The question many businesses face with bringing SEO in-house is: “Where does it fit in the business?” Much to the dismay of marketers, Bowman believes it fits better in the IT department.

An SEO that sits in IT will typically be willing to work with the marketing department. However, most IT departments are not usually as amiable to meet the marketing department’s technical requirements.

In-house SEO involves a tremendous amount of responsibility, especially with the advent of social media and local search. As a result, Bowman often recommends an in-house SEO work with an outside agency as well. An agency provides a senior level of authority that most in-house SEOs do not have. In cases such as this, the agency could act as a mentor and carry between 10-20 percent of the workload.

These great minds have come together on two projects geared toward developers. JaneandRobot.com is a site they created that discusses the fundamentals of search engine optimization from a web developer’s perspective.

The second is the O’Reilly Found Conference. With this event, Vanessa and Nathan hope to change the historical idea that search is a marketing activity since it is now just as critical to technical architecture. The target audience for the conference is designers, IT professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Most of the search conferences such as SMX and SES focus primarily on the marketing angle of search. Marketers go home and pitch all their new ideas to their IT departments who have trouble believing the changes are necessary. Vanessa and Nathan want to help bridge that communication gap and allow the marketing and the IT departments work together.

In the above WPN video, Nathan gives a couple of examples of the type of issues that will be addressed at the conference.

1.    What is the right design pattern for my website?
2.    Information regarding what you need to know to be successful using any platform.

The conference will be held in Burlingame, California, June 9-11. Nathan and Vanessa are currently accepting speaker and topic proposals and ask if you need more information to contact them.