Happy New Year, I wish you a very prosperous year of SEOing.
May the algorithms be kind and stable in your vertical.
And may you make the necessary changes to move the needle in your SEO journey.
I’ve been thinking and wondering over the holidays about why some businesses are unconvinced about SEO.
This always gets me cause – hey, I’m an SEO guy. Every day I get to talk and do SEO is a good day in my books.
In my mind, everyone loves the channel the way I do.
But, there are folks who may have invested in the channel but aren’t truly invested in the channel. They aren’t convinced of it.
And all it takes is one roadblock for them to tell themselves that SEO is not worth ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ may be.
And as a result they stick with traditional media, or worse, PPC. I’m just playing, PPC. Don’t come at me.
The biggest roadblock that seems to turn people away from SEO shows up when it comes to implementing SEO recs.
So, I’ve been thinking…
Why is it that some businesses are able to overcome the barriers they face when it comes to implementing SEO recs and other businesses are not…?
If you’re one of the people dealing with this struggle, I have a suggestion for you.
This is a rather simple suggestion that came right out of the ether – it came to me like a song I wrote.
You see, from my time at working client-side, I always enjoyed the challenge, the drive of getting people onboard with SEO in order to have recommendations implemented.
The hustling and bustling with other departments, trying to get them to give a damn about SEO was marketing to me.
In my mind, this was fun. This was progress. This was marketing – with SEO.
I realised, as an inhouse SEO guy, I spent most of my time trying to get SEO implemented.
And because of this, I adopted this belief that the key for a business to succeed with their SEO lies in the business’s ability to implement SEO recommendations.
This is a belief that has developed over the years and is firmly in place today.
So I started thinking, pontificating – over the holidays.
When the success of a business’s SEO lies in their ability to implement SEO recommendations, what can the business do to have SEO implementation forefront in the business?
And then it hit me! That much loved ‘ah-moment’ struck me like lightening straight from Heaven’s gate!
Make it a metric.
Make it a metric!
You wanna have your SEO implementation forefront, make it a metric!
This is a simple solution from a self-proclaimed simpleton.
But it can save you weeks, months and even years if you choose to adopt it.
Let me pose this question to you…
What is your SEO implementation rate?
This is a hidden consideration, an undisclosed metric (if you like), that separates businesses that succeed with their SEO from those that struggle with their SEO.
In 2022, a time where SEO continues to get more complex, you wanna have this metric well-known across your business.
In certain cases, you might even want to have this metric as a KPI.
It’s that important!
Your SEO implementation rate is measured in days.
To get your SEO implementation rate, get the percentage of how long it takes you to implement SEO recommendations upon having received the recommendations.
So, as an example, let’s say you commission an SEO work to be carried out.
This takes 10 days, 10 working days.
You receive the doc and after review, the recommendations are approved – signed-off.
You have the implementations begin immediately after sign-off, let’s say, the very next day, and it takes 5 days for the implementations to be completed.
Your SEO implementation rate, for this project, is at 50%. There you have it!
You can use this to gauge how you’re doing with your SEO.
The lower your implementation rate, the better you’ll be doing with your SEO – everything else being equal.
As you’re counting in days, if you can have your SEO implementation rate down to as low as 10%, you can use this as a sign of how streamlined SEO is across your business.
Having your SEO implementation rate as an identified metric brings into focus how much delayed you’ll be in succeeding with your SEO by having SEO implementations put to the side.
This is often the case, isn’t it?
SEO implementations are put to the side for weeks, months and years.
And what happens within this time is your competitors make progress with their SEO.
Well, if 20 days have gone by and you still haven’t even started working on implementing your SEO recommendations you can show that your SEO implementation rate has skyrocketed to over 200%, and it continues to grow, everyday, until the work is completed.
If it takes the business 120 days over the course of 6 months to have SEO recommendations implemented and you show that your implementation rate is at 1200%, guess what…?
You now have the goal of reducing this rate to as low as 10%. Who doesn’t love goals, right…?
If you have challenges implementing SEO recommendations, an implementation rate is one you’ll want to have for ALL your SEO projects.
It will change the dynamic between SEOs and non-SEOs across your business.
It will especially put SEO front of mind within the board and further demystify it, making its success a lot easier to grasp.
In 2022, as SEO becomes more complex and more competitive, you’ll wanna ensure you’re giving you site the best chances of it acquiring you traffic via the organic channel.
Your SEO implementation rate should be forefront in 2022.
Your SEO implementation rate should be seen as important as your rankings.
Your SEO implementation rate should be considered as that dial that you’ve been seeking to turn to drive your SEO to success.
