“Where should a company start [with SEO]?” asked an attendee after my AMA Conference talk.
As my mind spun into a million different directions and I struggled to form complete sentences, I asked for a more specific website example. A healthy discussion ensued after more direction was provided, but these “Where do I start?” questions occur all the time in digital marketing.
SEOs especially are in a constant state of overwhelmed-ness (is that a word?), but no one likes to talk about this. It’s not comfortable to discuss the thousands of errors that came back after a recent site crawl. It’s not fun to discuss the drop in organic traffic that you can’t explain. It’s not possible to stay on top of every single news update, international change, case study, tool, etc. It’s exhausting and without a strategic plan of attack, you’ll find yourself in the weeds.
I’ve performed strategic SEO now for both clients and in-house marketing teams, and the following five methods have played a critical role in keeping my head above water.
First, I had to source this question on Twitter:
How do you prioritize SEO fixes?
— Britney Muller (@BritneyMuller) September 15, 2017
Here was some of the best feedback from true industry leaders:
Murat made a solid distinction between working with an SMBs versus a large companies:
This is sad, but so true (thanks, Jeff!):
To help you get started, I put together an SEO prioritization worksheet in Google Sheets. Make yourself a copy (File > Make a copy) and go wild!:
Free SEO prioritization workflow sheet
TLDR;
How to prioritize SEO?
- Agree upon & set specific goals
- Identify important pages for conversions
- Perform a site crawl to uncover technical opportunities
- Employ Covey's time management grid
- Provide consistent benchmarks and reports
#1 Start with the end in mind
What is the end goal? You can have multiple goals (both macro and micro), but establishing a specific primary end goal is critical.
The only way to agree upon an end goal is to have a strong understanding of your client’s business. I’ve always relied on these new client questions to help me wrap my head around a new client’s business.
[Please leave a comment if you have other favorite client questions!]
This not only helps you become way more strategic in your efforts, but also shows that you care.
Fun fact: I used to use an alias to sign up for my client’s medical consultations online to see what the process was like. What automated emails did they send after someone made an appointment? What are people required to bring into a consult? What is a consult like? How does a consult make someone feel?
Clients were always disappointed when I arrived for the in-person consult, but happy that my team and I were doing our research!
Goal setting tips:
Measurable
Seems obvious, but it’s essential to stay on track and set benchmarks along the way.
Be specific
Don’t let vague marketing jargon find its way into your goals. Be specific.
Share your goals
A study performed by Psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews found that writing down and sharing your goals boosts your chances of achieving them.
Have a stretch goal
"Under-promise and over-deliver" is a great rule of thumb for clients, but setting private stretch goals (nearly impossible to achieve) can actually help you achieve more. Research found that when people set specific, challenging goals it led to higher performance 90% of the time.
#2 Identify important pages for conversions
There are a couple ways you can do this in Google Analytics.
Behavior Flow is a nice visualization for common page paths which deserve your attention, but it doesn’t display specific conversion paths very well.
It’s interesting to click on page destination goals to get a better idea of where people come into that page from and where they abandon it to:
Reverse Goal Paths are a great way to discover which page funnels are the most successful for conversions and which could use a little more love:
If you want to know which pages have the most last-touch assists, create a Custom Report > Flat Table > Dimension: Goal Previous Step - 1 > Metric: Goal Completions > Save
Then you’ll see the raw data for your top last-touch pages:
Side note: If the Marketing Services page is driving the second most assists, it’s a great idea to see where else on the site you can naturally weave in Marketing Services Page CTAs.
The idea here is to simply get an idea of which page funnels are working, which are not, and take these pages into high consideration when prioritizing SEO opportunities.
If you really want to become a conversion funnel ninja, check out this awesome Google Analytics Conversion Funnel Survival Guide by Kissmetrics.
#3 Crawl your site for issues
While many of us audit parts of a website by hand, we nearly all rely on a site crawl tool (or two) to uncover sneaky technical issues.
Some of my favorites:
I really like Moz Pro, DeepCrawl, and Raven for their automated re-crawling. I’m alerted anytime new issues arise (and they always do). Just last week, I got a Moz Pro email about these new pages that are now redirecting to a 4XX because we moved some Learning Center pages around and missed a few redirects (whoops!):
An initial website crawl can be incredibly overwhelming and stressful. I get anxiety just thinking about a recent Moz site crawl: 54,995 pages with meta noindex, 60,995 pages without valid canonical, 41,234 without an <h1>... you get the idea. Ermahgerd!! Where do you start?!
This is where a time management grid comes in handy.
#4 Employ Covey's time management grid
Time management and prioritization is hard, and many of us fall into "Urgent" traps.
Putting out small, urgent SEO fires might feel effective in the short term, but you’ll often fall into productivity-killing rabbit holes. Don’t neglect the non-urgent important items!
Prioritize and set time aside for those non-urgent yet important tasks, like writing short, helpful, unique, click-enticing title tags for all primary pages.
Here’s an example of some SEO issues that fall into each of the above 4 categories:
To help prioritize Not Urgent/Important issues for maximum effectiveness here at Moz, I’m scheduling time to address high-volume crawl errors.
Moz.com’s largest issues (highlighted by Moz Pro) are meta noindex. However, most of these are intentional.
You also want to consider prioritizing any issues on the primary page flows that we discovered earlier. You can also sort issues by shallow crawl depth (fewer clicks from homepage, which are often primary pages to focus on):
#5 Reporting & communication
Consistently reporting your efforts on increasing your client’s bottom line is critical for client longevity.
Develop a custom SEO reporting system that’s aligned with your client’s KPIs for every stage of your campaign. A great place to start is with a basic Google Analytics Custom Report that you can customize further for your client:
- New Google Analytics User Starter Bundle
- Content Analysis Dashboard
- Content Efficiency Report
- Occam’s Razor Awesomeness
While traffic, search visibility, engagement, conversions, etc. get all of the reporting love, don’t forget about the not-so-tangible metrics. Are customers less frustrated navigating the new website? How does the new site navigation make a user feel? This type of monitoring and reporting can also be done through kickass tools like Lucky Orange or Mechanical Turk.
Lastly, reporting is really about communication and understanding people. Most of you have probably had a client who prefers a simple summary paragraph of your report, and that’s ok too.
Hopefully these tips can help you work smarter, not harder.
Don’t miss your site’s top technical SEO opportunities:
Already have an account? Log in here
Hi Britney, another great contribution! I always set long terms goals by setting the short-term habits. Starting with the end in mind is always a good idea but sometimes with the industry changes and technology enhancements, we need to reset the priorities. Asking questions to clients is a good way to start but sometimes this put us in risk, they become annoyed especially in case of small businesses. Once I have experienced the lack of trust with my local client, he doesn’t even want to share the minor details because of his privacy concerns. Yeah, Challenging Goals will take to the right place.
Question not from the post- Does review schema markup for product page can help rank well in SERP? Does it impact in anycase?
Hi Shalu, GREAT question!!! Review schema is sort of a black box right now, but I've asked your question on twitter to see if anyone has done any proper testing on this. Stay tuned!
Thanks Britney, gone through your twitter post. Interesting discussion there, folks are talking about CTR but ...
I love the idea of getting the developers in the room early. That last thing you want is to be recommending changes that the developers hate. You need everybody working in the same direction.
It would be really cool if you could combine sever tools together for an SEO crawl that could report out a prioritized list. From the category sort box there, the upper left corner was URGENT & IMPORTANT which contained Primary Page Issues and High Volume Page Issues. If you combined the SEO Crawl with analytics you could assign a priority score to issues based upon page volume. That would be the "I" (Importance) in the ICE acronym from Paul Shapiro.
the C (confidence) and E (Easy) could could be addressed by adding a priority score from the crawl itself (which also should include some importance factors). By having a ranked SEO Crawl combined with traffic flow analysis you can really hone in on what's important. You talk about doing this manually, but it seems like there is an opportunity for automation.
BOOM!!! Are you seeing this @Dr_Pete? Yea, that's a brilliant suggestion for automation.
We could even do that within G Sheets by pulling GA data and utilizing an ICE like formula. Great feedback Jenn!
DeepCrawl is making it much easier to do that asw
Screaming Frog also already has much of that integrated - Analytics, GSC and optionally inbound link counts via Moz/HREFS, Majestic api data. Makes the initial prioritisation process much quicker. But it's still a manual process in the end. The tools can't flag the *reasons* for the issues being flagged - as the article notes, sometime these *issues* are intentional settings.
Hi Britney,
Great read! I love the new client questionnaire. It's super helpful even if SEO isn't your focus.
I had a lot of clients in the past ask about customer journey and they like the pathing reports in Google Analytics, but I hate them because, outside of getting a general idea of how users flow, they're just not that helpful.
For the most part, it's pretty obvious how users get to conversion points because there are usually pre-defined paths. And even if there are multiple pages where a user can convert, you can just use the events report to find out where they converted and that usually tells you everything. I see more demand for reporting that gives the full journey of individual users across sessions, devices, and subdomains. This is something BigQuery solves, but it requires some SQL(ish) knowledge to get really specific data.
Do your clients request that type of data or do that type of analysis as well as more general pathing? It may be a step that comes much later after the SEO triage phase, but I was just curious about your thoughts or experiences with it since it's something that I'm seeing more and more.
YESSSS!!! Thank you so much for this Victoria!
You're exactly right, larger websites (like Moz) do require some larger SQL pulls for different data paths, but that typically occurs after that initial triage. Do you use BigQuery and SQL often? Are there any specific use cases that you use it for?
Moz should create a resource on SQL and how to use it for SEO.
Love Covey's time management Grid, and definitely agree with focusing on conversion pages before others, while beginning with the end in mind. Awesome post Britney!
If there was a Step #6, I would have to say building some online business directory citations should be prioritized as well, using Moz Local or Yext, especially if you are a local business.
Definitely agree, that that would be a solid sixth step for locally based businesses. Thanks for that feedback Nicholas!
Wow, what a brilliant post it is! I too have read the book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" but never applied that concept in SEO strategies. Well, the way you have guided us through this post is mind-blowing. Wonderful blog.
I bought that book 4 years ago, should i read then? :)
Without any doubt.
Thanks a lot Britney for this article. It helped me learn many new things :)
Thanks for the post! It's always great to compare workflow styles, so the transparency is appreciated. My favorite anecdote however is to set stretch goals. In my office, we often worry about setting the right expectations and not over-promising, but setting stretch goals do make sense to encourage creative problem solving and set a culture that achieves beyond basic benchmark goals.
Exactly!!! I've always loved that concept as well and quite honestly enjoy the laughs I get back from colleagues/friends when I share semi-ridiculous goals, which then really drives me to prove them wrong.
---It triggers some childlike instinct in me to beat my brother, surprise my parents, or tell someone, "I told you I could!". Haha! Curiosity + Competitiveness = a badass combo in SEOs!!!
Hi Britney,
This is good and very systematic. However, how do you analyze your title tags? Normally, the same title tags live on for years and are not updated often. We actually have an entire SEO workflow process (think template) in our web app. Brightpod. Would love to add a few of your processes/points/plan - maybe "powered by moz"?
Very nice piece of content!
Two more important points to me are:
That the client sometimes has traffic from different countries. Therefore, is important to identify which are the Main countries and analyze them in detail. Sometimes you notice relevant differences in terms of traffic and the overall behavior.
Also, from a keyword point of view, today is even more important to “cluster” the keywords semantically and create a clear schema of the keywords you want a page to rank for. It is also very helpful for the client to understand.
These are exactly the types of nuggets of info that I hope pop up in the comment section!
Country analysis is very important for certain clients and should be reported on. I've also often found it helpful to incorporate that data into an-always-updated dashboard that my client/coworkers can reference at anytime.
Check out this video on how to easily do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Ok0rJwj2U
Your keyword point of view is valid, but could also be boiled down to, "These are the types of things we want to help answer/solve for for your visitors who come to this page,".
Thanks for sharing this, Britney! I love this concept. My wife is a Quality Engineer and uses a lot of similar concepts from LEAN and Six Sigma training - I've been trying to apply similar ideas to SEO to build more efficiency into our operations.
That is so cool Logan, your wife sounds like a badass! It is so fun and interesting to apply other applications like that to SEO. Let us know if you come across anything interesting or valuable!
There goes Britney blowing my mind again! Can I shadow you for like 2 days!?
New client questions: I always like to start with a foundation like "who is your audience and what do you want them to know/do as a result of visiting your site?" Another good one is "what shortcomings exist with your current site, and what 3 things would you change if you could?"
Blair! You are way too sweet. Seriously, I'm blushing!
And, yes, please come hang whenever you want!!! (seriously, I need more friends.) Haha!
Ooo I love this question, "what shortcomings exist with your current site?" to get their perspective, because we all tend to come in hot on thinking we know what's wrong, what's right, etc. However, they're likely going to know a lot more about industry intricacies than we will and that shouldn't be ignored.
Thank YOU!
Wow! Awesome post! Really appreciate the depth and suggestions, especially the links to the GA dashboards and Reports in the GA solutions gallery.
One thing I noticed for the Last-Touch Assists example in point #2 is that for ecommerce, sometimes the Goal Previous Step 1 is a page related to the checkout/cart flow. When applying that report to some of my own clients, I found jumping to Goal Previous Step 3 was more helpful. If anyone has any other suggestions for last touch assists for ecommerce, please share!
Ah, such a great point Noah, thank you! Many custom GA reports will require subtle tweaking like that to fit your specific client. Really appreciate your feedback on this.
Hi Britney
Seo, like any aspect of online and offline marketing, requires a few goals. And every goal requires a strategy ....
It is not about doing many activities to do them, but to focus on the right path
Exactly! It's all too easy to get distracted in this space.
I love worksheets ;) thanks. Saved.
Excellent post, thanks. Another tool which is also free is Xenu's Link Sleuth. It is helpful for checking broken links. It is particularly useful when the website is big.
EXCELLENT
I mean, really, really useful!
Really good article, being a freelance website designer who specialises in Wordpress there is a lot of SEO I need to do but where to start was the question on my mind. So much to do but in what order?!
All of us had this problem. The answer is simply start and not trying to do all al the same time :)
Exactly! Maintain focus, start with the primary pages (that would offer the client the highest ROI) and then address any critical high volume site issues. There isn't a perfect science to it, sometimes you have to go with your gut on what fixes to make first, but as long as you keep executing fixes, you'll see results.
Love it Love it Love it! Thank you for sharing the incredible working process with us, I enjoy getting inspirations from how other people work for SEO. In the client questionnaire questions #12, what does cash specifically stands for?
Thank you! Cash literally stands for; cash money!!! :)
Think giveaways, contests, fun video ideas, etc.
"Under-promise and over-deliver"
Such a winning formula. Thanks for this article Britney, the sheet was most helpful and something I will try to filter into our process at the agency I work at.
This have one of the most useful articles on Moz, mainly because it talk about a topic that is not on any Guide or Manual - You know like real world
Good article Britney! Do you get alerted as these technical issues happen? What kind of setup do you use for this?
Hi Steven!
I do! Moz Pro simply alerted me on that one, no special set up, but I know other tools will have "new issues" reports as well. Really comes in handy when you're busy working on other things and something slips by ya!
Do these alerts come in as the issue happens, or in weekly intervals (when the issue was possible already picked up by search engines)?
Great question!
Weekly intervals I believe.
Great article and very helpful template, thank you!
As for client questions, asking them about their UVP (in plain language, of course) helps me understand them better. It can also serve to get the client to think more deeply about their products and services which in turn can serve to better focus and define goals.
Yes, I totally agree, that's one of my main questions to know them better because it gives you a lot of insights in a few words.
Prioritizing SEO tasks is fundamental to achieving good results, and I am pleased to read this article to emphasize this aspect and thus improve the processes of the project.
Good Job!
Impressive article ! I love it. Had a hard time prioritizing SEO tasks but your suggestions will definitely help me achieve better results.
#1 reminds us that we need to see what the end goal is in order to build a proper strategy to reach that specific goal.
Really appreciate this article and the downloads too. I agree with what you say about ‘stretch goals’. Definitely a way of improving performance - in seo but also across digital marketing as a whole and the constant new skills & knowledge required!
Spot on and great write up. I really like #1 as it is makes so much sense to see what the end goal is and then from there build on what you need to get there. Also I have found that as you mentioned as well that finding those conversion pages and really seeing how to either improve them or mimic that process to other areas of the site can help bring the site to maximum success.
I think that too many people also avoid the consistent communication on fixes with clients, but in the end you brought a great point there as well longevity will come from that communication, but more so they will see all the work you are putting in providing the the value they expect.
I really think you did a fantastic job on this as you other posts, keep up the good work and great contributions to the moz community.
Thank you so much Tim! Really appreciate that feedback!
Hey Britney
I read this article.But not gather accurate.Something is missing that i cant get.My website crawl very well whther its direct , organic traffic.But want to improve more.Please help me to set the link of my website or in your language goal etc.
Thanks for your article but especially also the links and docs. I find them very useful.
I am regularly updating my website with fresh content (Informative Blogs) But It doesn't crawl by Google at the end I have to submit it to Google URL Submission (Manually) for crawling...Any Idea!!
I like the way how Covey's principles are connected to SEO. I'm a big fan of Covey and absolutely agree that starting from the end is one of the most important concepts from the book. Great article with specific examples.
Interesting that (other than a couple of very specific examples) technical SEO is almost entirely omitted. For me, that's a vital aspect on enabling a website to perform in search. Like the simplified approach to this piece though.
I love finding actionable posts with templates to follow. I am a big believer in developing everything I do into a step by step process and creating an SEO workflow is no different. It is crucial to lay out the exact process that you use in order to get repeatable results and eventually scale. That is not to say every client or website is the same but having a detailed and defined process can help you drive consistent results.
This post is very intersting and impressive,Thanks For sharing this post . I love the idea .
Please keep posting
The point about Lucky Orange and Mechanical Turk should have been expanded upon. Making UX changes can improve how long the user spends on your site, and what they are looking at. Unfortunately, if it can't be measured, then it does not matter. Keeping them there is what you want.
Agreed, but feel like that deserves an entirely seperate post.
I use moz and seo tools. I thank moz and family for quality seo tools in real sense. I am happy to be able to find solutions to the problems that I can not find long-term answers with a single moz. And I feel it in me more and more each time. I am trying to provide seo services with only one blog address and sites offering kaçak bahis services. It is not so easy to send difficult words to search results :(
I have an additional question (for questions that should be on clients Q&A)
1#
"To date what in your opinion has been the most effective method you have employed in the past on this site (or any of the other companies sites) that has given you the highest ROI"
#2
Has the development team you're have are working with ever worked with a seo?
#3
Do you know of any thing that although it might sound bad to say you think was done in a black hat manner (trying to get past Google's rules)
#4
Does your site need to be you HIPPA or PCI compliant. If there is another reason to me a certain standard would you please kindly write a standard and reason here____________
(if they say yes and are not help them tools like incapsula or Armor will automate this)
#5
Who is your hosting company what do you pay them ( a estate is fine ) and do we have your permission to change your hosting setup or host if you're development team agrees?
#6
Would you kindly have your team send any information that you want us to have incase we will need it. Examples or password for everything.
(Remember you must protect them) but using a PDF like this
https://d.pr/f/69LUJE+ to get that information is a very easy way just send it over sharefile.
#7
You have made your choice for project management tools anything from Basecamp, Slack, Asana or Wrinkle?
#8 please feel free to contact me anytime at phone number ___-____-_____
A nice read. We always need a refresher on where to start a SEO campaign. Thanks for that!
Definitely agree with this article.
Link equity is a thing in SEO we people always want to see for our website. But somehow because of some issue or less knowledge we don't get succeed as per our exception. This WBF helps me a lot to understand this giant topic in a seamless way. Great stuff thanks for sharing.
What a good article. Thank you!