SEO has been around for so many years. Some love it, some don’t, however no one should ignore it. SEO idea is a simple one – a large number of people use Google to find information and having a prominent presence in search results will lead to an increase in site visits from people who are actively looking for products, services and information you offer. With so much noise on the Internet – this is a unique situation where potential customers tell you what and when they need. Financial services is a great example, as nobody searches ‘car insurance’ just for fun.

The Challenges

SEO struggles with a bad reputation as some push the boundaries to make it to the top spot in Google (some with no, some temporary and some longer lasting results), often damaging the quality of information available online. There is still a large volume of spam happening in forums and blog comments which is unfortunate. Furthermore, SEO is not a quick fix solution – it requires creativity, scientific approach and TIME. With a large number of SEO experts and agencies on the market, some clients had bad experiences with no results achieved or even worsening performance after getting into SEO. SEO takes time – either good or bad (or no) results will be clear only after a few months.

Measuring SEO success is also a challenge. Rankings (position in Google for individual keywords) are important, however do not tell the whole story. SEO traffic is important, however the impact of other marketing activities on SEO is harder to measure accurately (branded vs. non-branded traffic challenge: many visitors convert on a branded keyword (e.g. your brand, your product name) after initially arriving to your site searching a non-branded keyword (e.g. product category, generic phrase). Furthermore, after the introduction of Google secure search, where Google stopped reporting on organic keywords, this is even harder to measure accurately.

Many marketing managers look at SEO the same way as on all other marketing activities – if I spend $X this month on SEO – how many SEO sales will I get this month, what’s my ROI, CPA, CPL? It’s harder for them to understand the long(er) term nature of SEO – it takes longer to see the results, but once you achieve those – they provide benefits over many months and even years (if done properly).

The Approach

Here are a few thoughts on how to improve your SEO approach to increase the chances of a long term SEO success.

1. Do NOT fully outsource your SEO…

– especially to address the off-site factors (“link building”). SEO is not a separate area of focus, it should be properly integrated into many of your activities and strategies (product development, marketing, brand, comms, web development, UX, sales and so on). The business goal of SEO is the same as that of your other business activities – to provide value to you customers, make them happy and sell more as a result. You don’t want to fully outsource this important function.

2. Consider hiring an in-house specialist or a consultant for a short term (Disclaimer: Yes, I do offer this service!)

Further to the above point, instead of fully outsourcing your SEO for 12 months (or ‘for ever’) – consider hiring a specialist / experienced consultant for 2-3 months who will help you develop sustainable SEO strategy, will integrate SEO into your other processes, will train your staff on how to do things with SEO in mind, will assist with the implementation and can provide support for the next 6-12 months, if needed. In-house person should be better in getting to know your business, relevant stakeholders, processes and as a result provide highly tailored recommendations.

Some SEO agencies are great, however consider this – many SEO specialists in agencies have agency background only – ‘they know the SEO stuff’, however they are more likely to move to a client side (and stay there) than those with client side experience moving to an agency – as a result, it is likely that your agency experts providing recommendations to you have never worked client side and may not fully understand your point of view and challenges you face daily (sign off, brand and legal limitations and challenges, priorities, politics,…).

3. Do not see SEO as a technical only area

SEO activities fall into 2 basic categories – On-Page (web content, metadata, IA, code,…) and Off-Page (your presence around the Web). On-Page Optimisation is part ‘technical’ (coding, meta WHAT?, Canonical WHAT?) and part ‘human’(web copy, navigation, UX). Off-Page stuff is mostly ‘human’. Once you fix your technical and On-Page stuff (that can be done once and reviewed after 3-6 months), the majority of your focus in SEO will be ‘human’ – great unique content, simplifying path to purchase, addressing customer needs, improving your online visibility, sharing knowledge, becoming an authority in your field, building your presence around the Web that will also help your SEO as a ‘side effect’. SEO is about building relationships, improving overall online visibility and helping you to become a leading brand / authority in your field. SEO should support this.

4. Measure your SEO performance properly

There is no one single SEO measure to accurately measure the performance, use a combination.

  • Rankings = important (provided you track the right keywords!); however the issue is that you can keep an eye only on a certain number of keywords. Around 25% of all queries in Google each month are unique! Keep a close eye on around 30-50 targeted keywords per product or product area (depending on the nature of your products – adjust up or down,…), but don’t forget that for each high volume keyword (head term) there are potentially hundreds of additional long tail keywords driving traffic to your site as you improve positions for the main keywords you monitor.
  • Search Visibility = important, rankings related. SEO visibility will give you a better feel of the improvements in Google results. The SEO Visibility provides a single number that shows your rankings in Google for multiple keywords. There are many approaches, the simplest one = record rankings in the top 30 places in Google for all keywords you monitor. The top spot gets 30 points, 2nd place 29, …. , 30th place gets 1 point. 100% visibility = all monitored keywords are in the top spot in Google (e.g. 30 keywords all in 1st spot = 900 points…). More than the absolute number or a %, the real benefit of this measure is to monitor it over time – see the trend, are you improving? To make this more accurate, you may also consider estimated search volumes for all those keywords as not all keywords are equal. Use SEO ranking software such as AWR to automate this. Always keep in mind that if you are out of the Top 5 or Top 3 places in Google, the click volume will be small…
  • SEO Traffic = important. SEO traffic is an obvious measure, however the challenge is that the SEO traffic is influenced by marketing campaigns, brand awareness, seasonality, etc. Measure and report on SEO traffic, try to overlay it with your overall marketing spend, campaign activity, seasonality data, etc. to get a clearer picture. In the past, looking at branded vs. non-branded SEO traffic was part of the solution, however, as mentioned earlier, after the secured search was introduced by Google, this is now a challenge – Google Webmaster Tools provides some data.
  • SEO Conversions = important. Another obvious measure. The issue here is similar to the above point – the impact of other campaigns, seasonality, etc. on SEO conversions. Again, looking at branded vs. non-branded conversions was (a partial) solution in past – pre SSL (secured) search. Also, visitors arriving on non-branded keywords and coming back on branded keywords (or directly) to convert. Having a holistic view of all your marketing activities, seasonality, competitor activity, etc. can help you to get a better and more accurate estimates of the SEO improvements and benefits.
  • External Links = important. Monitor changes in the volumes of your external links to better understand if your online visibility is improving. Not all of those links will directly impact your SEO performance, however improved online visibility around the web usually leads to a better brand/product awareness, so there are benefits beyond SEO. In your reporting, also see what traffic volumes are you getting from those referring sites. A link that may not help your SEO can still prove to be a significant driver of referral traffic. The improved brand/product awareness is also likely to improve your click through rate in Search results, it’s simple – if you rank 5th in Google for a keyword and I’ve never heard of you, I may not click, if I’ve seen your brand ‘somewhere on the web’ or offline before, I’m more likely to click on your result. As we all probably know, the quality/relevancy of links is more important than quantity.

5. Integrated approach for your marketing activities

There is a great benefit in looking at your various marketing activities as one, sharing the content, finding multiple uses for assets you have. Do you have a great performing banner copy? Use similar messages in your SEM and SEO Metadata. Test a broader variety of keywords in SEM and focus your SEO activities on the best converting ones. Are you sending your Press Releases to a few journalists as a PDF? Optimise and distribute it online. Are you launching a new product, new promo, etc… again, optimise and distribute those messages around the web for a better online visibility and SEO benefits. Are you signing a new business agreement? – think of any additional benefits that can improve your online visibility & SEO. Do you have a large volume of content behind a login or hidden from the world in a printed form? Optimise and share it online.

6. 80/20 Rule

As with many other activities, this rule has its place also in SEO. According to Google, there are 200+ factors/variables they consider when evaluating and ranking websites. So you should be getting 200+ recommendations to implement, right? 🙂 Most companies use SEO agencies. Many SEO agencies are doing a great job, however their objective besides improving client’s results is to have as high monthly retainer and for as long as possible – it’s understandable, they run a business, have staff, fixed costs, etc. To justify 40 hours of SEO work every month, some may provide recommendations, white papers, competitor analysis, industry insights, more white papers, Google algorithm updates, and more recommendations and more white papers, and so on.

It is true that there is no specific/official list of factors that impact SEO performance as Google algorithm is a ‘secret’ one. Experienced SEOs (and even all SEO seminars) will tell you about the importance of Links, Page Titles, Web Copy, Content Strategies, …. some will highlight page speed, canonicalisation, alt tags, H1s, ‘social signals’, sitemaps,…. –  there are so many factors, it may seem that you need to address all of those to see any results. This is false. A few targeted and tailored strategies (20%) can make a significant difference (80%) while many other (80%) may have only a small importance (20%). Ideally you would want to implement all good recommendations over time, realistically you cannot – so don’t waste 80% of your time getting 20% results.

My approach at ROKO Consulting is to focus on activities that will deliver the best outcomes for your specific business, not wasting my and your time with stuff that is not crucial for your SEO success. Each and every business/website is different and requires unique, tailored solutions. Don’t just copy what your competitors do in this space – be creative and do it better. Build on your strengths and limit your weaknesses.