SEO Strategy SEO Collective Sydney 28 Mar 2023

A strategy is a framework, not a list of tactics. If your strategy starts with something like this, think hard about what you’re trying to accomplish: ● Build 20x outbound links a month ● Write 5x in-depth articles per year with unique research and at least 2K words ● Migrate to server side rendering

The purpose of an SEO strategy is to provide a North Star when making broader business decisions

It boils down to 4 buckets of potentially really time consuming information 1. Understand what you have (including other channel investments) 2. Set or confirm the goal 3. See what’s working currently 4. Build the strategy

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You need to know what you have in order to understand where you need to go An SEO strategy should be the product of doing foundational analyses, including: ● Tech audit ● Content audit & inventory ● Market review, product fit & competitor analysis ● Define & agree on metrics of success ● Analytics platform audit to make sure data is accurate

What I mean when I say content inventory

Document and communicate the steps of your research to the client This is because more often than not, the output of an SEO strategy is distilled down from hours and hours of research — it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the value if you’re talking to someone who likes to see volume of output. So, communicate along the way, and at the end, share your raw data and calculations.

Once you know all this you should be able to set realistic goals Or recoginse that the goals already set by the client are unrealistic…and be able to articulate why.

Multipliers are the levers you can and should be pulling…and will probably be the seed of your Big Idea.

The Big Idea guides the strategy How do you know what the Big Idea is? It kept coming up in your different analyses. But it’s big. It might be: ● A new website section ● A new content initiative ● A new brand positioning For an accounting firm, the Big Idea may be the importance of clarity and trust.

When discussing tactics, focus on the why and not the what “The average page speed in the industry is 4 seconds, and your site is on average, 2x slower. The opportunities to address site speed are also relatively accessible for non-developers. Because of this reducing the site speed should be the first priority within the development stream.” Rather than “Reduce page speed by compressing images and eliminating third-party JavaScript.”

So what is in your strategy document? 1. Confirm current state 2. Articulate the Big Idea 3. Confirm goals, targets and measurement 4. Include a forecast (conservative, aggressive) 5. Share tactical buckets 6. Share what could really fck sh*t up 7. Acknowledge requirements, limitations and assumptions 8. Include ideal plan of action for next quarter +

How I create an SEO strategy

I start with the broadest context I prefer to start with the broadest context and work my way down so I start with the market. This will already give me a lens to look through during the deeper analysis around the client’s performance within it.

I don’t reinvent the wheel when considering the market ● Technical/backlink/total addressable market reference: ahrefs or SEMrush ● Competitor channel investment: Similarweb or SEMrush ● Content velocity: manual (grabbing publish dates from blog metadata) ● Manual journey review of website & competitors ● Site speed: Pagespeed insights and Screaming Frog using the API ● Manual review of branded SERPs

Nor do I for the content audit & inventory ● Ahrefs/SEMrush: topic research. Start with product lines & go from there. Exports and filters are your friend. ○ When I build the model, I’ll be adding in a more BERT-focussed process, by comparing the topics covered by top-ranking content versus client content (link) ● Ahrefs top content: Shares ● Screaming Frog > Content > All: Fleish Reading Ease & readability, word count ● Analytics platform: Sessions, page value, etc. ● Primary topic: gut check from the URL VLOOKUP it all into a master

Total Addressable Market is more translatable to a business than “search volume” Total addressable market (TAM) is the total market demand opportunity for a product or service. For SEO, an easy way to calculate this is: (annual search volume) x (estimated ranking CTR*) To translate to revenue: (TAM*CVR)*Average Transaction Value *Estimated ranking CTR can be easily calculated by taking a recent industry CTR and assigning based on keyword difficulty

If the site is new or the setup isn’t correct, use external data for multipliers — social and ad demographics, total addressable market for topic focus

Strategy is inherently long-term Rather than one-off execution, my focus tends to be on implementing and embedding SEO into already existing processes, or creating new ones.

If you feel like reading further https://floq.co/seo-strategy/tactics-strategy/ https://www.portent.com/onetrick/ https://newsletter.seomba.com/p/how-to-make-an-seo-strat egy

Thank you Amanda King amanda@floq.co w. floq.co