Agile SEO: Building a Continuous Improvement Machine for SEO Tory Gray @GrayDotCo #Empower2021

Why SEO? Compound Interest Simple Interest

Dominate with an SEO Moat Foundation/Ross Simmonds: https://bit.ly/3eGB8e2

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.

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

Where to start...

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 1 Templates: https://thegray.company/empower

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 2

Best Practices ● There IS a place for best practices ● It’s a place to start and improve upon over time 3

Rinse & Repeat ● Execute, execute, execute. ● Collect data & evaluate the results. ● Refine your process. Work out the kinks. 4

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:

What this is NOT NO Bias for Action Move Fast and Break Things 6 Months of Strategy + No Action

Next level...

Your SEO Strategy Inputs Defined Business Goals TAM/Keyword Universe Data & Results Competitive Audits Website Audits Stakeholders

Defined, Prioritized Business Objectives

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?

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

(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

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?

… 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.

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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