I am the only one at my company responsible for SEO

[joebuilder]

This includes onpage, blogging, social media, link building, content creation, reporting, etc Etc ETC!!! The company I work for has about 100 employess and we are an eCommerce company.  I have recently taken over all the SEO duties, as the person before me left. In the past we relied heavily on link building but that seems to be losing steam with Panda and Penguin.  Is it even possible in this day in age for one person to keep a company afloat in the competitve SEO world?  If so, what should I devote most my time to?

[joebuilder]

How do you feel about guest bloggin?  Our site has a blog but all blog entries are written by me.  It can be difficult to find something new to write about ont he same topic everyday.  Also it takes an hour or two to write worthy content.  Just spewing something out to get new content is not worth it.  I want to allow guest blogging.  This will create more time for me to focus onother SEO tasks and broader blog topics.  The carrot for guest blogging would be a link to the guest bloggers site. However, it is believed by the powers that be at the company that we never want any outbound links.  Once we have them on our site we want them to stay here.

[joebuilder]

What is the easiest most efficient way to transfer from relying soley on backlinks to a content strategy?  I don't want to completely kill off the backlinking we do now because I don't want to take a risk of a serious SEO drop. Although, we need to do it quickly as we have been hit by Penguin and Panda.

[danatanseo]

EGOL is sopt on. You will find the other hat you need to wear is that of "diplomat."

[danatanseo]

Yes and no EGOL. Their sales tanked, but they still rank really well for some terms for which we are competing against them. I think it's only a matter of time.

[VentaMarketing]

Great additions here. Internal training, awareness, and participation are key.

Thanks for the reply.

[EGOL]

if you are going to tackle this alone, I would try to leverage as many resources internal as possible

I like this....   it means go to the boss and get a mandate to delegate parts of the SEO job to people in related positions. 

Honest...  It means that you have to train the people who do product descriptions to write the title tags, train the IT folks to keep the site running right, train the sales people to get customers linking back, train the buyers to get suppliers linking back... you got the idea?

Get customer relations to write content, marketing people to write content, product experts to write content, get the CEO to write regular blog posts, find customers who love you who will allow you use their letters.

[EGOL]

Hey Dana... did the site of the first company tank yet?

[danatanseo]

The short answer is, yes, you can do it. It's not easy, but it can be done. I was once the lone SEO for a company of about 100 and I left. They were relying heavily on link-building (via blog networks) and I fundamentally disagreed with their approach (the basically set up fake blog networks all over the place and piled them high with links and over-optimized anchor text.

I am now the lone-SEO at one of their competitors and encouraged to engage in white hat SEO. If you are on your own, the best place for you to keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO is right here at SEOMoz and I'd also follow the guys at Distilled, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, the good folks at Search Engine Journal and if at all possible, attend MozCon in Seattle this summer. It will be worth every penny your company spends to send you.

Good luck Jean-Pierre. Just remember to prioritize stuff. Know what's going to have the biggest impact on your company's business goals and go after that and be able to prove your results. Then hang out here when you get stuck or just need a pat on the back

Dana

[VentaMarketing]

It will be very difficult for one person to serve all of your company's SEO needs.

However, if you are going to tackle this alone, I would try to leverage as many resources internally as possible. I would make sure you are allowed to stay in constant communication with all departments, especially marketing and website development. Also, I would make sure that they are aware that you need to be in the loop to what their departments are doing.

If you website is up to speed with most of the on-page criteria, I would focus my efforts on link building and content creation. The marketing department will have some great assets and resources that you can use to build great links. Also, if y'all work together, you may get them to understand how press and events are great link building tools, which will help your efforts.

I would also make sure that you are involved in all changes/update to the website to make sure all things are done with search engines in mind.