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Agile SEO: Building a Continuous Improvement Machine for SEO

Tory Gray @GrayDotCo

#Empower2021

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Why SEO?

Compound Interest�

Simple Interest

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Dominate with an SEO Moat

Foundation/Ross Simmonds: https://bit.ly/3eGB8e2

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Continuous Improvement Machine for SEO

IS NOT

IS

A tool (e.g. Yoast) you can “set and forget”
Spammy text “An SEO walks into a bar, pub…”
For Google
Growth hacking
A silo

Strategic
Relative to your online competitors (SEO is a race!)
Ongoing time & effort that you measure and improve

A framework for data-driven, iterative growth.

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Ideally, you’ll learn...

What’s Needed to Launch�a SEO Program (and �What’s Not Needed)

A Process for Improving SEO Results in an Agile Fashion

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Where to start...

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Keyword Strategy for Core Landing Pages

Use good tools, data to learn what users are seeking
Pick keywords that are accurate, brand-aligned, and have opportunity
Organize keywords/pages by their “intent” (map them in a Matrix)
Craft metadata and onpage copy for these pages with this data set in mind

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Templates: https://thegray.company/empower

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Strategic Content

What subjects/keywords have you not already covered?

Different content for different personas
Review pain points
Target the various customer funnel stages (TOFU head terms vs. BOFU longtail ones)
Create How Tos, FAQs, documentation & case studies
Thought leadership/perspective pieces�

Focus on:

Where you provide unique value (UVPs), or you can fill a market gap
Experimentation & strategic bets
Building comprehensive context & authority for your subject matter�

Publish stuff you are proud of

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Define strategic content *typically a blog; doesn’t have to be

Just worked on what your business *is* prior, so now work on related subject matters

Maybe that’s:

Content for different personas
Top of funnel brand awareness content vs a long tail “ready to buy” term
Thought leadership where you share you unique perspective OR do a hot take that presses some buttons

Ideally focus on:

Identify gaps in what users are seeking in the marketplace that your competitors aren’t addressing (keywords, or new angles. Cover the why instead of the how. Bring something NEW to the table.
ESC: see what competitors are ranking for, start with those keywords, and figure out how to do it… better
Experiment, and explore options.
Place some bets and see how it pans out
Build quality content and gain context - with search engines, and users

Bottom line: Publish what you are proud of, and keep it up

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Best Practices

There IS a place for best practices�
It’s a place to start and improve upon over time

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Rinse & Repeat

Execute, execute, execute.�
Collect data & evaluate the results.�
Refine your process. Work out the kinks.

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Watch your SEO funnel & KPIs

SEO is slowest at the beginning, so watch for leading indicators to ensure things are moving in the right direction:

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What this is NOT

Bias�for

Action

Move Fast

and

Break Things

6 Months of Strategy + No Action

NO

You might notice… this doesn’t involve a giant strategy project.

That’s purposeful!

Too many times I see smart teams planning, planning, planning… with nothing live on the site to show for it.

Takes TIME to grow, and develop context/authority.

So get the engine started, then shift gears and work on the bigger strategy.

Typically you can transition here after 3-6 months.

Don’t be thoughtless - don’t break things!

Do develop a bias for action

Collect data, refine your process. Use that insight to inform your strategy.

*Quick caveat - if you have a member of your team that can throw together an epic strategy in a week, or you can afford to pay a vendor to get it done in a month - by all means, do so. The smarter you can be - while still being fast - the better.

Most early stage companies don’t have this luxury, unfortunately.��The key here is the time- don’t wait 6 months to be somewhat smarter.

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Next level...

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Your SEO Strategy Inputs

Defined Business Goals

TAM/Keyword Universe

Data & Results

Competitive Audits

Website Audits

Stakeholders

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Defined, Prioritized Business Objectives

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Define Opportunity: Keyword Universe/TAM

What is your “Digital” Total Addressable Market?

How frequently is your target subject matter searched for, and clicked on?
How much traffic, and revenue, could that translate to?

What do you stand to gain?
What do you stand to lose - if a competitor captures this instead of you?

Next we define the opportunity.

Answer: Can we achieve these objectives, or impact them via organic search... today.

Define your brand’s “universe”- use keyword research tools & competitive data to find all the keywords covering everything out there that’s related to your brand, directly and indirectly.

Once you know these keywords, calculate:

How often are those searched for? And clicked on?
How much traffic & revenue could that translate to?
Just what is the opportunity, and the opportunity cost, of these queries?

This is your digital TAM.

Some of your businesses will be for new industries, solving problems that users might not know they have, or maybe they know they have it, but you solve it in a new way.

The SEO Play for these scenarios is different (where & how much to invest, and when) so this data is critical.

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Competition Analysis: Current & Investment

Current:

Audit your competitor’s site(s.) What are they doing better (and worse) than you?

Investment:

How many butts do they have in critical seats, and where are they hiring?
What are they building? (tools, content, features)
Did they just raise money?
What results/revenue does that drive for them?

Templates: https://thegray.company/empower

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(Own) Site Analysis: What to Evaluate

Tier I�Accessibility & Indexability

Tier II

Trade-off of �Value vs Effort

Do you let search engines “in the door”? When you do, do you allow them to index your content?

Do you make it worthwhile for a search engines to do this work?

Potential Areas / Activities

Technical SEO / Technical SEO Audit
JS Access / JS Audit
Site Architecture / IA
UX/UI & User Accessibility / Usability Testing

Potential Areas / Activities

Quality (Content Audit, On-page Audit)
Rendering (Mobility & UX/UI Issues & JS Effort Level)
Performance (Core Vitals Audit, GSC Audit)
Backlinks (Link Building Audit, Internal Linking Audit)
Added Value (E-A-T Audit, Schema Audit)
SERP Features Opportunities
Local, International, Niche Aspects

Now we come to all the classic “SEO audits”; understand where you are today.

The goals is to define known, tangible issues & opportunities

Tier 1: define accessibility * Indexability

This is Classic tech SEO
Critical; Tier 2 won’t matter without it.
That said, small sites are typically pretty simple, so you may not need to invest much in tech SEO until your site is larger & more complicated.
Caveat: SPAs and JS-heavy sites

Tier 2: value vs effort (define)

if they can get in… do they *want* to. Do you make it worth their while?
More fun or interesting audits, b/c they can help you “stand out” - Content quality, Core Vitals, Backlinks, E-A-T, adding or improving schema.
Goal: make sure you are doing *enough* to stand out, and identify new opportunities to do so even better

(check out thegray.company/empower for a Maintenance checklist - it’s got recommendations on how frequently to do which audits)

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Your Data & Results

How well is your funnel growing? Where/when are users dropping off?
How are you ranking overall, and for your target terms?

How are you doing relative to competitors for those same target terms?

Is your keyword footprint growing?
How quickly are you scaling (quality) content?
Does your content address all target personas, at all stages of the customer funnel? Where are there gaps you can fill?
Are you accomplishing your goals?

If not, why not, and what do you do about it?
If so… what’s next to con’t the amplification trend?

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… One Last Critical Addition

Consult your stakeholders, and prioritize those efforts that also support:

Brand Strategy
Content/Editorial
Email Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Sales
Customer Service
Product/Engineering
Data Science
Etc.

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Combine your inputs to create your plan

Rinse & repeat every 6-12 months (or as needed).

Pull in the latest & greatest objectives, strategies and KPIs
Latest results
Updated, timely audits
Don’t forget to CONNECT THE DOTS… what tactical work are you doing & why? What strategies and objectives does that work align to?

Templates: https://thegray.company/empower

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Keep going...

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Thank You!

Connect with us!�Site: https://thegray.company�Templates: https://thegray.company/empower

Social: @GrayDotCo

Special Thanks�@samTorresATL�@techSEOWomen