Using Project Management to Manage SEO Campaigns

© 2011 Mike Moran Group LLC

Mike Moran

www.mikemoran.com

SEO Project Management

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INTRODUCTION

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What is SEO Project Management?

Embedding SEO into marketing strategy

Planning your SEO program

Making SEO operational

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Embedding SEO into Marketing Strategy

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Does direct marketing have lessons to teach search marketers?

Direct mail Catalogs

Direct marketing underlies your strategy

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Direct marketers always think metrics at the start

Target your first campaign

Assess your current situation

Calculate your opportunity

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Define numeric

objectives

Get real feedback

Constantly look at

performance

Try different approaches

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What are your conversions?

Online sales

Find a store

Find a dealer

Find a partner

Phone call

Affiliate link

Download a white paper

Fill out a contact form

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How do you use visitor and conversion metrics?

Visitors 1000

Conversion Rate 1%

Conversions 10

Base

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Visitors 1000 1000

Conversion Rate 1% 2%

Conversions 10 20

Increase your conversion rate

Base

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Visitors 1000 1000 2000

Conversion Rate 1% 2% 1%

Conversions 10 20 20

Increase your conversion rate Increase your

traffic

Base

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Visitors 1000 1000 2000 2000

Conversion Rate 1% 2% 1% 2%

Conversions 10 20 20 40

Increase your conversion rate Increase your

traffic

Or both

Base

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© 2010 Mike Moran11

You can apply mini-conversions to your Web site

Learn–looking at and becoming familiar with your offerings

Shop–placing items in the shopping cart

Buy–entering and completing the purchase or checkout process

Learn

Shop

Buy

Learners

Customers

Shoppers

Buyers

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How do you count conversions?

Google Analytics is free

It’s easy

It works

© 2010 Mike Moran Group LLC

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What is your Web Conversion cycle? For your site?

Learn

Buy

Shop

Use

Get

Land

Some sites lead to offline activity

Online PC Sales?

LandConsulting?

Le

Learn

EngageSelect

Collabora

te

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How do you track offline conversions to the Web?

The easiest way is for you to contact the customer

If the customer switches channels, entice the customer to:

Print the product’s specifications to bring to the dealer

Print a coupon to present at the retailer

Call a special phone number

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Use SEO to drive conversions

How many search visitors come to buy?

The right search result puts the visitor in the “Learn” stage to view a product page.

How many customers that view a product page put items in their carts?

And how many check out?

Multiply by your average revenue and you have the impact of search on revenue.

Learn

Buy

Shop

Use

Get

Search

Increasing the success rate at any stage increases the overall conversion rate


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Planning your SEO Program

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Choose the scope of your overall SEO program

A single product line?

Business unit?

Country market?

The entire enterprise?

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Digital Cameras

Home Theatres

DVD Players

Televisions

Time

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What are the basic steps of each campaign?

Make sure your pages are in the search indexes

Identify the words that searchers use to find you

Use those words in the right places on your Web pages

Create content that others will link to

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Get Pages Indexed

Choose Keywords

Optimize Content

AttractLinks

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Decide what tasks you must centralize

Task Functional Product-Oriented

Multinational Conglomerate

Targeting search engines

Central Central Extended Central

Planning keywords

Central Extended Extended Central

Reporting metrics

Central Central Central Extended

Defining standards

Central Central Central Extended

Organization type influences the right place for each task

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How does a company plan an SEO program?

Example: Snap Electronics

A fictional electronics manufacturer

Well-known brand name

Large Web site with heavy online sales

High-end, innovative, easy-to-use products

“Our products are a snap!”

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Choose the target area of your site

Pick something high profile

Ensure the impact is measurable

Keep it simple

Make it practical

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How much search traffic do you already get?

Your metrics facility can tell you your current traffic

You can project your missed opportunities:

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Check to see where your competitors are

Competitors rank much higher for digital camera than Snap does

That likely means you can improve

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How much more traffic can you get?

Project the traffic improvement for each keyword

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Then project the value of the resulting conversions

To know what the value of search marketing is worth, you must calculate the conversion rate and its value

You can use this to justify the investment and to check your return on investment later

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Project your costs

You already projected your revenues

Now you need to see the other side

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Put together your revenue and expenses

Your mileage may vary, but the number will be big for you

This won’t persuade everyone, but it’s a start

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Put together your plan

Don’t skimp on details for execution

Anyone can cook a spreadsheet to forecast success

Make sure that your plan is detailed and believable

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Making SEO Operational

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Make your search program operational

Your central team handles everything you need to do in one place in your organization

But their most important job is working with your extended team—all of those specialists that already run your Web site:

Copy writers

Product managers

IT folks

etc.

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Create a search marketing user’s group

Invite members from each key area of your business

Keep the meetings consistent and valuable

Make introductions and explain roles

Share learning experiences andbest practices

Opportunity for additional training

Work through specific problems toget to a resolution

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Large companies need a search marketing council

Central Search Team

Organic Search Content Management

AmericasAP

Campaign development

Best practicesContent optimization

EMEA

Paid Search Program Management

Product Lines

Geographies

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Training the extended team is the main job

Explain why search is important—they all want the site to be successful and they all search themselves

The specialists on your extended search team need different training in their ownlanguages:

Copy writers: Keyword rich

Product Managers: Keywords

IT folks: Spider traps

etc.

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What levers do you pull?

If you use “processes” to your advantage, you canuse the system against itself

Change existing standards

Leverage compliance systems to enforce

Training and Evangelizing

Show the negative current situation

Offer focused training sessions

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Fix your infrastructure to get your pages indexed

Set standards to control spider traps:

Ban frames, pop-ups, JavaScript links, etc.

Regulate Flash, cookies, dynamic pages

Correct robots directives

Redirect pages properly

Enforce standards withexisting processeswhenever possible

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Enforce search-friendly coding templates

Modify authoring processes to foster best practices

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Centralize keyword management

Pick the must-win keywords and the landing page for each one

Stopping bidding wars between business units in paid search might justify your program by itself

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Assess your content with metrics

Build or buy an automated program that regularly inspects your content

Check compliance to all key standards:

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Rank checking alerts you to sudden movements

You can check manually, but automated rank checking programs save you effort

Increasing personalization is making ranking harder to measure than in the good old days

Observe changes in your rankings or your competitors’

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Assess your referrals and conversion metrics

Use the Web Conversion Cycle to use your added search referrals to show the revenue and costs for each conversion

Use this to compare to the projections you made and to detect any changes (positive or negative) that need attention

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Monitor search referrals and conversions regularly

Overall

By keyword

By search engine

Organic vs. paid

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If you see referrals and

conversions out of sync, it can be worth examining

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Use scorecards to “motivate” teamwork

Keyword Google Rank MSN Rank Yahoo Rank AOL Rank AlltheWeb Ask Rankkeyword 1 1,2 58 1 1,2 1,2 100keyword 2 1,2,6 70 1,5 1,2,6 1,2,6 29keyword 3 1,2 45 1 1,2 1,2 65keyword 4 1,2 3 1 1,2 1,2,10 4keyword 5 3,4 2 2 3,4 3,4 1keyword 6 18 13 16 20 18 18keyword 7 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3,4,5 1,2,3,4 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3keyword 8 3,4 4,6 3 3,4 4,5 12keyword 9 1,2,10 1,2,3 1,9 1,2,10, 1,2,10 2,4keyword 10 1,9,10 100 1,7 1,9,10 2,3,4 50keyword 11 2,3,4 0 2,3 2,3,4 0 0keyword 12 1 100 1 1 1 0keyword 13 1,2 20 1 1,2 1,2 47keyword 14 10 100 9 10 27 100keyword 15 8 100 11 7 7 100

Keywords with Top 10 Rankings 14 5 13 14 12 4With KW List Size Factor 0.933333333 0.333333333 0.866666667 0.93333333 0.8 0.26666667With Browser Share Factor 0.466666667 0.033333333 0.086666667 0.09333333 0.08 0.02666667Number of Top 10 Rankings 34 12 20 34 31 7

Unit: XX URLs: URL1, URL2, URL3Search Engine Brand Unit Scorecard Worksheet

Current Missed CurrentKeyword Monthly Annual Visits Visits 10% 25% Google Rank

Keyword 1 59,130 709,560 591 58,539 5,913 14,783 25Keyword 2 41,580 498,960 416 41,164 4,158 10,395 45Keyword 3 40,050 480,600 401 39,650 4,005 10,013 22Keyword 4 31,560 378,720 316 31,244 3,156 7,890 88Keyword 5 23,700 284,400 237 23,463 2,370 5,925 120Keyword 6 19,860 238,320 199 19,661 1,986 4,965 75Keyword 7 12,660 151,920 127 12,533 1,266 3,165 46Keyword 8 7,740 92,880 77 7,663 774 1,935 82Keyword 9 6,210 74,520 62 6,148 621 1,553 38Keyword 10 1,230 14,760 12 1,218 123 308 98

Total Searches/Visitors 243,720 2,924,640 2,437 241,283 24,372 60,930

Results Current 10% 25%

Visitors 2,437 24,372 60,930

# Leads @ 10% Conversion 244 2,437 6,093

Increased Traffic Potential

Estimated Searches Potential

Score each business unit every month and publicize the results

internally

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Slowly change organizational behavior

Change the rules

Set benchmarks

Review business unit scorecards

Demand improvement

Repeat

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Summing up SEO Project Management

Embed SEO into your marketing strategy

Plan your SEO program

Make SEO operational

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Using Project Management to Manage SEO Campaigns

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