To succeed in Enterprise SEO, you need a team. You’ll deal with multiple stakeholders and groups – and even though you may be technically proficient yourself, it’s still important to have friends in the IT department.

All parties benefit when the enterprise architect has a close relationship with the SEO team, IT and marketing.

Putting everything together requires the right approach and understanding everyone’s role in enterprise architect and SEO.

What’s the Role of IT Architects and Engineers in an Enterprise?

As an IT architect, your job isn’t to perform SEO. But as the keeper and maintainer of the organization’s IT networks and services, the enterprise architect has some influence when it comes to executing the SEO strategy.

And as an SEO professional, understanding this relationship makes it clear why having friends in IT is still vital.

IT and engineers are responsible for keeping systems up and running, accessible, and secure, all while ensuring that features continue to work properly.

When it comes to SEO, downtime impacts rankings and revenue directly.

It’s the job of these professionals to:

• Keep servers and databases up and running.
• Design platforms that have scalability in mind.
• Harden servers and software to keep user data secure and prevent vulnerabilities.
• Build metrics for business performance.
• Create tools and systems.

Additionally, IT will be responsible for upgrading enterprise services, hardware, and software.

For example, if a server or database can no longer handle the traffic a site receives, these teams will create redundancy and add new capacity to the system.

Scaling will be a major component of IT architects, from the hardware to the site’s platform and databases.

Bottlenecks on the server side are handled by these individuals; they are not typically the job of the SEO team.

In terms of site speed, SEO professionals can only do so much with the tools they have available.

However, IT can add in new caching systems or Memcached systems to reduce the risk of the database becoming the site’s speed bottleneck.

If scripts or other components produce errors, these individuals can help.

When you’re working on enterprise-level projects, it’s vital to make friends with IT so that you can work together as a team.

You may need assistance on the server level that you wouldn’t have access to as an SEO expert.

What’s the Role of Marketing and IT in SEO?

In the most successful organizations, marketing and IT work together intimately and each has a major role in a search engine optimization campaign.

It’s much different when optimizing for enterprises versus small businesses, simply because there’s so much going on.

Teams are massive, backends are complex and enterprises often have far more traffic than their small business counterparts.

A few of the many roles that marketing and IT can help with are:

• Optimization: Server and database optimization are key, especially with high-trafficked sites. These tasks can be handled by IT in a way that an SEO simply cannot replicate.
• Automation: Scripts can be run and automated to help keep sites running smoothly or perform other tasks.
• Scaling: Sites must be able to handle traffic spikes and even numerous forms of content, depending on the site. Scaling is only possible with the right enterprise architecture and help from IT.
• Website security: Security is critical if you want to build user trust. If a site experiences a data breach, it can cost the enterprise millions of dollars and damage its reputation significantly.
• Content governance: Marketing teams are who you turn to when you want to focus on content governance. When you have governance in place, you enable teams to work together to achieve the same goal by following strict governance rules. They can also assist with SEO hygiene, but your friends in IT are the ones to implement and enforce the State-Owned Enterprise governance requirements.
• Marketing and lead generation: You’ll need to work with marketing to improve conversion rates and reach revenue goals. The marketing team can help create landing pages and use other marketing channels alongside your SEO strategy.

These are just a few ways that marketing and IT can work together to help SEO teams reach their goals.

Many companies, including Fortune 500s, roll SEO experts into their digital marketing division, which is part of the bigger marketing team overall.

But is SEO strictly marketing or does it go much deeper?

Should SEO Fall Under Marketing or IT and Engineering?

SEO experts are an interesting part of marketing teams because we’re not full-blown marketers.

As SEO experts, we don’t purchase billboard ads or ad space on television, so we’re more of a segment of marketing.

Generally, we’re not:

• Developers.
• Network specialists.
• Architects.

Instead, we work closely with IT departments, engineers, developers, and others to reach our goals on the enterprise level.

We may also work closely with these stakeholders when:

• Optimizing code structure.
• Trying to add specific functionality to a site.
• Working through complex errors.
• Trying to boost site speed.
• Wanting to add caching to a site or database.

When dealing with massive websites with thousands of pages, tens of thousands of visitors, and a massive team behind its operation, it’s important to report both to engineers and marketing teams.

Working closely together with multiple internal units is the easiest, most cost-effective means of reaching your goals.

So, while an SEO expert is a segment of the marketing team, it’s vital to work with multiple teams at the same time to align goals and execution plans.

How to Get IT, Developers, and Marketers Onboard With SEO

IT developers, architects, and marketing teams need to get on board with your SEO strategies to reach your goals.

If one of these stakeholders is out-of-the-loop or not on board, it can make hitting search engine optimization targets much more difficult.

To get everyone on board with website architecture and SEO, you can:

Create and Nurture Relationships

Relationships matter.

It’s important to befriend people in all areas of the business, including IT, marketing, and development.

Hold meetings with them and Zoom calls to better understand what these individuals do and how you can work together.

Learn From Each Other

You and the teams around you have limitations.

Learn from each other, share goals (more on that below) and see if there are recommendations that you can give each other to reach your goals.

Create Collateral Goals

Collateral objectives and goals help bring people together.

When you create like-minded goals, you’ll be more likely to work together and reach your objectives.

Share information openly about what you hope to achieve so all stakeholders understand why certain actions are being undertaken.

Share Achievements

Did a server optimization or a developer change help you improve rankings? Share these achievements together.

Thank the team, explain how they were integral in making the achievement occur, and continue sharing the praise going forward.

Advocate for and evangelize SEO in your organization, making it clear how integral the collaboration of marketing and IT is to its success.

Present Ideas Differently

When presenting ideas to an architect/engineer or a marketing manager, you need to explain your thoughts clearly and in a way that everyone understands.

You might not understand the intricacies of server optimization, so don’t assume that these stakeholders will grasp your ideas.

Presenting these ideas in the right way helps bring team members on board.

Educate

When working with architects/engineers/developers, be sure to explain why each portion of visual code is essential in SEO.

When you educate, you’re helping these stakeholders understand the “why” behind the changes you recommend.

Conclusion

When everyone is on board, there’s cohesion among teams that brings enterprise architects and SEO together faster and much more efficiently.

In addition, working with teams and building a deep understanding of each other’s goals will make it easier for all teams to reach their objectives – and those of the business as a whole.

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