore, your SEO team will need to take responsibilities for each campaign for better search rankings and more.

Following a lesson, the manager should observe the team's work related to the lesson and look for signs of applying the principles learned. Also, they should try to connect with the employees regularly to solicit feedback.

Establishing a successful team culture

The most crucial factor to consider when forming a fully remote SEO team is how each member thrives within the team. There are various ways you can help your team perform well individually.

First and foremost, managers should focus on making each member feel at ease in their new role. There's a chance the team has never collaborated before. They will therefore need to invest time in helping the team become effective upfront.

This may imply scheduling "ways of working" discussions and "getting to know you" sessions in advance.

Spending time in person is not always necessary to help your team work well together remotely. It takes more than just establishing a few online escape rooms or after-work drinks over Zoom.

Making sure you communicate with your team members regularly is the second crucial aspect of your role in creating a remote SEO team. You must evaluate their contentment and productivity and consider how you can help remove any barriers.

There is only a slight difference between being a supportive manager and being one who is overbearing. Therefore, it is essential to discuss how each team member functions best with them.

Would a weekly 15-minute conversation reviewing the week's work be helpful?

Would the team prefer to update you via weekly emails and a more in-depth face-to-face monthly review?

Whatever the decision, managers should note it in their diary. The team must have the chance to share any successes or grievances. To determine the type of support, managers would also need frequent touchpoints.

Wrapping Up

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Setting up and developing a remote SEO team will take time and effort. But in the end, it's worthwhile. Substantial time and effort must be invested in creating a virtual SEO team.

You won't suddenly go from 0 to 100,000 visitors per month or perhaps in a year. But your company will definitely grow more quickly, and that too at a substantially lower cost as compared to paid marketing.

With remote working now being the norm, it’s the best time to set up a fully remote SEO team and start growing your business.