I work with mostly small independent sites with little or next to nothing budgets, and I help them turn things around (if possible). My biggest success story was a client who had 1 or 2 patients a week through word of mouth, and then grew to an average of 50 referrals through monthly online marketing, as well as a huge established practice.
I can't take all the credit – he worked hard at building what he did and was good at what he did; all he needed was a decent platform to launch a starter kit.
So, how do you help such small sized businesses that operate in direct competition with the “big boys”?
Sometimes you need to get back to the basics and carry out a simple overview strategy of where the client is in the market place, and where they would like to be. In my experience, a simple SWOT analysis is a great starting point. It creates a grid for you to work from, and is simple enough for even the most unaware SEO/M clients.
For those of you who don’t have a marketing background, I will quickly outline what the SWOT acronym stands for:
- Strength
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
Usually Strengths and Weaknesses stem from internal (onsite, business operational, business resource) sources, while Opportunities and Threats are from external sources.
Where does SEO/M fit in here?
Take, for example, Business X. They have a website that was built on Wordpress, they make use of category tagging, add at least one page of content every two days, and have excellent knowledge of their industry. Their domain name isn’t ideal, but it's businessnameandkeyword.com.
But they do not get much traffic from search engines, while their rivals, Business Z, do because their domain name is set on theperfectkeyphrase.com. On the other hand, Business Z doesn’t have any SEO and relies on their main page to bring in all traffic, based on the strengths of the domain name.
There aren’t a lot of competing SERPs; in fact, they are below 50,000 for the core set of keywords. Business X's site ranks on the second page of Google results for the top 10 results, while Business Z is on the top 3 positions, with Wikipedia and About.com taking up the top positions. Neither business does PPC, and the niche doesn’t have much room for other entrants (there may be 10 – 15 competitors). Both sites have similar links in terms of strengths and numbers. The businesses deal in emotional sales – the products can or may have emotions attached to them.
This is how I envision their SWOT to look like:
The above straight away suggests quick wins that the client can make, and where the priority would be. It also forms a great starting point for a long term strategy and tactical maneuvers.
I have kept this very simple and basic, but a decent SWOT picks up much more than the above, and it does require you to have analysed your client's site, their main competitor/s, and the SERPs vs keywords. This means the bigger the site, the bigger this exercise would be. This is why it’s ideal for small businesses, as the results are smaller and directly actionable / observable, with fewer affecting variables.
I really enjoyed this post. I agree completely with the marketing strategy you discuss. Boiling things down to the basics is a great way to define goals :o) BTW congrats on the awesome traffic increase for your client!
Hi, First off, I am not sure why you got thumbed down or by whom... and I am quite surprised to be honest...
Secondly, thanks!
@agood
If you give yourself a downthumb every comment you're going to go right past everyone.
You wouldn't do that though would you?
Great post Rishil. Thumb up.
Geez, 10 thumbs up for this innocuous reply! Seems you've got a few fans out there somewhere.....hahahah
I love the graphics, I know Rebecca does too (at least she usually does) - hence my question why isn't it promoted to the main blog?;)
I was thinking about doing it...and now I have. :)
@ Ann and Rebecca: ummmm wow!???
Thank you! Most unexpected. Love you both ;)
Very well deserved!
Good post. Execs often don't really understand SEO, but if you can pitch it as an extension of what they do know, you stand a better chance of succeeding.
Great stuff mate - always do first things first; what's the client's position, what's the competition's position, and where's the overlap.
Nice & easy does it every time as the great man sang...
I read this post and did a SWOT analysis for a client's SEO/SEM project.
We won the client!
Thanks .
Sangeeta
I am glad it helped! and good luck with the client!
You demonstrate savvy, instructional design skills and some SEO/Marketing smarts! Have you considered teaching?
Had a client who started a project with a well-developed marketing plan with a SWOT. Multiple team members developed/marketed the site, and now it's obvious they didn't address the plan. They recently called me back in again. I'm going to show them your post to remind them of the importance of SWOT, including review, monitoring and adjustment.
This is an excellent educational opportunity that can easily be understood by all. Thanks for sharing with us!
Thank you. Thats is beyond a compliment and I really appreciate your kind words!
I do hope that this information comes in useful for you.
The scenario you described is the exact same as my situation with my own website. Thanks for the great info.
Well then -I assume you see some direct actions?
goodluck!
very nice article, but you left out a strength...
They have you :)
coming from you I will take that as a major compliment!
I have been doing SWOT analysis while making business plans for many projects that I have worked on so far and I get amazing piece of information every time I do it.
My SWOT analysis tips:
Before performing a SWOT analysis of your own business, it's a very good idea to first perform the SWOT analysis of your evil competitor. With the competitor's SWOT report that you have now, you will give have a more clear picture of the market that you are about to enter and you'l also be in a better position to perform SWOT for your own business. This is especially useful to explore the 'O' of SWOT, and I believe Opportunity is where the real money lies.
Keep your SWOT as factual and realistic as possible. Do a comprehensive market research on internet before coming to any sort of conclusion. You must have facts to support what ever you include in SWOT. This will be helpful to explore the 'T' of SWOT.
No SWOT analysis is said completed without a brain storming session done before (or even after) the analysis. You will get a clearer picture of the market from the experience of the people already working in the industry and thus will help you explore the 'W' of SWOT of your business model. While it's important to concentrate on your strengths, you must be aware of your weaknesses as well.
'S' of SWOT is the reason why you think you stand a chance to compete and the very idea that drove you into the business. It is the core idea, why you think your business will make money. But again, assumptions can hurt badly, only facts will help. So be realistic and stay positive.
BTW, it was a nice post Rishil. I just loved it. Thanks !
SEOmoz staff or Rishil, the Flickr image above is no longer displaying...
Good lesson Rishil. The last company I worked for, I managed a large global sales team and for every key account I required a SWOT analysis. Executives love them because it's a great way to quickly capture the synthesis of a situation and a means to plan your attack.
The key point being, as you said - you need the data to back it up.
Thumbs up.
Great Post Rishil,
I am graduating college in two weeks with a Marketing degree. I dont think I can count how may times we have gone over/discussed/used SWOT Analysis.
Its good to know I can (read will) use this in the real world as I begin my career.
Funny enough, till I got onto web marketing a year ago, I NEVER made use of marketing theory, even though I was in ofline.
Strange.
Planning a strategy of work after studying the strength of the competitor is good idea.
If we can find what are their weakness, a identify a loop hole to defeat them, we can communicate the idea with our site owner and we can participate that particular small business owner and his resources rank in better levels
thanks nice post..
like your sharing information
Thanks for the post. I often have to remind myself to go back to the basics and not get lost in the seo marketing. Great one to safe.
Excellent post Rishil. Simple, easy to implement and nice diagrams!
I will definitely be putting this as 'Step 1' of my SEO workflow.
im sorry but i have to say that you totally look like a guy that works at our company named amir
great post rishil
Great post Rishil! SEO is a great Marketing tool that can give any company a competitive advantage and the analysis that you provide in this post is incredible helpful to determine the position of the company in that matter.
@Rishil: I see everyone congratulates you for the post. I didn't even read it but I have to say something else:
Nice avatar :)
I love the simplicity of SWOT in helping clients see a 'snapshot' of what's required as part of their SEO attack plan. It would be great if the work involved in getting to that snapshot was just as simple!
I got to this post from another one that you did, and found the article very interesting.
A great method to summarize the strengths and weaknesses.
Thanks
Great post. I'll have add this into my follow up when meeting with clients. Keep up the good work!
A SWOT analysis is a powerful tool, however because of its infinate flexibility one of the problems is that users only include factors "they want to" and this can bias and underming the approach.
One way i have found of avoiding this pitfall is the use of PRIMO-F for ensuring all of the SW factors are cdonsidered and PEST or PESTLE for OT
Certainly swot should be used by more people with respect to their site and online marketing efforts
Great articles I see why it was promoted to the seomoz blog, great job.
Very effective. With comparisons like this you can also make it insightful for your client.
Great post. Thanks Rishil.
Congratz on a great post. The SWOT can be very helpful with clients.
Thank you
I really liked this post.. Thanks!
I'd like to see more from Youmoz promoted out here.
Duly noted. I'll try to promote quality submissions as much as I can.
Rashil,
Thank you for the great post. I was introduced to the SWOT analysis a long time ago in a college marketing class once but since then it kinda slipped my mind I guess :)
I can see its power here especially as a presentation medium that can be shared with the client thats informational and easy to understand.
Hey Rishil fantastic use of traditional marketing analysis in SEO. As you suggest it's a great way of distilling the company's current situation so you can then go on to formulate the key objectives for your activity.
Good post! Most of my clients have very little knowledge about SEO/SEM. Providing them with quality research in conjunction with a flowchart, makes all the difference in making the right/result oriented decision.
One thing I love to see in conjunction with SWOT is Measure of Success. This gives me a solid understanding (sort of completes it) of the proposed strategy.
-Artur
Hi Artur,
Thanks for the comments - but a point to note: SWOT is an overview analysis - measures of succes depend on the strategies that result from such an analysis - as such it in itself cannot have a measure of success.
Hi Rishil, this is what I had in mind, so if this was a flowchart, it would look like something like this:
Step 1: SWOT => Step 2: Measure of Success Step 3: => Successful? Yes => Great Job! No Step 4: => Revisit plan, Optimize accordingly and Try Again.
Because as an executive or a business owner, the next thing that comes to mind after viewing the pros/cons is MS.
Best,
Artur
Artur, in that context you are absolutely right - SWOT is not a means to an end but like a "path finder" - it easy to see where the quick wins lie, and where the major risks are, which means that the company /client can focus on srategies that are within their budgets, and not on the latest fads, or their "wishes"
Very often businesses tend to go and spend time money and effort on stretegies that have low returns, and in most cases these are people who didnt take a step back and see whether they have covered the basics or not.
e.g its great to be no.1 for "keyword" and get X traffic, but what about the more profitable long tail such as "keyword in area" where the volume is low, but more targetted?
The SWOT helps bring these things into perspective.
Going back to the "roots" can be good, especially when you are presenting your plans of actions. I think using the SWOT analysis with a client, can also demonstrate that you master your business and the overall marketing domain. It shows them that there is a strategy behind your thoughts and recomandations !
good post Rishil.
Great post :) I offer a budget service and run this separate to my full fledged service. The graphics were nice and i thank you - sometimes it really is all about the basics...
Thanks for the post Rishil. Coming from a more conventional marketing background it pleases me to see the back to basics issues being highlighted!
Thanks Rishill. So we must go back to the basics of Marketing... Yes it seems very logical to do such analysis SWOT, will try it with a new site I'm working on.
As other commenters said, it is great to boil it all down to the basics and realize what exactly are your high points and low points as company as far as your SEO efforts go. Oftentimes, we overanalyze what is needed or not needed, thus resulting in missing some pretty key and necessary things.
excellent post mate! Glad to see this got promoted to the blog.
Good article Rishil, nice to see that someone else uses the SWOT analysis for SEO. I too find it extremely useful and incorporate such analyses into my SEO strategies. One useful thing learned from our marketing studies then eh?!
Great post, concise, new and powerful
Much appreciated!!!
Bloody scrappers!
i dont get it...
This is a great starting point for anyone working together to strategically think about their SEO.