Whether you’ve moved in-house for the first time, or looking to pitch for a new client, the task of putting together an SEO strategy from scratch can be daunting. Where do you even begin? This talk covers the practicalities of focusing your efforts on what matters in order to produce a well-informed SEO strategy.

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Setting up an SEO
strategy from scratch
Serena Pearson | Ocean Finance
@exceldaddy

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I am not going to talk through
how to run an SEO audit.

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An SEO audit outlines the SEO health of a website.
The purpose is to identify as many foundational issues affecting organic search
performance as possible.
These are typically in a ‘checklist’ format and technically focused.
What is an SEO audit?

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● Rank position 1 - 3 for your primary keyword.
● Increase non-branded visibility.
● Improve traffic relevancy, to in turn improve conversion rates.
Example long-term goal or aim

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A strategy is what
you want to achieve,
and how you’re
going to get there.
An audit is a checklist
of SEO problems.

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What the auditing process typically looks like
Run a crawl
Performance review
Gather backlink
profile data
Read the website
Analysis of meta title, description, H1s, duplication issues, length issues,
canonical tag review, meta robots tag, response code audit, subdomain
review, JS SEO, schema markup tags, page speed, indexation issues, site
structure, internal linking, breadcrumbs, rendering issues, crawlability.
Reviewing distribution of traffic across pages, getting ranking data, split
between brand and non-brand traffic, categorisation of keywords, topics,
pages, user intent review, conversion data, are correct pages ranking for
correct keywords, ranking competitors.
Content structure review, content depth checks, quality review, navigation
analysis, google my business listings, checking usability of the website,
mobile & other device friendliness, accessibility checks, website design.
Reviewing distribution of traffic across pages, getting ranking data, split
between brand and non-brand traffic, categorisation of keywords, topics,
pages, user intent review, conversion data, are correct pages ranking for
correct keywords, ranking competitors.

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If you’re an agency,
that is way too much work for a pitch.

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If you’re in-house,
that is still way too much work.

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You don’t want to sink all your time into
analysis, and no action.

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Templates are your best friend

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However, this is still just an audit.

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You can’t prioritise your work, without
getting wider non-SEO context.

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1. Know your industry

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Do you know your product?
The content on your website is meant to add value to your customers
by giving them the information they need to make the best decision.
How can you help your customers if you don’t even know how the
product works?

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What does your customer
journey look like?
Awareness > Research > Product > Brand > Engaged
Understanding how long customers spend at each stage of the
customer journey is important in understanding where priorities are.

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How important is SEO in the
marketing mix?
Knowing where SEO fits among the other channels shows which areas
to prioritise.
If social media plays a big role in the marketing strategy, onsite content
should be versatile, adaptable, and cohesive across channels.

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2. Understand
business priorities

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Which product do you want to
focus your attention to?
If your business offers multiple products, get an understanding as to
what are the most important areas for the business.
You can then consolidate this with SEO opportunities.

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Where does your product sit within
the market? What’s your USP?
What are competitors in the space offering, can you even compete?
Who are the up-and-comers, ones to watch out for?

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4. Practically assess
what you’re able to
achieve

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Identifying current rankings and where to fill in the gaps can be a time
consuming task, and similar to keyword categorisation.
Find out ways to automate this part of the process to quickly identifying
where you are at currently, and where you could be.
Streamline the SEO performance
analysis process

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Know your strengths, and know where to ask for additional resource.
Once you identify this gap, put
together your plan of action.

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4. Keep abreast of
trends

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WEB VITALS
2021
Affecting 3 page
experience signals
which measure load
time, interactivity
and visual stability.
FRED
2017
Targets sites that
violate Google’s
WM guidelines,
generally ones that
focus solely on ads.
RANKBRAIN
2015
Machine learning to
improve relevance
in the SERPs. 3rd
most important
ranking factor.
MOBILE
2015
Give mobile friendly
pages a ranking
boost in SERPs, and
de-rank pages that
aren’t optimised.
HUMMINGBIRD
2014
Provides search
results that match
intent, rather than
individual keywords
within the query.
PANDA
2011
Reduce rankings for
duplicate, thin,
plagiarised content
overstuffed with
keywords.
PENGUIN
2012
De-ranks spammy
backlink profiles.
This includes paid
or topically
irrelevant links.
MEDIC
2018
Affecting YMYL
type pages, relating
to E-A-T signals
from the Quality
Rater Guidelines.

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Keep on top of your digital PR
activity to identify new content
trends, as well as declining trends.

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Monitor your competitors.

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In summary:
1. Know your industry
2. Understand business
priorities
3. Practically assess
what you’re able to
achieve
4. Keep abreast of
trends

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Thank you!
You can find the slides at:
slideshare.net/SerenaPearson2
Any questions, get in touch with
Serena Pearson on Twitter at @exceldaddy