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What’s in it for you?

Stronger client relationships and far less chances of them moaning
Greater job satisfaction, knowing what you’re doing is having an impact
Less stress as you know exactly what you need to do and when
No AMs or other colleagues chasing you or having a moan
Happier clients > more revenue for the agency > bonuses and salary increases

So please pay attention. It’s only 30 minutes.

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Step 0

Understanding the client and market

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Key things you need to know about your clients

Good understanding of what the client does and how they operate (even for SaaS!)
Their overall business objectives
Their audience and pain points (this needs to play a huge part, especially when it comes to content)
What does a conversion look like to them, including offline
What are their key products/services/brands
Are they targeting other countries aside from the UK?
What makes them distinct in the marketplace
What CMS they use and who built the site
Development and content writing capabilities
Who the client thinks their competitors are

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To create a winning strategy you need to

start thinking like a marketer, not just an SEO.

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How to uncover this information

Check your competitors
Check the industry
SPEAK TO THE CLIENT to fill the gaps

Search engines are like librarians.

They are the keepers of all knowledge and they help you find the best answer to your query.

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Step 1

Identifying opportunities

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How to gather keyword ideas

Google search console data

Competitor keyword gap

Paid keywords

Good old keyword research

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Additional things to keep an eye out for

Seasonality

Depending on the client, you may come across highly seasonal terms. For some clients this will be obvious (e.g. garden furniture), for others not so much. Understanding broad seasonality patterns will first and foremost help you put together a more accurate strategy but it will also help come reporting time.

Google trends

As well as helping you with seasonality, Google trends can help you identify searches that are on the rise, false positives (terms that have spiked in interest but only temporarily) and find even more new keyword ideas (the “related queries” bit).

Branded terms

Although non branded terms are our key focus, doing some digging into branded keywords can be helpful too. Is the brand on the rise or in decline? What product/service do customers most often associate with the brand?

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Being organised at this stage is EVERYTHING.

Always remove irrelevant keywords from your sheets and ensure that you group your keywords by product/service/topic - it will save you a lot of hassle later down the line.

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A note on competitors

Never, ever, ever trust the competitor list provided by the client alone. A lot of the time who they consider their competitors are not their organic competitors.

Do your own research.

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Step 2

Narrow down your keyword set and benchmark performance

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Things that you need to consider before selecting your keywords

Does this keyword closely describe what the client does?
What are you trying to achieve by targeting this keyword?
How does this keyword contribute to the business objective?
Is this keyword going to make the client money?
What’s the competition looking like? Can you realistically rank for that keyword or are there more niche options you can go after?
Can we/the client create content that will enable us to rank for that keyword (e.g. if all ranking pages include video/in depth photography)?

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Mapping your keywords

Mapping keywords to their most relevant pages (or identifying where a new page may be needed) will enable you to:

Optimise pages for the most relevant keywords
Prevent keyword cannibalisation
Identify and fill content gaps on the site

We do this well when it comes to new websites, but currently we do not have this map for all retained clients.

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Once you’ve selected your keywords, set them up in SEO Monitor* as a proper campaign and ensure these are split into groups (product, service, etc.).

This will improve your reporting and give you better visibility of what’s working and what isn’t.

* or the tool you use to track keywords

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Step 3

Understand what areas you need to focus on

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You can’t put together an SEO strategy if you haven’t assessed the situation first.

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At a bare minimum, for each client we need:

Technical audit
Internal link analysis
Content audit
Competitor analysis
Link analysis and intersect
SERP and intent analysis

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Always remember that if the technical foundations are not in place, any other type of activity is very unlikely to bring huge results.

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Is it technical issues?

Is it lack of relevant content?

Is it a very poor experience?

Is it links?

Is it a mix of different things?

🤷🏻‍♀️

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What’s stopping the website from ranking well?

Do not jump into tactics before having a clear understanding of what the website needs.

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Step 4

Create your roadmap and clear objectives

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Creating a 3 month roadmap

Benefits of using a roadmap:

You know what you need to work on and won’t get sidetracked working on things that provide no results
The client knows what you’re working on - no more stress
Clear deadlines for everyone
It makes reporting on what you’ve done a doddle
It makes planning stuff out in Forecast a doddle

Share with client

for full transparency

Plan work out

based on impact, effort and available budget

Issues backlog

(aka everything you

need to work on)

Every 3 months

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Every SEO strategy needs KPIs

Benefits of using KPIs

You can clearly measure if what you’re doing is working
Maintain accountability
Client has clarity of what you’re working towards and what to expect
Improve decision making
Align strategy with objectives
HoD, pod leads or Cat can support with forecasting

Using SMART KPIs:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time bound

Increase traffic coming from keywords in strategy by 20%

by Decemeber 2023

Increase organic conversions by 10%

by July 2024

Increase traffic coming from branded keywords by 10% by March 2024

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Step 5

Performance tracking and reporting

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Performance tracking

Don’t go into autopilot with reports every month
Spend time analysing the data (full training sesh coming up on this!)
Have checkpoints throughout the month to quickly assess rankings, traffic and conversions (bonus points if you spot something good and share with client there and then)
Track performance against the KPIs you set up
Don’t waste time on something that isn’t working. Give things time to settle but don’t be afraid to tweak the strategy if needed

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What makes a good SEO report?

You talk about how much money you’re making them
You talk about SEO results in a way that links them back to their business objectives
You tell them things that they can’t easily find out themselves (avoid blurry screenshots from tools)
If things are looking bad, why are they bad and what will you be doing to fix it? Everything needs to fill the client with confidence
The client leaves the meeting with a clear understanding of what you did last month and what you’re planning to do this month and why

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In a nutshell, organic visibility means 💩.

Start talking 💰 and clients will love you 4eva.

And it all starts with your SEO strategy.

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