By Ruben Remy 1 October 2024 Evidence-Based Management in Organic Search Marketing Improving Value Delivery under Conditions of Uncertainty

Ruben Remy In SEO since 2007 • First freelance SEO client in 2007 for 5 euro per hour (I was 17) • Started working for Adwise agency in 2011 • First SEO lead role at Webprint in 2014 • Started freelance/interim in 2017 Experience

Every SEO role has it’s organizational frustrations The SEO Consultant The In-House SEO The Content SEO The Technical SEO

You think the problem is • Getting your audit stuck at the client • Escalations messing with your priorities • Content experts not motivated to do content SEO • Not having people around you that see the obvious SEO pitfall and ask for your input

While the real problem is… Being an expert in SEO is not enough. We need to know how to run the show

Let’s look at the big picture first

SEOs often live in organizations whereof we don’t see the big picture of the organizational structures and practices But you need a sense of common structures in which you run your show

• 3 Roles • 3 Artifacts • 5 Events • Backlog Refinement • Forecast • Sprint Goal • Definition of Done • Burnup/Burndown Charts • User Stories • Release Planning • Story Mapping • Specification By Example • Planning Poker • Velocity • Buy A Feature • Relative Estimation • Just In Time Planning • Continuous Delivery • Cost of Delay • Value Metrics • Measuring/Reducing • Technical Debt • Impact Mapping • Minimal Viable Product • Program Management • Roadmapping • User Surveys • A/B Testing • Market Research • Business Modelling • Product Vision The (often desired) big picture of the organizational structures and practices Scrum Agile Product Management Empiricism & Self-Organization You’ll notice this touchpoint with SEO

• 3 Roles • 3 Artifacts • 5 Events • Backlog Refinement • Forecast • Sprint Goal • Definition of Done • Burnup/Burndown Charts • User Stories • Release Planning • Story Mapping • Specification By Example • Planning Poker • Velocity • Buy A Feature • Relative Estimation • Just In Time Planning • Continuous Delivery • Cost of Delay • Value Metrics • Measuring/Reducing • Technical Debt • Impact Mapping • Minimal Viable Product • Program Management • Roadmapping • User Surveys • A/B Testing • Market Research • Business Modelling • Product Vision The (often desired) big picture of the organizational structures and practices Scrum Agile Product Management Empiricism & Self-Organization You’ll notice this touchpoint with SEO All this that may be familiar to you is grounded in Evidence-Based Management

I will argue why evidence-based management is the missing skill to be an effective SEO practitioner in any kind of role

Definition of Evidence-Based Management Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is a framework that helps people, teams, and organizations make better-informed decisions to help them achieve their goals by using intentional experimentation and feedback.

Value is the focus of Evidence-Based Management “Improving Value Delivery under Conditions of Uncertainty”

EBM Helps Organizations Achieve Their Goals in a Complex World Immediate Tactical Goals Intermediate Goals Strategic Goals Impacts: Increase revenue/profit ☺ Outcomes: More organic traffic! The path to the Intermediate Goal is often still somewhat uncertain, but not completely unknown. Your SEO strategies and execution Technical SEO, Content SEO, Link growth, CRO, CRUX etc.

We will focus on value creation in evidence-based management Improving your ability to create value for your customers and stakeholders. Market value Organizational Capacity

Using EBM applied to SEO business value creation Improving your ability to create organic search value for your customers and stakeholders. SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity What SEO value is currently delivered by the organization? How long does it take to deliver new SEO value? How effective is the organization at improving SEO value? What is the additional potential SEO value that could be achieved?

Always have enough unrealized value and ability to innovate work, so you can prioritize all/most possible actions

Using EBM applied to SEO business value creation SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity Use the SEO confrontation matrix to methodically uncover gaps in SEO value creation

SEO WAY OF WORKING or organizational capacity Business case & budget enablement IT system enablement SEO lead/Consultant In-house capabilities Processes Data, Metrics & KPIs SEO landscape - confrontation matrix SEO STRATEGIES with market value Crawling, rendering & indexing Content Internal links External links & mentions Social activity SERP User experience , SERP features & branding, voice search SEO landscape An SEO birds-eye view as starting point Core web vitals / site speed

SEO WAY OF WORKING or organizational capacity Business case & budget enablement IT system enablement SEO lead/Consultant In-house capabilities Processes Data, Metrics & KPIs There are 42 SEO touchpoints to consider And many more considerations within a touchpoint SEO STRATEGIES with market value Crawling, rendering & indexing Content Internal links External links & mentions Social activity SERP User experience , SERP features & branding, voice search SEO landscape An SEO birds-eye view as starting point Core web vitals / site speed

Use the SEO confrontation matrix to uncover value creation To methodically map out the realized and unrealized value through SEO strategies that can be done. Map out the current and desired operational capacity to find out abilities to innovate and improve the operational impact and time to market.

Steps to achieve Operational Excellence in SEO (improving operational capacity) Tooling requirements The exact tooling that fits the processes and skillsets of people needed to achieve our growth goals People & process requirements Where the capabilities need to be filled in by people in different parts of the organization Capability gaps Translating the SEO landscape into SEO capabilities SEO landscape An SEO birds-eye view as starting point The 10 Pillars of SEO gives a full view of all that is in scope of search engine optimization SEO pillars need to be picked apart and clustered as there is no 1 on 1 translation to capability buckets Tools need to match the skillset of the SEO area specialists that will fill the gap, not that of the stakeholder and first processes need to be defined before tooling can be chosen to fit the processes The Pillars of SEO gives a full view of all that is in scope of search engine optimization Defining SEO area specialists, their skillset that matches capability requirements and where they need to be in the organization

Determine the SEO strategy mix (unrealized value) to realize market value SEO execution What needs to be done concretely to reach the set goals? SEO strategy What unrealized value and prioritization? Gaps & feasibility What kind of opportunities are in reach SEO landscape An SEO birds-eye view as starting point The 10 Pillars of SEO gives a full view of all that is in scope of search engine optimization What gaps are there in the SEO mix in between untapped yet realistically reachable opportunities and the current performance? The execution of the SEO strategy includes concrete processes and training for non-SEOs to practice SEO with high quality outputs. The Pillars of SEO gives a full view of all that is in scope of search engine optimization Based on gaps and feasibility a proposal for an SEO-mix and goals to turn unrealized value into value creation

Let’s apply EBM to your content SEO workflow

Log the optimization date By logging the optimization date of every content optimization done, you get new data insights that enable evidence-based management in SEO.

Content SEO its growth in operational capacity Remove technical impediments to grow Standardize E2E SEO content workflow Prioritize SEO work on impact and effort Scale and speed up go-live of optimizations Measure, learn and repeat successful optimizations Is your website’s technique not impeding the succes of content optimizations? Are your content teams trained in an end-to-end (E2E) way of working? 1. Measure the number of optimization go-lives as a KPI for T2M. 2. Are you aware of the traffic impact of an optimization? Is SEO work properly prioritized based on impact and effort? Is a Pareto analyses used as business as usual in content teams? Do you log optimization go-live dates and report on before/after impact, learn from and repeat successful optimizations?

Introduce Pareto’s to make content experts more independent in prioritizing what content to optimize next.

Do content optimization prioritization with Pareto’s for existing content SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity New clean site Content SEO workflow Team Y Team X Content optimization prioritization with Pareto’s Automate internal linking Assigning keywords to more pages

Start optimization of existing content with the high performers that can still improve

Automated Pareto classification - The pages with the top 40% traffic is classified as “Very High contribution” - The next 30% traffic as High - The next 18% as Mid - The next 10% as Low - The last 2% as Almost no traffic - 0 traffic in the No Traffic bucket.

Know how much content is and is not yet optimized and their contribution to your overall traffic

See when prioritization has not been done optimally and you need to step in to steer decision making

Do content optimization prioritization with Pareto’s for existing content SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity New clean site Content SEO workflow Team Y Team X Content optimization prioritization with Pareto’s Automate internal linking Assigning keywords to more pages Optimized content with Pareto’s

Introduce a new Time to Market KPI Track number of optimization go-lives. (velocity)

Get a grip on T2M by tracking the content optimization velocity and set KPI’s SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity New clean site Content SEO workflow Team Y Lacking human resources in team A Team X Lacking priority in team B Treats Content optimization prioritization Track optimization velocity. Optimized content with Pareto’s

Introduce a T2M KPI Measure the number of optimizations that go live Burn-up Cumulative amount of content optimizations New site launch Content SEO training

Measuring impact of optimizations that go live Waterfall of 60 days before/after traffic difference Increase ecrease otal Only use such waterfall charts for operational use, not suitable for forecasting or targets

Improve Time to Market and reduce content SEO its cost of delay of editorial internal linking optimization through your Ability to Innovate

Using EBM applied to SEO business value creation Improving your ability to create organic search value for your customers and stakeholders. SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity Automate internal linking Manual internal linking

The opportunity cost is also the Cost of Delay In our case, it’s nearly impossible to get 140/280 content management hours assigned to internal linking alone. So it would be one of those things that would otherwise never be a complete realized value.

Using EBM applied to SEO business value creation Improving your ability to create organic search value for your customers and stakeholders. SEO business value Market value Organizational Capacity Automate internal linking Manual internal linking Automated internal linking Time to market improves through innovation! oesn’t always need human resource prioritization Automated internal linking Assigning keywords to more pages

4 EBM improvements for you content SEO workflow 1 Make content experts independent in prioritizing unrealized content SEO value with Pareto’s. 2 Improve Time to Market and reduce content SEO its cost of delay of editorial internal linking optimization through your Ability to Innovate 3 Hold the organization accountable by showing content SEO Time to Market with a Burn-up chart that shows the cumulative amount of content optimizations over time. 4 And show the performance of individual content optimizations to content experts with a waterfall chart of before/after traffic difference of optimizations over time to motivate content experts to keep doing content SEO.

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