Charlie Whitworth

Boring stuff about me Brands I've helped grow HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL Experienced SEO with 14 years of experience at 4 agencies across the north west, covering a wide range of industries, platforms and campaign types. Previously Head of SEO at Missguided, now running a consultancy here in Ancoats. I run campaigns, training days, white label for agencies and speak at BrightonSEO, Barbados SEO, Digital Bites, Missing Link, SASCon, SEODay and now, MancSEO (finally). Areas of expertise are technical SEO, content strategy, developer liaison, forecasting, reporting on ROI from the organic channel and training & mentorship.

My Grandad, Frank Minor HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL I’ve seen, sent and received a lot of proposals

My Grandad, Frank Minor HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

Pre Pitch Research

Get a detailed brief • Big agency tenders will tend to provide a detailed brief, these are often nonsense • Smaller prospects may not have one and may not know what they need • You may establish the brief isn’t what is going to drive performance - but be diplomatic HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

Research your audience Head of Marketing Managing Director Head of SEO • Broad knowledge of digital • May or may not be SEO savvy • Time and efficiency will be key • Could have no SEO knowledge • Will be very interested in efficiency and ROI • Layman's terms usually (not always) required • Likely to be SEO savvy • May be looking for support and will be open to recommendations • Could be some friction if not agreed on strategy HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

The Story

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My Grandad, Frank Minor • Tell a story, rather than compiling a list of stuff • Base this on the brief but don’t be confined by it • This could be the size of the opportunity and where the brand is currently • Or a significant keyword category they may not have considered • Always tie back to the proposal brief but show insight others won’t be Decide on the narrative HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor For large sites, focus on a key category HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL Size of the opportunity Most prospects will want to know: • The size of the opportunity, and where they currently sit • How much work (and budget) will be needed to gain market share • Perhaps a view of this via an SEO roadmap • The split between technical, content and offsite • Internal resource required • How long will it take (without “it depends”)

My Grandad, Frank Minor SEO jargon is the enemy • Unless you’ve established from your research and chemistry calls that you are speaking to someone super technical • This is what many prospects hear when we start spitting out SEO jargon and buzz words • These topics are important, but often not at proposal stage with various stakeholders • Decide on the story and tell it in Layman’s terms, if your audience won’t understand all the terminology

My Grandad, Frank Minor There are issues with hreflang mismatches Canonicalisation is flawed Duplicate title tags are creating dupe content issues 1,402 images are missing alt tags Sitebulb’s favourite of URL contains a form with a GET Method Jargon & negative terminology The prospect may not understand or have sat through the same stuff repeatedly It also creates a negative narrative or story HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor By ensuring all hreflang tags are returned, we can ensure international indexing is optimal Fixing errors with canonical tags will help ensure all content is indexed efficiently Title tag rewrites will remove any ambiguity for search engines Adding alt tags to all image references will boost accessibility and give additional context to search engines Crawl efficiency can be improved by switching form method to POST Layman’s terms & positive terminology HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor RICE framework • If the requirement is to go into detail on SEO roadmap, then the RICE methodology can be a great way to show client impact and efforts vs reward • Nice article here on how it works HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

The Deck

My Grandad, Frank Minor Contextless screenshots can look lazy There is obviously nothing wrong with using 3rd party data, but exporting and presenting yourself can indicate you’ve done analysis and not just screenshotting tools N.B. *I’m a massive hypocrite

My Grandad, Frank Minor Process and ways of working • Prospects will presume from the fact they have asked you to pitch that SEO fundamentals are a given • Although advanced tactics will impress, a separator can often be alignment with your process and ways of working • Anything you can do to showcase what makes you different as an agency, freelancer or consultant could be the tie breaker • Particularly if the technical recommendations are inevitably samey across multiple pitches, show how you’re more efficient and pleasant to work with HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor Less is more at proposal stage • But make the less impactful and concise • We’ve all seen potential clients glaze over, we want to avoid that • A war and peace proposal deck with tonnes of actions, could be daunting, and seem like a lot of work for the prospect • Most efficient way of working as possible, without endless Monday, Asana and Trello notifications • Ultimately, your job will be to get results, make them look good and via a path of least resistance HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

My Grandad, Frank Minor Minimise the waffle • This could be the 4th or 5th SEO proposal the prospect has sat through • They’ve heard all the jargon • They’ve heard all the agency creds • They’ve met the office dog and love the fact you love to nerd out with data • Tell your story succinctly, try to stand out with your approach and end with a differentiator

My Grandad, Frank Minor Dead obvious stuff • Case Studies – sessions are vanity, revenue is sanity • How long will it take – either via forecast or anecdotally from previous campaign experience • Direct testimonials - again talking specifically about the success and how/why it occurred • Costs – I tend to leave these out of the proposal as it can be a tricky end to a nice story. Engage the client first • Meet the team – Ideally at the meeting, clients like to know who they’ll be working with • Smile – Make sure everyone on the call/meeting looks like they want to be there HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL

HOW TO PREPARE A KILLER SEO PROPOSAL http://www.whitworthseo.com https://twitter.com/WhitworthSEO https://www.instagram.com/whitworthseo/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/seo-consultancy-manchester/ Thanks!