Achieving SEO Success Today: What it Takes and How To Tackle Challenges - #AhrefsEvolve

SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS
EVOLVE Achieving SEO Success Today SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS EVOLVE What it Takes and How To Tackle Challenges

EVOLVE AI OVERVIEWS CHATGPT, PERPLEXITY, AND LLMS THREAT Welcome to the “fine” state of SEO in 2024 GOOGLE DOC LEAKS GOOGLE SEARCH   UPDATES SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS EVOLVE AI ORGANIZED SERPS

EVOLVE The pace of changes and the uncertainty that comes with it is at all-time high in search

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/ It’s not only you. I actually asked about it!

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/ It has never been harder to sell SEO

EVOLVE It has also never been harder to achieve SEO goals https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/ But why? Despite the changing context,   most of the top challenges to achieve goals haven’t really changed much

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/seofomo-technical-seo-survey/ How are we going to achieve SEO goals if most SEOs only see 40-60% of recommendations implemented?

EVOLVE And way too many SEO related actions are not implemented as fast as expected either? https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/seofomo-technical-seo-survey/

EVOLVE And even when they are, there’s the uncertainty that this might end up happening with Google Updates if you’re a small site…

EVOLVE …While the biggest UGC platforms continue to gain visibility and outrank specialized sites

EVOLVE Yikes

EVOLVE There’s also the risk that this might happen to a high share of valuable queries with the continuous AIOs expansion

EVOLVE If it’s not detrimental but actually beneficial to sites’ traffic, why are we not given a way to measure AIO’s impact?

EVOLVE Please, make it make sense

EVOLVE https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/blog/google-is-still-your-biggest-traffic-referrer The thing is: Google is not (yet) going away,   it’s still the biggest traffic referrer

EVOLVE Organic search remains the dominant   source of trackable web traffic by far https://videos.brightedge.com/research-report/BrightEdge_ChannelReport2019_FINAL.pdf

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/ And despite SERP shifts, uncertainty and execution issues, most projects still achieve goals

EVOLVE https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/blog/google-is-still-your-biggest-traffic-referrer We clearly still need to better influence and communicate the value and impact of SEO to get buy-in and win (more)

EVOLVE It’s time to change how we think about the SEO problems we face to better tackle them, and maximize our SEO success

EVOLVE Let’s take a step back

EVOLVE At a high level, the SEO challenge is whether about brand or product, depending on the size

EVOLVE For smaller companies: solving the “brand” (popularity & authority) issue is the biggest one

EVOLVE For bigger companies (and sites), the “product” (execution buy-in & alignment) is the top challenge

EVOLVE In terms of SEO areas of importance,   it translates to this PRODUCT BRAND

EVOLVE But the difference in size, also impacts the type of challenges faced at the execution level PRODUCT BRAND

EVOLVE https://hub.seofomo.co/surveys/the-seofomo-seo-consulting-survey/ Product or brand challenges are also directly connected with the top reasons why SEO projects don’t achieve the expected goals BRAND PRODUCT PRODUCT PRODUCT PRODUCT BRAND

EVOLVE The sites that succeed building their brand (popularity + authority) and are still flexible and lean despite growth to optimize their product (technical) end up winning https://ahrefs.com/top/

EVOLVE But how are we in SEO going to grow the brand and optimize the product? It goes beyond the scope of what we do!

EVOLVE https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content Not really. Establishing a trusted brand with a great product search experience that Google can recognize as authoritative is what the “people first” guidelines are about

EVOLVE Google has also directly shared they want to showcase “real” brands with expertise in SERPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3M_tal884c

EVOLVE https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/es//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf Growing a brand it’s about establishing an identity, to facilitate recognition and reputation, which are used by Quality Raters to evaluate sites too

EVOLVE Haven’t we learned from the Google Doc leak? Goog tracks many signals related to brand assessment https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

EVOLVE Research now suggests the HCU might be using   the brand (nav searches) vs backlinks as a signal https://moz.com/blog/helpful-content-update-not-what-you-think

EVOLVE Also, in today’s SERPs full of features, establishing a brand people trust and has affinity for, is key to attract traffic

EVOLVE This will be even more important   in the future with AI personalized SERPs https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-lens-october-2024-updates/

EVOLVE It’s also not about replacing brand or product specialists but aligning efforts for search impact RELEVANT, EXPERIENCED &   TRUSTWORTHY CRAWLABLE &   INDEXABLE GREAT USER   EXPERIENCE > YOUR SITE PAGES COMPETITORS PAGES APPROPRIATE FORMAT TO FULFILL NEED & MAXIMIZE SERP ENGAGEMENT POPULAR &   AUTHORITATIVE AWARENESS LOYALTY USERS SEARCH JOURNEY RANKABLE   FOR RELEVANT   QUERIES CONSIDERATION ACQUISITION SERVICE

EVOLVE Here are practical ways to address the brand and product challenges within SEO for scalable success SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS EVOLVE

EVOLVE How many of you have asked or read about the branding strategy of the company you do SEO for?

EVOLVE It’s key to understand the brand core, positioning and persona to drive your SEO efforts accordingly https://www.ebaqdesign.com/blog/brand-strategy-elements https://www.ebaqdesign.com/blog/brand-strategy-elements

EVOLVE https://botpenguin.com/glossary/brand-positioning Especially your brand positioning: how you’re going to differentiate vs competitors, and why you should be chosen over them

EVOLVE How do you want to be recognized or not?   For example, If you’re a cruise line, do you want to rank for “cheap cruises”?

EVOLVE Let’s see how to integrate branding in your SEO strategy to own branded & non-branded SERPs BRANDED NON-BRANDED

EVOLVE https://serpapi.com/knowledge-graph Let’s start with the fundamentals: Is your brand recognized as an entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph? Are the details correct & all presence included?

EVOLVE https://audits.com/tools/knowledge-graph-search/ What’s your salience score towards your brand query? Are there other sites recognized for it too?

EVOLVE https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization & https://validator.schema.org/ Specify all brand details through the Organization Schema on your site! Use every relevant property

EVOLVE Claim your knowledge panel and suggest changes to make the details accurate

EVOLVE Optimize all your brand presence consistently   and link back to your main site

EVOLVE https://inlinks.com/free-seo-tools/named-entities-indexing-checker-seo-tool/ Beyond your brand: What other relevant entities are recognized in your site content?

EVOLVE https://inlinks.com/ Develop your site knowledge graph to specify all relevant entities and semantic connections in your content to facilitate Google relevance assessment

EVOLVE Make sure you’re targeting your branded search demand: assess the share & trend in top markets

EVOLVE What are users asking about your brand? Are the questions aligned with your brand strategy?

EVOLVE https://alsoasked.com/ What about those questions addressed through PAA’s in SERPs?

EVOLVE https://numerous.ai/ What’s the sentiment of the top questions? Use Add-on’s like Numerous.ai to classify them

EVOLVE What about conversations on social platforms? What are the top topics? What’s their sentiment? Use social audience analysis tools like buzzabout https://buzzabout.ai/

EVOLVE What about your competitors queries? What are the questions about? Is your brand able to solve these issues as well? Assess the relevance to target!

EVOLVE How are you addressing all these queries? For how many are you already ranking in top positions?

EVOLVE https://www.keywordinsights.ai/ Use this to expand your content clusters based on opportunity & grow your brand & topical relevance

EVOLVE What’s the blend of branded vs non- branded searches you’re already ranking for? Balance your targeting not only based on relevance & search volume but also intent & conversions!

EVOLVE Remember to grow your authority you shouldn’t only target mid-bottom of the funnel queries, but also top of the funnel topics your audience will find useful, engage & happily link

EVOLVE It’s the alignment of all these actions that will help you to establish a recognizable brand that’s so popular in its sector Google can’t overlook & users will click even if not in 1st position

EVOLVE Once you’ve started positioning and growing an authoritative brand Google can’t overlook, it’s time to solve the product problem

EVOLVE https://medium.com/doubleloop/a-visual-vocabulary-for-product-building-eef6bef5c595 Start by understanding the Product Triangle, a representation of the key areas needing alignment for product success

EVOLVE Unsurprisingly, these are also the 3 areas of stakeholders involved in SEO execution that can make or break the process https://medium.com/doubleloop/a-visual-vocabulary-for-product-building-eef6bef5c595 MARKETING TEAM DEV/UX TEAM BIZ DECISION MAKERS SEO SEO SEO

EVOLVE SEO should also align with the needs, constraints & goals of these 3 areas to avoid common issues SEO SEO SEO

EVOLVE For Dev & UX is the lack of Web platform flexibility, overlook of SEO as a findability requirement and gap between bot and human visitor experience Eg. Implementing non- crawlable navigation reliant on JS event execution

EVOLVE Eg. Showing ads for already organically ranked queries to hit PPC forecasts even if it means a lower ROI that SEO For users growth/ marketing is the bias toward hitting targets as fast as possible overlooking scalability & long- term ROI

EVOLVE For the business is the focus on the highest ROI within restrictive timelines independent to longer term impact on quality and experience Eg. Featuring twice as many ads per page and adding intrusive vignette ads

EVOLVE Love it or hate it, SEO can’t succeed in a silo without them! Let’s use Product Management principles to solve the alignment challenges

EVOLVE Follow JAD Principles to gather “joint” requirements involving stakeholders since early on https://cooens.com/knowledge-base/the-joint-application-development-methodology-approach-jad/

EVOLVE Run interviews with the   3 key areas stakeholders during SEO analysis/auditing and go beyond goals to take their full context into account in SEO strategy, roadmap and ongoing communication GOALS KPIS ROADMAP CONSTRAINTS / PROBLEMS DEV/UX GROWTH BIZ

EVOLVE An additional benefit of these sessions : They allow you to spot SEO knowledge gaps, to evangelize, and agree on alternatives for feasibility issues early on together https://www.sketchbubble.com/en/presentation-joint-application-development-jad.html

EVOLVE Audience Goals they Care About Goals Progress Questions KPIs to Report Metrics to Use Data Source Scope Frequency Format CEO   CMO +50% SEO Process ROI in 12 months   +80% Organic Search Revenue in 12 months   1st in Organic Search Traffic marketshare in 12 months What’s the organic search ROI?   What’s the organic search revenue?   What’s our organic search traffic marketshare? SEO Process ROI YoY   Organic Search Revenue YoY   Organic Search Traffic marketshare position Organic Search Revenue   SEO related Cost (Consulting, resources) Website Organic search traffic   Competitors Organic search traffic Analytics Web Traffic Tool Website Level Per Product line Quarterly Presentation Deck   Conference Call Head of SEO +50% SEO Process ROI in 12 months   +80% Organic Search Revenue in 12 months 1st in Organic Search Traffic marketshare in 12 months   +200% Non-Branded Commercial Search Traffic in 12 months Top 10 in Targeted Queries Rankings in 12 months   +20% Promoted pages Backlinks in 12 months   All Optimized Key pages indexability in 6 months   All Optimized Key pages crawlability in 6 months What’s the organic search ROI?   What’s the organic search revenue?   What’s our organic search traffic marketshare? What’s our non-branded commercial traffic?   How are we ranking for targeted queries? What are the promoted pages backlinks? How are we indexing key pages?   How are we crawling key pages? SEO Process ROI YoY   Organic Search Revenue YoY   Organic Search Traffic marketshare position   Non-branded commercial traffic YoY   Targeted queries rankings YoY   Promoted pages backlinks YoY   Key pages indexed 6 months trend   Key pages crawled 6 months trend Organic Search Revenue   SEO related Cost (Consulting, resources) Website Organic search traffic   Competitors Organic search traffic Non-Branded Commercial organic traffic   Organic search rankings   Backlinks per pages Ranked Pages   Indexed Pages Crawled Pages Analytics Web Traffic Tool   Search Console   Rank Tracker   Backlink Tool   SEO Crawler Website Level Per Product line   Per Category Per Page Type Monthly Presentation Deck   Conference Call   Google Sheets … … … … …. …. … Agreeing on what and how you will recommend   and report on based on what they care about

EVOLVE Here’s a Sheet version of the SEO measurement and report Planner to set meaningful Goals & KPIs https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g88EW02BRQGtaHQQ6wohL0jUVrSqcozaLUcTqbveNfQ/view?usp=sharing

EVOLVE Create User Stories for each SEO recommendation to easily articulate the benefit and desired action at an strategic level https://caroli.org/en/user-story/

EVOLVE https://caroli.org/en/user-story/ User stories help to specify acceptance criteria to consider executions as done, and establishing the connected tasks with each

EVOLVE Use the (D)RICE model to assess and prioritize SEO recommendations with the highest reach, impact, confidence and lower efforts across involved areas to ensure ROI https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/

EVOLVE The model also helps to specify the level of scope, effort and expected impact from each SEO strategy

EVOLVE .. as well as the connected resources to facilitate spotting feasibility and cost effectiveness issues

EVOLVE Copy my (D)RICE SEO recommendations   specification and prioritization template https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z6Rw5VblHC_t6xPC-DB-3OyFyxPXkN71a-LEzr4bhBM/edit?usp=sharing

EVOLVE But where do you bring that expected traffic data from? It’s time to get comfortable with forecasts https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LkcNF4SzTVpcKNWzmYq6IEtVkSAg7kOPuLKjNE7LZTw/edit?gid=1906435056#gid=1906435056

EVOLVE Check out Simple ML for Sheets for free   (relying on both ARIMA and ETS models) https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/simple_ml_for_sheets/685936641092

EVOLVE Use the SCR Framework to organize   recos & reports for better understanding What we need? What’s the obstacle faced? What to do about it? https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/minto-pyramid-principle-scr

EVOLVE This is also used in storytelling and helpful for ongoing reporting, beyond recommendations too Goal: X% of [METRIC] by [DATE] Audience: [ROLE]   KPI: [KPI NAME] [DESCRIPTIVE KPI PROGRESS SUMMARIZING HEADING] Introduction explaining what happened and if the expected results have been achieved or not.     Why [THE RESULT IS THE ONE IT IS]? Explain why this happened, good or bad. How to achieve the expected goal? Summarize the proposed next steps to start, continue or stop executing to achieve the expected goal. RESOLUTION CONFLICT SETUP KPI CHART Goal: 30% branded traffic share by December Audience: CEO/CMO   KPI: Branded Traffic Share https://speakerdeck.com/aleyda/how-to-develop-successful-seo-reports-number-seokomm

EVOLVE You can then describe each reco using the   Minto Pyramid Principle to back each action https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/minto-pyramid-principle-scr

EVOLVE Your SEO recos and reports will be now organized to provide needed context & drive action https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/minto-pyramid-principle-scr

EVOLVE These principles will set the base to influence   and align stakeholders for product execution MEANINGFUL KPIS CLEAR   DATA PRESENTATION DATA STORYTELLING COMMUNICATE RESULTS EXPLAIN THE CAUSE OF RESULTS DRIVE ACTION TO ACHIEVE GOALS

EVOLVE MARKETING TEAM DEV/UX TEAM BIZ DECISION MAKERS SEO SEO SEO We will never automate buy-in! It’s time to solve   product challenges by using product principles & getting human alignment and support

EVOLVE Too much work? Perfect! There will be less competition and more chances of success

EVOLVE At the end, it’s about the results. By growing a recognizable authoritative brand, with a cost- effective, well aligned and lean product execution

EVOLVE These principles will also serve you in the future too, independently of features & platforms https://blog.google/products/search/improving-search-next-20-years/

EVOLVE It’s time to change the narrative and win the brand & product challenge for consistent SEO success SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS EVOLVE

EVOLVE I’m Aleyda Solis * SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti * SEOFOMO & MarketingFOMO Newsletters Author * SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries * Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.” * Crawling Mondays Video & Podcast Series Host * Maker LearningSEO.io * European Search Personality of the Year in 2018 * remoters.net Co-Founder SEO SUCCESS IN 2024 BY @ALEYDA FROM ORAINTI AT @AHREFS EVOLVE Thanks! Questions?

Achieving SEO Success Today: What it Takes and ...

Achieving SEO Success Today: What it Takes and How To Tackle Challenges - #AhrefsEvolve

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