SEO

Training & Professional Development Tips For Remote-First SEO Teams

Published

2 years ago

June 9, 2022

Training & Professional Development Tips For Remote-First SEO Teams

People management is critical to the success of your remote-first SEO team.

You may never meet in person, and many of the verbal and visual cues inherent to working in the same physical space are gone.

This is the final part of a three-part series on building your remote SEO team, whether in-house or at your own agency or freelance business.

We first examined how to structure your remote team, then explored legal implications and important communication issues remote SEO teams face.

Now, you’ll learn how to structure your remote SEO training and development program and find helpful tips for onboarding, team building, mentoring, work-life balance, and more.

Building A Success Remote SEO Team Culture

The most important consideration when building a fully remote SEO team is how each member is thriving within the team.

Help Members Feel Settled

You can help your team perform well individually in several ways.

First, we should look at helping each member feel settled in the role.

Onboarding

Joining a team is daunting. Walking into the office for the first time can be overwhelming.

Joining a remote-only team is similarly nerve-wracking.

The only thing that will change for some team members between the Friday at their last job and their first Monday with you is the laptop on their desk.

For others, it may be the first time in a remote role.

Onboarding colleagues is crucial for setting them up for success.

There are many ways to help your new team member feel settled, but in those first few weeks, you should consider:

Offering (not mandating!) a catch-up before they start once they have accepted the role to meet you again as their line manager so they can ask any questions and get to know you.
Creating a structured first week and sharing the plan with them before they join so they know what is expected of them and the hours they will be needed for their first few days.
Sending over any equipment before they join to set up in time for their first day.
Sending them information about their colleagues, even if it’s just names and their job titles, to get familiar before they join.
Do not use this as an excuse to get them to start working for you before they have officially joined the company. Anything you send should be for their benefit and not yours. This is not an opportunity to get their “thoughts” on a client pitch or take a “quick look” at an audit.

Team Building

You might be building a team from scratch or inheriting and growing a team.

If it’s the former, the members may not be familiar with working together. You will need to spend time up-front helping the team become efficient.

This may mean scheduling “ways of working” discussions and “getting to know you” sessions upfront.

If your team has been working together for a while, and you’re the new one on the team, take the opportunity to learn their current cadence of things like meetings and retros, and find out what’s already working well.

Helping your team gel together remotely doesn’t always require a lot of face-to-face time.

It goes beyond organizing a few virtual escape rooms or drinks over Zoom after work.

Look at the personalities and skillsets within your team.

Where are they working well together?

Where are they not?

Assess the weaker points in their teamwork and create a plan to address them.

For example, it may be that they all have very disparate ways of approaching common SEO tasks.

This might be an issue when handing overwork or working together on a project.

Getting the team to discuss their approaches and agree on a standard output would be one way of facing this challenge.

Team building can be part social, part operations-focused.

But do not make the mistake of thinking weekly virtual quizzes will solve these challenges.

Regular Check-ins

A crucial part of your role in leading a remote SEO team is making sure you are checking in with your team members regularly.

You will need to assess their happiness, productivity, and how you can help remove obstacles to either.

You will know from your own experiences that there is a fine line between being a supportive manager and an overbearing one.

It is worth discussing with each team member how they work best.

Would a weekly 15-minute chat reviewing what they are working on that week help?

Would they prefer to keep you updated with an email each week and a more in-depth face-to-face review once a month?

Whatever you decide on, make sure you keep it in the diary.

Your team needs an opportunity to voice any concerns or wins.

You also need regular touchpoints to see what support you should be giving.

One significant difference between an in-office and remote role is that it is a lot easier to miss the signs that your colleagues are struggling.

These regular check-ins go some way to addressing that.

Training & Professional Development Tips

High-profile digital marketing agencies have recently commented how they would never want to go remote-first.

The comments centered on the need for junior staff to be around more experienced staff to grow and learn.

Remote-first SEO teams simply don’t have this set-up.

That’s not to say that the opportunity to learn from more experienced colleagues isn’t there. It’s just not going to be through overhearing a conversation from across the desk.

Training must be more thoughtfully considered and planned with remote teams.

Guides And Mentors

A great way to make sure your new team member feels welcomed and settled onto the team is by assigning them a “guide.”

This is someone, not their line manager, to who they can ask questions.

This way, they have a point of contact where they can find out information about the company, logins, and the history of SEO on the websites without worrying they are bothering the wrong people or looking silly in front of their manager.

This is particularly important for remote roles where it isn’t possible for a new colleague to just ask a question of someone who is passing by.

A mentor can be particularly helpful for junior team members.

Their role is to help with training and development needs.

As a line manager, you will likely have helped identify skills gaps.

The mentor can be someone who has a strength in those skills and can be a sounding board, or signpost, for your team member.

For example, if your new junior SEO wants to learn more about technical SEO, you can pair them up with your senior tech SEO, and they can arrange one-to-one training or coaching.

Team Workshops

Getting the whole SEO team together for regular workshops can aid in both building team support and sharing knowledge.

A workshop can be as simple as looking over recent developments in the SEO industry together, like Google Analytics 4, or working on a problem such as a Javascript rendering issue.

By coming together as a team, you have the opportunity to learn from each other and build a culture of solving problems together.

Knowledge Shares

Similar to team workshops, knowledge shares will build a culture of looking to colleagues for help rather than going it alone.

Knowledge shares can be sessions once a week, or month, where the whole team talks about developments in the SEO industry, such as sharing a recently read article or conference notes.

Group Conference Trips

Bringing the whole team together to attend an in-person, or virtual conference can help with upskilling and team building.

Remember to make sure it’s accessible for everyone.

Virtual might be the better way to go if your team is spread across a large geography.

Pooling Training Budgets

You might like to encourage your team to share any training budgets they are afforded.

Pooling together their budget might allow them to hire a specific trainer or coach.

It could give them access to a resource portal or back-catalog of videos from a conference.

By sharing their budget, they will have a unified development opportunity to talk about as a group and increase the scope of what they can afford.

Internal Seminars

You may want to empower your team to give their own training sessions.

Chances are you have hired team members with strengths in certain areas where others are lacking.

If they are up for sharing that knowledge, you can suggest a training seminar.

Alternatively, you may have identified other people in the business to share their knowledge on a certain topic, for example, a developer running through the latest Javascript framework for the new website.

Respect Why People Have Chosen Remote Working

There are many reasons your team may have chosen to work fully remote.

It is a good idea to find out why they’ve chosen remote work and make sure you are helping them get the most out of the opportunity.

Outside Of Work Commitments

Many of us chose to work remotely because of our commitments outside of work.

Working remotely reduces the need for a lengthy commute and keeps us closer to our homes, hobbies, and families.

Be mindful that just because a team member is already at home and does not need to rush off to beat the traffic doesn’t mean they don’t need to clock out on time each evening.

Those outside-of-work commitments might be during lunch breaks or before work starts.

Your team working from home does not give you access 24 hours a day.

Their work hours are when you should expect them to work.

Child And Elder Care

Some of these out-of-work commitments might well be looking after family members.

Be prepared for kids on video calls and parents walking past your colleague’s desk as they’re talking to you.

Your team’s offices are in their homes.

It is unreasonable for us to expect other people in those homes to work to our company’s schedule.

It is reasonable for you to expect your team to keep distractions to a minimum where possible.

However, likely, family members popping on screen or an emergency trip to the doctor likely causes your colleague far more stress than the company.

Help to normalize a healthy work/life balance.

Let your team know that it is OK to prioritize family when emergencies happen.

Flexibility And Work/Life Balance

Another reason employees choose to work fully remote is the flexibility that it brings them.

There is the freedom to pick the kids up from school or take the dog for a walk.

It is important to realize that if this flexibility is a core driver for your team member working from home, frequent infringement on that might be why they look for another role.

Make sure you and your team understand what is required of them in terms of working hours, and don’t be the one to break that agreement.

Conferences And Meet-ups

If work-life balance, commitments outside of work, and the desire for a short commute motivate your remote team, be very careful not to over-index on meet-ups and in-person conferences.

Remote first businesses often want to gather their team together once or twice a year for face-to-face meet-ups with a view to team building.

This might already be the limit of what your team can commit to.

Consider the additional toll it takes on employees.

You may not be aware of the additional steps they need to take to be present at the in-person events; for example, the single parent arranging childcare during their time away.

The extra effort of staying overnight in an unfamiliar place can be for someone with health conditions.

The desire to not be away from family members.

Be prepared not to expect too much in-person attendance from your fully-remote team.

Remoteness Of Home

Finally, another consideration you should make around why your team might choose to work remotely is their home location.

Some people don’t live near major cities or transport links.

For them, working remotely opens up SEO jobs that would otherwise be physically out of reach.

If you expect them to travel to clients’ premises or a social event, keep this in mind.

Making Sure Remote Is Right

When building your remote-first SEO team, a key consideration is finding candidates suited to remote roles.

The pandemic has led to some people working remotely for the first time.

They may now never want to go back to in-person alternatives.

For others, this might be their first experience working fully from home.

Part of your interview process might include exploring how comfortable they feel with a remote-only role.

Does the candidate appreciate the loneliness or change in the work environment that a fully remote role brings?

Conclusion

However you choose to build your remote SEO team, there are a lot of benefits to doing so.

Being remote-only opens up the possibility of increased diversity in your team.

Your team may include people from across the world, not just in the city where old offices were based.

Embrace that opportunity to build out a diverse and accommodating team.

Your team may experience a greater level of freedom as a remote team.

Make sure they are comfortable with that and understand the boundaries you’ll need to work within.

ICYMI – be sure to read How To Build A Remote Team For SEO: Planning & Structure and Legal Considerations & Communication Tips For Your Remote SEO Team for more on setting your remote SEO team up for success.

More resources:

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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SEO

Client-Side Vs. Server-Side Rendering

Published

19 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Max

Faster webpage loading times play a big part in user experience and SEO, with page load speed a key determining factor for Google’s algorithm.

A front-end web developer must decide the best way to render a website so it delivers a fast experience and dynamic content.

Two popular rendering methods include client-side rendering (CSR) and server-side rendering (SSR).

All websites have different requirements, so understanding the difference between client-side and server-side rendering can help you render your website to match your business goals.

Google & JavaScript

Google has extensive documentation on how it handles JavaScript, and Googlers offer insights and answer JavaScript questions regularly through various formats – both official and unofficial.

For example, in a Search Off The Record podcast, it was discussed that Google renders all pages for Search, including JavaScript-heavy ones.

This sparked a substantial conversation on LinkedIn, and another couple of takeaways from both the podcast and proceeding discussions are that:

Google doesn’t track how expensive it is to render specific pages.
Google renders all pages to see content – regardless if it uses JavaScript or not.

The conversation as a whole has helped to dispel many myths and misconceptions about how Google might have approached JavaScript and allocated resources.

Martin Splitt’s full comment on LinkedIn covering this was:

“We don’t keep track of “how expensive was this page for us?” or something. We know that a substantial part of the web uses JavaScript to add, remove, change content on web pages. We just have to render, to see it all. It doesn’t really matter if a page does or does not use JavaScript, because we can only be reasonably sure to see all content once it’s rendered.”

Martin also confirmed a queue and potential delay between crawling and indexing, but not just because something is JavaScript or not, and it’s not an “opaque” issue that the presence of JavaScript is the root cause of URLs not being indexed.

General JavaScript Best Practices

Before we get into the client-side versus server-side debate, it’s important that we also follow general best practices for either of these approaches to work:

Don’t block JavaScript resources through Robots.txt or server rules.
Avoid render blocking.
Avoid injecting JavaScript in the DOM.

What Is Client-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?

Client-side rendering is a relatively new approach to rendering websites.

It became popular when JavaScript libraries started integrating it, with Angular and React.js being some of the best examples of libraries used in this type of rendering.

It works by rendering a website’s JavaScript in your browser rather than on the server.

The server responds with a bare-bones HTML document containing the JS files instead of getting all the content from the HTML document.

While the initial upload time is a bit slow, the subsequent page loads will be rapid as they aren’t reliant on a different HTML page per route.

From managing logic to retrieving data from an API, client-rendered sites do everything “independently.” The page is available after the code is executed because every page the user visits and its corresponding URL are created dynamically.

The CSR process is as follows:

The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
A data request is sent to the server at the specified URL.
On the client’s first request for the site, the server delivers the static files (CSS and HTML) to the client’s browser.
The client browser will download the HTML content first, followed by JavaScript. These HTML files connect the JavaScript, starting the loading process by displaying loading symbols the developer defines to the user. At this stage, the website is still not visible to the user.
After the JavaScript is downloaded, content is dynamically generated on the client’s browser.
The web content becomes visible as the client navigates and interacts with the website.

What Is Server-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?

Server-side rendering is the more common technique for displaying information on a screen.

The web browser submits a request for information from the server, fetching user-specific data to populate and sending a fully rendered HTML page to the client.

Every time the user visits a new page on the site, the server will repeat the entire process.

Here’s how the SSR process goes step-by-step:

The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
The server serves a ready-to-be-rendered HTML response to the browser.
The browser renders the page (now viewable) and downloads JavaScript.
The browser executes React, thus making the page interactable.

What Are The Differences Between Client-Side And Server-Side Rendering?

The main difference between these two rendering approaches is in the algorithms of their operation. CSR shows an empty page before loading, while SSR displays a fully-rendered HTML page on the first load.

This gives server-side rendering a speed advantage over client-side rendering, as the browser doesn’t need to process large JavaScript files. Content is often visible within a couple of milliseconds.

Search engines can crawl the site for better SEO, making it easy to index your webpages. This readability in the form of text is precisely the way SSR sites appear in the browser.

However, client-side rendering is a cheaper option for website owners.

It relieves the load on your servers, passing the responsibility of rendering to the client (the bot or user trying to view your page). It also offers rich site interactions by providing fast website interaction after the initial load.

Fewer HTTP requests are made to the server with CSR, unlike in SSR, where each page is rendered from scratch, resulting in a slower transition between pages.

SSR can also buckle under a high server load if the server receives many simultaneous requests from different users.

The drawback of CSR is the longer initial loading time. This can impact SEO; crawlers might not wait for the content to load and exit the site.

This two-phased approach raises the possibility of seeing empty content on your page by missing JavaScript content after first crawling and indexing the HTML of a page. Remember that, in most cases, CSR requires an external library.

When To Use Server-Side Rendering

If you want to improve your Google visibility and rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs), server-side rendering is the number one choice.

E-learning websites, online marketplaces, and applications with a straightforward user interface with fewer pages, features, and dynamic data all benefit from this type of rendering.

When To Use Client-Side Rendering

Client-side rendering is usually paired with dynamic web apps like social networks or online messengers. This is because these apps’ information constantly changes and must deal with large and dynamic data to perform fast updates to meet user demand.

The focus here is on a rich site with many users, prioritizing the user experience over SEO.

Which Is Better: Server-Side Or Client-Side Rendering?

When determining which approach is best, you need to not only take into consideration your SEO needs but also how the website works for users and delivers value.

Think about your project and how your chosen rendering will impact your position in the SERPs and your website’s user experience.

Generally, CSR is better for dynamic websites, while SSR is best suited for static websites.

Content Refresh Frequency

Websites that feature highly dynamic information, such as gambling or FOREX websites, update their content every second, meaning you’d likely choose CSR over SSR in this scenario – or choose to use CSR for specific landing pages and not all pages, depending on your user acquisition strategy.

SSR is more effective if your site’s content doesn’t require much user interaction. It positively influences accessibility, page load times, SEO, and social media support.

On the other hand, CSR is excellent for providing cost-effective rendering for web applications, and it’s easier to build and maintain; it’s better for First Input Delay (FID).

Another CSR consideration is that meta tags (description, title), canonical URLs, and Hreflang tags should be rendered server-side or presented in the initial HTML response for the crawlers to identify them as soon as possible, and not only appear in the rendered HTML.

Platform Considerations

CSR technology tends to be more expensive to maintain because the hourly rate for developers skilled in React.js or Node.js is generally higher than that for PHP or WordPress developers.

Additionally, there are fewer ready-made plugins or out-of-the-box solutions available for CSR frameworks compared to the larger plugin ecosystem that WordPress users have access too.

For those considering a headless WordPress setup, such as using Frontity, it’s important to note that you’ll need to hire both React.js developers and PHP developers.

This is because headless WordPress relies on React.js for the front end while still requiring PHP for the back end.

It’s important to remember that not all WordPress plugins are compatible with headless setups, which could limit functionality or require additional custom development.

Website Functionality & Purpose

Sometimes, you don’t have to choose between the two as hybrid solutions are available. Both SSR and CSR can be implemented within a single website or webpage.

For example, in an online marketplace, pages with product descriptions can be rendered on the server, as they are static and need to be easily indexed by search engines.

Staying with ecommerce, if you have high levels of personalization for users on a number of pages, you won’t be able to SSR render the content for bots, so you will need to define some form of default content for Googlebot which crawls cookieless and stateless.

Pages like user accounts don’t need to be ranked in the search engine results pages (SERPs), so a CRS approach might be better for UX.

Both CSR and SSR are popular approaches to rendering websites. You and your team need to make this decision at the initial stage of product development.

More resources:

Featured Image: TippaPatt/Shutterstock

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SEO

HubSpot Rolls Out AI-Powered Marketing Tools

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2024

Max

HubSpot Rolls Out AI-Powered Marketing Tools

HubSpot announced a push into AI this week at its annual Inbound marketing conference, launching “Breeze.”

Breeze is an artificial intelligence layer integrated across the company’s marketing, sales, and customer service software.

According to HubSpot, the goal is to provide marketers with easier, faster, and more unified solutions as digital channels become oversaturated.

Karen Ng, VP of Product at HubSpot, tells Search Engine Journal in an interview:

“We’re trying to create really powerful tools for marketers to rise above the noise that’s happening now with a lot of this AI-generated content. We might help you generate titles or a blog content…but we do expect kind of a human there to be a co-assist in that.”

Breeze AI Covers Copilot, Workflow Agents, Data Enrichment

The Breeze layer includes three main components.

Breeze Copilot

An AI assistant that provides personalized recommendations and suggestions based on data in HubSpot’s CRM.

Ng explained:

“It’s a chat-based AI companion that assists with tasks everywhere – in HubSpot, the browser, and mobile.”

Breeze Agents

A set of four agents that can automate entire workflows like content generation, social media campaigns, prospecting, and customer support without human input.

Ng added the following context:

“Agents allow you to automate a lot of those workflows. But it’s still, you know, we might generate for you a content backlog. But taking a look at that content backlog, and knowing what you publish is still a really important key of it right now.”

Breeze Intelligence

Combines HubSpot customer data with third-party sources to build richer profiles.

Ng stated:

“It’s really important that we’re bringing together data that can be trusted. We know your AI is really only as good as the data that it’s actually trained on.”

Addressing AI Content Quality

While prioritizing AI-driven productivity, Ng acknowledged the need for human oversight of AI content:

“We really do need eyes on it still…We think of that content generation as still human-assisted.”

Marketing Hub Updates

Beyond Breeze, HubSpot is updating Marketing Hub with tools like:

Content Remix to repurpose videos into clips, audio, blogs, and more.
AI video creation via integration with HeyGen
YouTube and Instagram Reels publishing
Improved marketing analytics and attribution

The announcements signal HubSpot’s AI-driven vision for unifying customer data.

But as Ng tells us, “We definitely think a lot about the data sources…and then also understand your business.”

HubSpot’s updates are rolling out now, with some in public beta.

Featured Image: Poetra.RH/Shutterstock

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SEO

Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2024

Max

Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]

Brands are seeing success driving quality pipeline and revenue growth. It’s all about building an intentional customer journey, aligning sales + marketing, plus measuring ROI.

Check out this executive panel on-demand, as we show you how we do it.

With Ryann Hogan, senior demand generation manager at CallRail, and our very own Heather Campbell and Jessica Cromwell, we chatted about driving demand, lead gen, revenue, and proper attribution.

This B2B leadership forum provided insights you can use in your strategy tomorrow, like:

The importance of the customer journey, and the keys to matching content to your ideal personas.
How to align marketing and sales efforts to guide leads through an effective journey to conversion.
Methods to measure ROI and determine if your strategies are delivering results.

While the case study is SaaS, these strategies are for any brand.

Watch on-demand and be part of the conversation.

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

Navigating SERP Complexity: How to Leverage Search Intent for SEO

Join us live as we break down all of these complexities and reveal how to identify valuable opportunities in your space. We’ll show you how to tap into the searcher’s motivation behind each query (and how Google responds to it in kind).

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