From the SEOgadget presentation archives: Getting SEO done against the organisational odds.

1. GETTING SEO DONE AGAINST THE
ORGANISATIONAL ODDS
Richard Baxter
Founder / Director
SEOgadget Limited
SEOgadget.co.uk

2. OUR PURPOSE:
HELPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS SUCCEED IN SEARCH
SEOgadget.co.uk

3. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

4. HISTORY
Started a blog in June 2008
40,000 monthly visits and growing
Started building a client base in January 2009
Started the company in September 2009
Thanks to the support of friends and subscribers
Speaking / coverage:
SEOgadget.co.uk

5. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

6. WHY ARE WE HERE?
We’re all here to do this:
Search Engines
SEOgadget.co.uk

7. FRAMEWORK
Planning
Tools
SEOgadget.co.uk
Organisation
Management

8. Setting objectives
Strategic planning
Gap assessment
Planning
SEOgadget.co.uk

9. SET OBJECTIVES
What are your objectives?
Make them compatible with a business case
Visibility %
Conversion %
£Revenue
Traffic
• Target relative to
competitors
• Keyword category
• Daily / Weekly
• Volume of link
acquisition
• By content type
• By keyword
Categories
• Measure
anomalies
• Annual
• Monthly
• Weekly
• AER (Average exit
revenue)
• Entries
• Exits
• Organic CTR
SEOgadget.co.uk

10. STRATEGIC PLANNING
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Link building
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Technical SEO
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Content / Social
Media
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Analytics / research
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Project
title
Define success metrics EG:
Success criteria
SEOgadget.co.uk
X% increase in site visibility
Site traffic growth
Revenue

11. GAP ASSESSMENT
Gap assessment framework for team capability
Link building
Technical SEO
• Communications
• Research sources
• Targets
• KPI’s
• Seasonal Themes
• Projects
• Contact management
• Support / resource for
content production
• 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
Analytics & research
• Rankings data
• Competitor data
• Analytics tooling
• Keyword research
• Category research
• Traffic reporting
• Social media monitoring
• Business case preparation
Work out where the gaps exist you’ll be pitching
for them to be filled at some point
What’s next?
SEOgadget.co.uk

12. DRILL
DOWN ON
THE DATA
Photo credit: Mark Heard
SEOgadget.co.uk

13. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

14. UNDERSTAND CTR
45.00%
1.00
40.00%
2.00
35.00%
3.00
30.00%
4.00
25.00%
5.00
20.00%
6.00
Organic CTR%
Avg. Ranking June
15.00%
7.00
10.00%
8.00
5.00%
9.00
0.00%
10.00
SEOgadget.co.uk

15. REVENUE CASE
Research and gather your keywords
Take the total search volume
Calculate the business benefit across a range of scenarios
EG:
Monetised Clicks = (Search Volume x CTR%) x Conversion%
£Value = Monetised Clicks x £AER
Now you have a business case
SEOgadget.co.uk

16. EXAMPLE
Take your keyword research data and mash it
up with rankings data
Including competitor rankings can be very
useful too
SEOgadget.co.uk

17. EXAMPLE
Create a pivot table (Insert > Pivot Table)
SEOgadget.co.uk

18. EXAMPLE
Drag your keywords in the row labels box and
your local search volume in the values field
Drag here
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19. SO FAR SO GOOD
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20. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

21. CALCULATED FIELD
Calculate the value of a keyword assuming
CTR%
Insert calculated field – appears in pivot table
SEOgadget.co.uk

22. CALCULATE REVENUE
Sort by value and opportunity (low hanging
fruit)
SEOgadget.co.uk

23. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

24. I HAS A MONEY
SEOgadget.co.uk

25. SEO team management
Plan a team
Job descriptions
Recruiting
The internal agency
Reviews and targets
Organisation & Management
SEOgadget.co.uk

26. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

27. MANAGEMENT FTW
Being the umbrella
Directional strategic steer
Commercial awareness
Credit: atomicjeep
Identifying strengths and weaknesses in your
team
Set appropriate development tasks and targets
SEOgadget.co.uk

28. PLAN A TEAM
Build a good SEO team
– Technical
– Content / Social Media
– Links
– Metrics / Analytics / Reporting
SEO Manager
Technical
SEOgadget.co.uk
Content
Links
Metrics / Analytics /
Reporting

29. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

30. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

31. BULD AN AGENCY
The “internal agency” cycle
Communication and
Awareness
- External knowledge sessions
- Briefings to section leaders
Reporting
Engagement
Monthly follow up
- Departments “hire” SEO department
SEO report containing traffic and
rankings
- Each area becomes customer /
account for in house agency
Delivery
- Keyword research
- SEO Team form strategic plan
- Ranking report created and scheduled
SEOgadget.co.uk
Consultation
- SEO Review

32. QUICK
RECAP...
SEOgadget.co.uk
Photo credit: Hryck

33. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

34. 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...
SEOgadget.co.uk

35. Excel [and other cool] Tips
Really nice ranking / keyword research charts
TOOLS
SEOgadget.co.uk

36. TABLES IN EXCEL
Cell references can break
Use Tables for agility
Replaces:
– =VLOOKUP(A2,‘KW rank'!$A$2:$E$11,5,FALSE)
– With
– =VLOOKUP(Table1[[#This
Row],[Keywords]],Table5[#All],5,0)
SEOgadget.co.uk

37. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

38. MS EXCEL TIPS
An example query:
Then you change a table name somewhere:
Changes to:
Ends with:
SEOgadget.co.uk

39. MS EXCEL TIPS
An example query:
Then you change a column name somewhere:
Changes to:
Ends with:
SEOgadget.co.uk

40. QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR
All Commands...
Awesome shortcuts
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41. QUICK ACCESS
Your most important commands
One more sweet tip: right mouse click
Right click here...
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42. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

43. OOH RANKING CHART
250000
1
3
200000
5
150000
7
Sum of Local Search Volume:
August
100000
9
Sum of Google Ranking EG.com
Sum of Google Ranking 11 Compare.com
50000
13
0
SEOgadget.co.uk
15

44. 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
SEOgadget.co.uk

45. RANKING CHARTS
Paste your raw data into sheets
Highlight data, hit CTRL+L
SEOgadget.co.uk

46. RANKING CHARTS
When you have your data, create VLOOKUPS
to pull everything into one table:
=VLOOKUP(Master[[#This Row],[KWs]],Rankings[#All],5,0)
Name your tables nicely (design tab):
SEOgadget.co.uk

47. PIVOT CHARTS
Create a PivotTable on a new sheet
Keywords here
SEOgadget.co.uk

48. RANKING CHARTS
SEOgadget.co.uk

49. RANKING REPORTS
Sort by KW volume
Filter out the “-1’s”
SEOgadget.co.uk

50. RANKING CHARTS
Put your rankings data on secondary axis
Use the format tab
Select your data
SEOgadget.co.uk

51. RANKING CHARTS
Change both rankings datasets to line “chart
types”
Use “no line” in “format data series”
SEOgadget.co.uk

52. RANKING CHARTS
Format the secondary axis
Axis options:
– Minimum – 1.0
– Maximum – 15
– Reverse the values
SEOgadget.co.uk

53. OOH RANKING CHART
250000
1
3
200000
5
150000
7
Sum of Local Search Volume:
August
100000
9
Sum of Google Ranking EG.com
Sum of Google Ranking 11 Compare.com
50000
13
0
SEOgadget.co.uk
15

54. ANOTHER COOL TIP
Ever had that thing where you paste data into
Excel and this happens? 
SEOgadget.co.uk

55. GET DAFIZILLA
Dafizilla Table2Clipboard
– Copies data from tables in web pages and pastes
perfectly into Excel
http://bit.ly/daffizilla
SEOgadget.co.uk

56. PASTE TO EXCEL
You end up with this:
Or you could export via CSV adding
“&limit=5000” into the Google Analytics URL
SEOgadget.co.uk

57. MY SEO TIPS
Have a plan
Understand your gaps and pitch for the resource
Manage your team well – they make the magic
happen
Get to grip with the commercial impact of your
SEO initiatives
Organise your team and keep focused on the end
result
Become an Excel Ninja!
SEOgadget.co.uk

58. TEMPLATES
Free templates:
– The pivot chart (and data) used in this presentation
– SEO Department Budget Manager
– SEO Consultant Job Description
Business cards / email me
SEOgadget.co.uk

59. THANK YOU
richard@SEOgadget.co.uk
@richardbaxter
http://seogadget.co.uk
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
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