SEOgadget.co.uk

Richard BaxterFounder / DirectorSEOgadget Limited

GETTING SEO DONE AGAINST THE ORGANISATIONAL ODDS

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OUR PURPOSE:

HELPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS SUCCEED IN SEARCH

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THIS IS ME

Here’s me:

A good many years of in-house – Technical SEO– Keyword research methodology– Business modelling– Team creation / training / recruitment

A good few years as an agency SEO

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HISTORY

Started a blog in June 200840,000 monthly visits and growingStarted building a client base in January 2009Started the company in September 2009Thanks to the support of friends and subscribersSpeaking / coverage:

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QUESTIONS

We’d like you to get a lot of value from the next two days

Write down your questions

Tweet: #SEOpro

Ask during Q&A

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WHY ARE WE HERE?

We’re all here to do this:

Monday, June 1, 2009 Wednesday, July 8, 2009 Friday, August 14, 2009 Sunday, September 20, 2009

Search Engines

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FRAMEWORK

Planning Organisation

Tools Management

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Planning

Setting objectivesStrategic planningGap assessment

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SET OBJECTIVES

What are your objectives?Make them compatible with a business case

Visibility %• Target relative

to competitors• Keyword

category• Daily / Weekly• Volume of link

acquisition

Conversion %• By content

type• By keyword

Categories• Measure

anomalies

£Revenue• Annual• Monthly• Weekly• AER

(Average exit revenue)

Traffic• Entries• Exits• Organic

CTR

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STRATEGIC PLANNING

Link building

Technical SEO

Content / Social Media

Success criteriaDefine success metrics EG:X% increase in site visibility

Site traffic growthRevenue

Q1

Project title

Project title

Project title

Project title

Q2

Project title

Project title

Project title

Project title

Q3

Project title

Project title

Project title

Project title

Q4

Project title

Project title

Project title

Project title

Analytics / research

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Link building

• Communications

• Research sources

• Targets• KPI’s• Seasonal

Themes• Projects• Contact

management• Support /

resource for content production

Technical SEO

• Skills / Knowledge

• Initiatives• Testing• Monitoring• Recording

changes• Industry

research / rationale

• Back end tools• Front end tools

Content / Social Media

• Integration• Content for

links• Content for

traffic• KW research• Awareness of

internal link strategy

• Awareness of KW strategy

GAP ASSESSMENT

Gap assessment framework for team capability

Work out where the gaps exist you’ll be pitching for them to be filled at some pointWhat’s next?

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DRILL DOWN ON THE DATA

Photo credit: Mark Heard

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OPPORTUNITY

Drill down on the opportunity by understanding your commercial ecosystem

Understanding the value of a campaign helps get the message across

What data do you need?– Total available traffic (Keyword research)– Total CTR share based on est. ranking position– Your conversion / revenue metrics

• EG: CPC Model on a price comparison site

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UNDERSTAND CTRNa

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Organic CTR%Avg. Ranking June

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REVENUE CASE

Research and gather your keywordsTake the total search volumeCalculate the business benefit across a range of scenariosEG:

Monetised Clicks = (Search Volume x CTR%) x Conversion%

£Value = Monetised Clicks x £AER

Now you have a business case

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EXAMPLE

Take your keyword research data and mash it up with rankings data

Including competitor rankings can be very useful too

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EXAMPLE

Create a pivot table (Insert > Pivot Table)

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EXAMPLE

Drag your keywords in the row labels box and your local search volume in the values field

Drag here

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SO FAR SO GOOD

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CALCULATED FIELDS

You can’t just edit a pivot table but they are very powerful calculators

Add calculated fields to show potential revenue by keyword for our CPC / CPA model

Options > Calculated Field

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CALCULATED FIELD

Calculate the value of a keyword assuming CTR%

Insert calculated field – appears in pivot table

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CALCULATE REVENUE

Sort by value and opportunity (low hanging fruit)

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TIPS

Group your keywords together in categories

– EG: “Broadband” – generic– EG: “Best Broadband” – research– EG: “Broadband deals” – purchase

Be conservative! Do your own CTR research + don’t assume the same CTR for different keyword categories

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I HAS A MONEY

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Organisation & Management

SEO team managementPlan a teamJob descriptionsRecruitingThe internal agencyReviews and targets

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SEO MANAGER

SEO Manager roles– Training and developing– Recruiting– Being accountable / setting targets– Reporting to senior management– Modelling traffic budgets– Bottom line accountability

Oh, and doing SEO

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Being the umbrella

Directional strategic steer

Commercial awareness

Identifying strengths and weaknesses in your team

Set appropriate development tasks and targets

MANAGEMENT FTW

Credit: atomicjeep

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PLAN A TEAM

Build a good SEO team– Technical– Content / Social Media– Links– Metrics / Analytics / Reporting

SEO Manager

Technical Content LinksMetrics /

Analytics / Reporting

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JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Job descriptions need to sell the role and relate to the task you really need done

– The organisation– The team– The role itself– How the role will develop– Personal qualities required– The remuneration– Process & timescales

How to recruit an SEO: http://bit.ly/recruitSEO

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RECRUITING

Start with group interviews– http://bit.ly/group-interview

Use one recruitment agency if you can

Advertise in the right places

Credit: Joe Shlabotnik

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BULD AN AGENCY

The “internal agency” cycleCommunication and

Awareness- External knowledge sessions- Briefings to section leaders

Engagement- Departments “hire” SEO

department- Each area becomes customer /

account for in house agency

Consultation- SEO Team form strategic plan

- SEO Review

Delivery- Keyword research

- Ranking report created and scheduled

ReportingMonthly follow up

SEO report containing traffic and rankings

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QUICK RECAP...

Photo credit: Hryck

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REVIEWS

Prepare– Check actions from last meeting– Consider staff strengths and weaknesses– Your own objectives

Meet– Your SEO should come prepared with their figures– Review each target (hit or miss?)– Agree actions and plan for next two weeks– Set deadlines

Document– Your SEO should send you a write up of the sessions with agreed

actions and targets

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SEO TEAM TARGETS

What are typical monthly targets?

– Visibility % (AWR) on top 200 keywords (Seasonal)

– Link acquisition by value per month• 25 mR 4 links or 4 mR 5 links

– Traffic X% growth year on year• Requires a steady flow of new rankings• Therefore links• And new content...

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TOOLS

Excel [and other cool] TipsReally nice ranking / keyword research charts

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TABLES IN EXCEL

Cell references can breakUse Tables for agilityReplaces:

– =VLOOKUP(A2,‘KW rank'!$A$2:$E$11,5,FALSE)

– With

– =VLOOKUP(Table1[[#This Row],[Keywords]],Table5[#All],5,0)

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MS EXCEL TIPS

Why is that good?

– “I moved a column of data somewhere, and now my entire spreadsheet is screwed” (ETC)

When you change data elements, the queries change with them

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An example query:

Then you change a table name somewhere:

Ends with:

MS EXCEL TIPS

Changes to:

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An example query:

Then you change a column name somewhere:

Ends with:

MS EXCEL TIPS

Changes to:

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QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR

All Commands...

Awesome shortcuts

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QUICK ACCESS

Your most important commands

One more sweet tip: right mouse click

Right click here...

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THE COOL THING

The cool thing about MS Excel tables is...

Paste in more data to the bottom of a table and the tables and references ALL update

Very cool table by: In Case Designs

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Sum of Google Ranking - EG.com

Sum of Google Ranking - Compare.com

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RANKING CHARTS

An example, table driven ranking chart using AWR and GKWT data (FTW)

You will need– Your keyword list– Your rankings data– Excel spreadsheet

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RANKING CHARTS

Paste your raw data into sheets

Highlight data, hit CTRL+L

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RANKING CHARTS

When you have your data, create VLOOKUPS to pull everything into one table:

Name your tables nicely (design tab):

=VLOOKUP(Master[[#This Row],[KWs]],Rankings[#All],5,0)

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PIVOT CHARTS

Create a PivotTable on a new sheet

Keywords here

Values here

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RANKING CHARTS

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RANKING REPORTS

Sort by KW volume

Filter out the “-1’s”

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RANKING CHARTS

Put your rankings data on secondary axis

Use the format tab

Select your data

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RANKING CHARTS

Change both rankings datasets to line “chart types”Use “no line” in “format data series”

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RANKING CHARTS

Format the secondary axisAxis options:– Minimum – 1.0– Maximum – 15– Reverse the values

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Sum of Local Search Volume: August

Sum of Google Ranking - EG.com

Sum of Google Ranking - Compare.com

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ANOTHER COOL TIP

Ever had that thing where you paste data into Excel and this happens?

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GET DAFIZILLA

Dafizilla Table2Clipboard – Copies data from tables in web pages and pastes

perfectly into Excel

http://bit.ly/daffizilla

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PASTE TO EXCEL

You end up with this:

Or you could export via CSV adding “&limit=5000” into the Google Analytics URL

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MY SEO TIPS

Have a planUnderstand your gaps and pitch for the resourceManage your team well – they make the magic happenGet to grip with the commercial impact of your SEO initiativesOrganise your team and keep focused on the end resultBecome an Excel Ninja!

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TEMPLATES

Free templates:

– The pivot chart (and data) used in this presentation– SEO Department Budget Manager– SEO Consultant Job Description

Business cards / email me

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richard@SEOgadget.co.uk

@richardbaxter

http://seogadget.co.uk

THANK YOU

SEOgadget is a niche SEO consulting business focused on helping people and organisations succeed in search. Did you like the presentation? Find out how we can help you with your technical SEO, Keyword research, Link building and Social Media strategy by asking us to talk to you.