How do you weigh SEO priorities if you don't know what those priorities are? Whether you're looking for improved rankings, more organic traffic, or a stronger DA, a thorough SEO project plan is instrumental in driving results. It's your tool for setting and measuring against objectives, effectively prioritizing new initiatives, and most importantly, reaching your SEO goals. During this Web Clinic, our Senior SEO Strategist, Rebecca Berin, covers: How to audit and analyze your site for opportunity. Prioritizing SEO opportunities. Building out an attainable and productive SEO project plan.

1. How to Build Your
SEO Project Plan
By: Rebecca Berin

2. Contact: Andrew@digitalreachagency.com | Digital Reach
We are a B2B Digital Marketing Agency
focusing on demand generation.
Companies work with us to:
• Increase qualified leads
• Track SEO and SEM to ROI
• Marketing Automation Support
About Us
• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Search & Display
• Website Redesign
• Marketing Automation

3. Contact: Andrew@digitalreachagency.com | Digital Reach
1 SEO 101
1
Research, 2
Planning, and 3
Implementation
2 Building a Foundation
3 Prioritizing Opportunity
4 Building a Project Plan
On the Agenda

4. 4
SEO 101

5. The Balance
In SEO there are no quick fixes with long-term, positive results. SEO is a delicate
balance of research, trial and error, and consistent adaptation of strategy.
Research Planning Implementation

6. 1
Research
Research is your friend and will guide your way to the right strategy unique to both
your industry and your site.
A thorough approach to research takes us between 10 and 15 hours, and includes
a few key components:
• On and Off-site Analysis
• Competitor Analysis
• Thematic and Keyword Research
Research

7. 2
Planning
You might have found the right strategy, but productively implementing it takes
strategic planning. Prioritizing your findings/needs can be the most gruelling part of
the process yet the most beneficial.
Potentially
harmful issues
Importance
to rankings
Prioritize your needs weighing the most harmful issues against the most important
factors that go into SEO rankings/authority.
Opportunity
Research Planning

8. 3
Implementation
Implementation can be a simple process as long as your research and planning are
thorough. The waiting game is the hardest part of this process.
Did you know it can take at least 3 weeks for certain SEO strategies to be indexed
post-implementation?
Research Planning Implementation

9. 9
Building a
Foundation

10. SEO Audits: The Goal
The Goal
A comprehensive look at technical SEO issues found to help identify areas of
improvements so that the proper actions can be taken in order to boost organic
search metrics and to improve overall website health.

11. SEO Audits: What to Cover
Measuring site speed - Measure site speed to make sure the site’s pages are loading fast enough
on both desktop and mobile devices. Finding issues to prioritize and fix
Review crawl errors - Keep an eye on the reported crawl errors, ideally, you’ll do this monthly.
Downloading these errors, crawling the reported URLs, and taking the necessary actions (i.e.
implement additional 301 redirects, fix soft 404 errors) will aid a quicker recovery.
Reviewing the below will also be necessary, especially from a technical standpoint:
• Number of indexed pages
• Submitted vs indexed pages in XML sitemaps
• Main pages receiving at least one visit
Content Analysis - Crawl and report on: metadata (Title Tags, Meta Descrips., Header Tags, Image
Alt Text), on-page content (duplicate content), keyword ranks.
Link Building Analysis - Analyze backlink profile and it’s value or toxicity levels. Competitor analysis
of backlinks and ranks.

12. SEO Audits: What to Cover
Performance measurement is very important - In addition to the organic traffic, also pay attention
to the following:
User engagement Search Rankings Sessions per page type
Conversion rate per page type Desktop and mobile visibility Conversion rate by device

13. Baseline SEO Musts
Building a foundation sets you up for success, if ignored it can hurt you in the long run...
● Technical Audit
● Keyword Research
● Keyword Mapping
● Competitor Analysis
● Site Speed Reporting
● Crawl Error Clean-Up
● Bulk MetaData
Optimizations
● Content Auditing
● Focused Page
Optimizations
● Supportive Content
Creation
● Internal Linking
● UX Analysis
● New Page
Recommendations
● CTA Creation
● Social Signals
● Link Building
● MoM Site Health
Analysis/Fixes
● Strategy
Adaptation/Adjustment
40h
rs
30
hrs
35
hrs
∞

14. SEO Audits: Translating Findings
Building an SEO audit that is beneficial company-wide involves knowing what to
show and being able to explain the positives and negatives.
• Put the most compelling information up front.
• Don’t overwhelm everyone in the company with all of your findings - the
important takeaways will get lost.
• Know your metrics and be explanatory - don’t assume that other people will
get the “why.”
• “Why is site health and user engagement our first big focus?”
• Stay visual.
• Get trusted advice early.
• Stay within a proven formula: What’s the issue-> Why does it matter -> How
do we fix it.

15. 15
Prioritizing
Opportunity

16. Ranking Factors in SEO: Refresher
Think of ranking factors as the building blocks necessary to get to page one. They
can be broken down into:
• Tech strategy: Looking under the hood and addressing the issues that will
undermine your strategy in the long run.
• Content-driven strategy: Guiding the customer journey through keyword
research, on-site optimizations, and thorough supporting content.
• UX/User Engagement: Intelligent and intuitive internal linking, CTAs, and
resources.
• Relationship Link Building: Link building focused on quality industry
partnerships (over quantity).

17. Ranking Factors in SEO: The Benefits
In 2017, Google accounted for over 79% of all global desktop search traffic, followed
by Bing at 7.27%, Baidu at 6.55% and Yahoo at 5.06%.
• With SEO, you have to play by Google's rules. Ranking high on Yahoo or
Bing is a “nice-to-have”, but ranking on Google will get the most
visibility/business.
Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day.
• Your consumer personas are on Google -
so SEO is essential to any marketing strategy.

18. The SEO Domino Effect
• Understanding and planning for underlying tech issues.
• The roles of supportive content, relationship link building, and site
friendliness/usability.
• Opportunity Cost: A missing piece will become a bigger road block if ignored.

19. Selling the Importance of SEO
• Know the right people to talk to and get on your side
• Web Dev, UX Teams, Content Marketers
• Finding and explaining the ROI
• Site health, Engagement, Ranks, Traffic
• Be detailed but brief:
• Why… do we need to implement these strategies/fixes...
• How… will we implement…
• What… kind of timeframe and manpower do we need...

20. Still with me?

21. 21
Project Planning in SEO

22. Organizing an SEO Focused Plan
Most harmful issues - Low Hanging Fruit - Importance to Rankings
How many team members are needed - Estimated time of completion
Potentially
harmful issues
Importance
to rankings
Opportunity

23. Staging Your Plans
Research/Strategy
Involves: Digital
Marketing Strategists
Planning
Involves: Strategists,
Department Heads
Implementation
Involves: Web Dev,
Content, & UX
Departments
Testing/Success
Tracking
Involves:
Strategists/Analysts
Don’t underestimate the time each project needs to be seen to completion. When it comes
to implementing SEO strategies, especially those that are tech heavy, shouldn’t be rushed.

24. Delegation in SEO
SEO Project Plans can take an army…

25. 25
BONUS: Analyzing
Progress/Success

26. Success Tracking/What Now?
Know the metrics that matter in SEO…
• User Engagement
• Ranks
• Traffic
Have/Set appropriate expectations…
• Not every marketing strategy will bring huge jumps
• Doesn’t make them less important/successful

27. 27
Get Your LIVE Site
Analysis

28. Site Analysis
Rebecca
Berin
Senior SEO
Strategist
In a 30 minute consultation, learn:
✓ Where you rank in relation to competitors
✓ Measure revenue opportunity from Search
✓ What you can do to accelerate your SEO results
Get a second opinion on your approach to SEO