Communication of the value of SEO
SEO is no different. Your SEO success depends on the other people within your organization such as marketing and content managers, engineers, and leaders.
It’s crucial that you can prove to these groups the ROI of SEO efforts, especially as SEO standards and guidelines are constantly changing. It’s important to be able to explain the benefits of SEO to those who don’t understand search engines.
You can use these tips to communicate the importance of SEO within your business or to your clients.
Many people don’t know much about SEO and have this common misconception. Your stakeholders may have this mentality and ask you to perform things that you’re not comfortable with, such as black hat SEO techniques. They may also question your focus on user experience or creating high-quality material.
Keep the user at the forefront of all your SEO efforts. Keep the user in mind when you are presenting your work to stakeholders. Remember that users are those who read your content and search for answers on your site. They may also become leads.
Make your work accessible. SEO is full of jargon that may be confusing to those who do not work in SEO.
Explain the impact of the action, not just the term.
Instead of saying “We must implement noindex tags”, you could say “We must secure the confidential content that is currently publicly accessible on our website.”
Finally,
Focus on the business objectives. How will this SEO strategy help your business generate more revenue?
Here, data is your best friend. Data is your friend. What is the revenue generated by organic users on your website?
It’s simple to convince everyone, from the CEO on down, to buy-in to SEO. You can then break down individual projects to see how they impact the buyer journey.
You can use these tips whether you are a client or an internal SEO specialist. These ideas may have different implementation strategies, but in general they will help you communicate the importance of SEO.
Keep track of SEO trends and updates
You need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in SEO, as well as your own market.
Let’s start by talking about how to keep track of Google.
Understanding how Google’s algorithm updates affected your website in the past, and how they could affect it in future, is important. You can use this to understand where your site is today, how it has progressed over time and predict its future progress.
How did algorithmic updates such as Penguin and Panda impact your website in the past, for example? What adaptations did you (or predecessors) make in order to keep up with these algorithm updates?
Check out the Resources section for a complete list of Google’s algorithm changes. Follow blogs, newsletters and SEO experts on social media to stay up-to-date with Google algorithm updates and other SEO trends.
You can follow these popular resources:
- Google Search Central YouTube Channel
- Search Engine Journal
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Watch
- Moz Blog (especially Whiteboard Saturdays)
- Ahrefs blog
- Semrush blog
- Blog Yoast
- Brian Dean
- Danny Sullivan
- Neil Patel
- Rand Fishkin
The Resources section has even more links to resources.
Next,
Follow these resources in the niches of your business or clients. Publications and forums specific to your industry are particularly helpful.
You’ll need to research online for some resources that you can use. Ask your colleagues for resources that they use if you are having difficulty or work in an extremely specific field. You can also check out online forums or ask coworkers if they have any suggestions.
You should always be aware of major changes and trends so that you can predict how they may affect your website. You can also see opportunities to take advantage of these changes in order to increase traffic to your website, or to build search volume for a new subject.
Let’s say, for example, that you are a freelance SEO specialist who has just signed a new big client in the real-estate industry. You can subscribe to Real Estate Forum and follow the major players on social media, such as Zillow. You notice that eco-friendly design is a growing trend. There isn’t
You advise your clients that there isn’t much content of high quality on Google about this subject, so they should incorporate it into their strategy.
You can use the skills that you have learned from the video to communicate the importance of SEO with your key stakeholders such as clients and company leaders, marketing teams, etc.
It may not seem obvious, but keeping track of trends is an important part of your job as an SEO. You can use this to develop your SEO skills and to be a valuable SEO resource for your company or clients.
Building Key SEO Reports
SEO specialists are responsible for analyzing and reporting SEO data. How do you get this data? And how do you create the reports that you need to make sure your website is successful on search engines?
Kevin McReady is a senior SEO expert at Continu, and the owner of McReady Consulting.
Marketer, Marketing, on the SEO reports that he uses and how to create them. Also, some SEO tips.
Here are the SEO reports that I create for the majority of websites with which I work.
The top blog pages from the past 28 days are compared with the previous period.
This report compares the top pages of the blog subfolder from organic users in the last 28-day period. This report gives me an idea of the pages that are driving the most traffic, the keywords used to search for each page, and what problems the content solves for our users. We can identify the stage of the funnel that most of our users are at based on the type and quantity of content.
Website visitors are.
Next, we will compare the number of goals achieved in the past 28 days to the same period last year.
Goal tracking is extremely valuable because the majority of websites I interact are SaaS and eCommerce. After I create the goals in Google Analytics (based on my company, products or services), the report shows which pages are responsible for the highest conversion rates and the completion of the most goals. Goals can include form submissions or pages visited. They may also be triggered by events, or other actions that are taken on the site.
The next report, Content to Leads is published quarterly. Google Analytics’ goals can be very general and may not give a complete picture of a user’s journey. This report was generated by HubSpot. It shows which pages were: The first interaction, the place where the visitor entered your website Page before conversion.
Marketing’s primary goal for most organizations is to generate leads that sales can reach out to, and convert into customers. This report will help you determine which pages are the most important. Then, based on that information, you can put more focus on the pages or content similar to those pages.
Next, we will compare the content quality of the past 28 days to the previous period.
This report is intended for content writers and editors. This report contains all the metrics for on-page.
Content that is successful will be able to qualify. The metrics that I look at are:
- Bounce rate
- Pages per session
- Time spent on page
- Percent exits
- Scroll depth
- Goal completions
Google loves it when a visitor stays on your page and then clicks to another page on your site. Pogo-sticking is when a site visitor reads for a few moments and then leaves.
RankBrain uses a metric called pogo-sticking to determine if a SERP listing is ranked higher or lower. If a user lands on your site and immediately leaves, RankBrain will see that as a negative signal. It may be that the page has not answered the query.
This report can be used by content writers to create or modify engaging content that will push users down the funnel or to other pages.
The next report compares the Clicks to Impressions (questions) of the last 28-days with the previous period.
Google Analytics only displays data about visitors after they have already visited your website, but it can be very insightful to see what brought them there. Google Analytics already shows us which pages are bringing in the most traffic, so I focus more on the queries than the pages. You can spot trends and see how people describe or search for your product or service using the queries report in Google Search Console’s “Search Results”. This report’s pages version is too generic, as each page may rank for hundreds of keywords. This data can be used. You can use this data to find out which queries have a high impression but low click rate and improve them with internal links or external backlinks.
The final report will be the Keyword Rank Tracker. The last 28 days are also compared with the previous period.
The Ahrefs Rank tracker tool allows me to add the keywords that I use most for the sites I do SEO for. I can now see the changes in position, as well as improvements, declines and new keywords. Ahrefs Rank Tracker’s visibility metric is a good indicator of the overall “web presence” (or DA score) for these keywords. The visibility metric is often correlated to more keywords, higher traffic and better positions. This rank tracker will give extra attention to any low-performing keywords, whether that’s through a content overhaul or a backlinking campaign.
My SEO reports are only generated for organic users in Google Analytics. Since SEO changes can take some time to become effective, I focus on a month-to-month basis. This gives me enough data to compare the before and after of a change.
In summarising my SEO reports I focus primarily on:
- Data for the month or quarter
- Only organically produced products
- Visitors become leads
- Improve low-performing queries by improving keywords
- Lead-gen content that doesn’t work
To generate the reports above, I usually use:
- Google Analytics
- Google Data Studio
- Ahrefs
- Tableau is a Business Intelligence tool.
Google Data Studio allows you to create clean, easy-to-understand reports that combine all of your SEO data. It’s best to store them in your organization’s BI tool if you have one. You can then generate a powerful, detailed report about how organic search affects your pipeline by connecting tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce.
After I have generated these reports and cleared my other quick wins, high priority tasks, and technical fix, I can focus on using the data to create an optimization or change roadmap. Using the Keyword Rank Tracker, for example, I can identify which keywords are losing (or falling) in rank and implement a fix. This could be fixing keyword cannibalization or outdated or stale content or even a more serious issue. These reports have a direct impact on my work as an SEO. All of our keywords, URLs and landing pages should perform well. These reports show me what areas of a site to focus on and what I need to do to achieve the desired results.
I also have a job.
The SEO reports that I produce are valuable for other departments and stakeholders. Sales teams can use the reports to determine which pages visitors visited in order to convert them into leads and then have a better understanding of what they should be talking about when they follow up. Stakeholders can also see how important SEO is for generating revenue.
It’s crucial to ask for feedback from those who will be using your data when generating the necessary SEO reports. What metrics, goals, or events should be tracked to show the impact of marketing on your organization and organic search? Are you combining data from multiple tools? What report format is the best for displaying this data? What reporting tool will be used to create the report? SEO is more than just how many people visit your site. There are a lot of ranking factors that you need to take into consideration.”
Perform SEO Competitive Analysis
Imagine you’ve achieved the holy-grail of any business: your content ranking number one on Google search results. Your hard work paid off and you’re proud of it. The leadership at your company is also excited.
After a month you return to your account and discover that something terrible has happened. Your content has dropped from the top spot to number two! Your content has been displaced by one of your competitors and is now in the number two spot!
What happened? How can this happen? Competitive analysis is a key component of the puzzle. SEO competitive analysis is a process that identifies the strengths and weakness of your SEO and the SEO of your competitors.
You’re looking to see if there are any gaps in your SEO strategy compared to that of your competitors.
Why is it important to perform a competitive SEO analysis?
Semrush states that “running a competitive analysis” allows you to examine your market, competitors and the current search landscape for important keywords.
You should monitor your SEO performance constantly, optimize it continuously and watch out for your competition. They might even overtake you.
Here are the objectives you should achieve when conducting a competitive analysis:
- Benchmark your current SEO performance
- SEO Strategy: Identify the areas that need improvement
- Seek out any weaknesses or gaps in your competitors
- Find out what your competitors are doing to win.
Let’s walk through the steps to conduct your own analysis now that you know what an SEO Competitive Analysis is and why it is important.
First, you need to create a list with your competitors.
They may or may be different from your normal business competitors. According to Search Engine Journal “Your SEO competitors” are those who rank first on the search results page for the keywords that you’re targeting.
Let’s take an example. Imagine that you run an ecommerce site where you sell sneakers. Zappos will be your business competitor, as well as Nike, New Balance and Amazon. You will face competition if you are trying to rank for keywords like “new balance sneakers” or similar. If you are trying to rank in search engines for keywords like “how do I choose running shoes for my flat feet”, you will have competitors from the health industry like prevention.com and healthline.com. You may also face competitors from the running industry like runnersworld.com.
Finding your main competitors is easy on Google: just search for the top keywords you want to rank for and note down their domain names. If your website ranks for many keywords, you should invest in a tool such as Moz to automate the manual work. You can download the free version from the resources section.
A key part of identifying competitors is to decide who you will not compete with. It’s not worth the time and effort to outrank websites like Wikipedia, which have a huge domain authority with tons of content.
Focus on the competitors who have the biggest impact on your traffic. Focus your efforts on long-tail keywords if you are a small fish.
Next, you need to identify your keyword gaps.
You are not ranking well for these phrases, while your competitors are. What are the areas where you fall behind your competitors? Pay attention to keywords that you are ranking just one or two spots behind your competitor. Try to only focus on keywords that will bring your business value. It’s no use ranking for keywords that won’t generate any ROI.
This data can be pulled using popular SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush. You can also do it manually if you don’t own one of these tools. Create a spreadsheet containing all of your most important keywords. Search each keyword in Google, and note who is populating the SERPs.
You can then work to close or take advantage of these gaps.
Ask yourself the following questions with your data:
- Why are you not ranking as high as your competitor?
- What is different about their content from yours?
- What must you do to overcome them?
Next, you need to determine your strengths and weaknesses.
What are your strengths and weaknesses compared to those of your competitors? What do they do well that you don’t? You want to take advantage of the weaknesses of your competitors, improve your website’s strengths, and eliminate your weaknesses.
Analyze these areas:
- How authoritative is your website compared to that of your competitors?
- Content: What is the quality of your content in comparison to that of your competitors?
- Technical SEO: Are there any issues that are affecting the performance of your website?
- How mobile-friendly is your site compared to those of your competitors?
You can use these areas to determine where you are excelling against your competitors and where you need some extra effort.
Next, you will need to compare your content with the pages of your competitors who are ranking higher than you.
This can be tedious and take some time depending on the size of your website. It’s important to do this work in order to understand how your website compares with the competition and pinpoint specific areas of improvement.
Concentrate on the pages that are performing best and those pages that have your keywords as their target. You can then prioritize your efforts.
You should check the following items for each page.
- Title: Does your title describe and engage your audience compared to competitors?
- Google understands H1, H2, H3 headings.
- Meta description: Is your meta description compelling enough to encourage searchers to click on the page?
- Are you confident in your URL structure?
- Keywords and content: how do you use keywords in your content?
competitors? What is the level of quality?
It’s finally time to check your backlinks.
Backlink analysis is an essential part of competitive analysis. You’ll find it difficult to compete against a competitor who has many high-quality links from authoritative websites if you don’t have the same backlink profile.
It’s important to differentiate between high-quality and low-quality links. Low-quality backlinks from unreliable sources don’t help you or your content. They can even harm you. Quality is always more important than quantity when it comes to links.
Please be aware that backlink analysis requires a robust SEO software like Ahrefs or Semrush. These tools are available for free to try out.seo performance
Ask yourself the following questions when you examine your competitor’s backlink profiles:
- Has your competitor received any major press coverage? Can you receive similar coverage?
coverage? - Do you have any competitors that are recommended by reputable websites within your industry? If so, which ones?
You can also get your business referred to you? - If yes, ask if there are any sites or pages that link to your competitors and not you. If so, you should ask
The site owner will link to your website.
Check out the SEO Certification to learn how you can scale up your backlink strategy.
Here are the steps to conducting an SEO Competitive Analysis:
- List your competitors
- Find Keyword Gaps
- Strengths and weaknesses are identified
- Analyze by page
- Backlinks to review
Remember that this list is not exhaustive of the possible actions you can take to conduct a competitive analysis. You could also consider other factors, like site structure, user experience, and featured snippets. By following the steps above, you can get a better idea of the competitive landscape for any website type and identify ways to outperform your competitors.seo performance
Blog resources
- Blog post: Breaking Silos: How to Enable SEO Across Your Organization
- Blog post: 5 SEO Trends to Leverage in 2022
- Tool: Domain Analysis Tool
- Blog post: 58 Resources to Help You Learn and Master SEO
- Blog post: History of Google Algorithm Updates
