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Crafting an SEO Strategy That WORKS [Case Study]
The document outlines a structured SEO campaign framework with five phases: learning, improving, building, promoting, and evaluating, emphasizing the importance of understanding client needs and data analysis. It details strategies for optimizing existing content, conducting keyword research, and creating new pages to drive organic traffic efficiently. The author shares insights from over ten years in digital marketing, advocating for a systematic approach to SEO that balances client expectations with actionable results.
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Crafting an SEO Strategy That WORKS [Case Study]
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- 5. Don’t overcomplicate SEO. Finda process that works and scale it.
- 6. Or...Let me giveyou mine. aka, “The Blueprint” framework.
- 7. The “5 Phases”of my SEO Campaign PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down the evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 8. 10+ years ofdigital marketing experience. Ryan Stewart, MBA @ryanwashere @ryan.was.here @ryan stewart Built and sold SEO agency (WEBRIS) in 18 months, now partner at From The Future and The Blueprint Training. Built and sold a number of online businesses and blogs that ran 100% on organic traffic.
- 10. Quick background... on theproject.
- 12. One of theindustries I’ve been trying to break into...
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- 14. Back to the“5 Phases”... PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down the evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 16. 80% of expended time 20%of expended time 80% of results 20% of resultsTRIVIALTASKS VITAL TASKS
- 17. LEARNING Client work oryour own sites, this period can’t be overlooked. Too many time we (marketers) rush into campaigns without understanding scope We don’t want to invest 6 months of resources to realize we were optimizing the wrong aspects of the website BLUEPRINT NOTES. Sometimes, clients can push back on “too much research” and “not enough action”. Explain that SEO is won through good strategy, not haphazard execution By asking the right questions, analyzing your data, looking at competitors and building a solid project plan we can minimize that risk.
- 18. Campaign LEARNING Process QUESTIONS youneed to ask prior to starting a campaign. ANALYSIS important website data and analytics. COMPETITORS research in your industry. This is what we’re going to cover in this phase: PLANNING and project management.
- 19. ONBOARDING QUESTIONS to ask beforestarting your campaign. ● Understand expectations from a campaign This information can help you shift around your project plan to ensure you’re meeting goals (and expectations). ● Formulate your initial plan of attack We need to use this information to form the building blocks of the campaign. ● Get a sense of the resources you have available SEO has so many overlaps with other marketing channels, you need to understand everything that the site is doing (social, lead generation campaigns, PPC ads, etc).
- 20. 20 We break thequestions down into 6 buckets. ACCESS BUSINESS CONTENT EMAIL LINK BUILDING SEO SOCIAL
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- 22. LEARNING QUESTIONS SUMMARY Projected to finishthe year around similar to last, growth slowing Single product, hard to understand with a high price point CEO had a good hold on medicinal market, well respected advocate Small team who was already overloaded with work, NO marketing expertise in house Big challenges with regulations (shipping, inventory, advertising) Tight hold on spending budget due to inventory buying challenges
- 23. LEARNING QUESTIONS SUMMARY Platform was notsuitable for scaling to multiple products, needed to change ASAP Client only cares about revenue, no “vanity metrics” Client had unrealistic expectations about growth Client not sophisticated in regards to tech and marketing, wanted weekly meetings Website and brand needed overhaul, ASAP
- 24. Results are relative,they shouldn’t be your end goal. The goal is to meet expectations.
- 25. DATA ANALYSIS Deep understanding, quickly ●Data tells a story we need to listen to Looking at Analytics data tells us a lot about past performance that the client CAN NOT (or did not) tell us ● Using Data Studio to report Data Studio is a (FREE) powerful visualization platform that pulls in data from various sources and allows us to build interactive reports. We use it for everything and it will be a cornerstone of all reporting in this course ● We mainly look at GA, GSC and Ahrefs Looking at a variety of data sources crosswalked against each other gives us an accurate picture of performance
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- 27. LEARNING DATA ANALYSIS Customers and websitevisitors predominantly men (+75%). Brand, messaging and company all women HUGE search volume in the cannabis space Good branded search and sentiment from organic reviews Poor data analytics and tracking (no ecom, no GSC, no UTMs). Partial cause of mismanaged expectations Good link profile from authority media sites, mainly to home page
- 28. LEARNING DATA ANALYSIS Small site witha lot of cannibalization issues Poor technical build and structure Affiliates drove a lot of revenue and traffic Poor retention and engagement metrics, hypothesis is due to poor messaging and visualizations
- 29. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS A quick overviewof what’s needed ● It’s important to understand the competitive landscape Understanding those having success helps us to refine our strategy on what the algorithm is ranking at the keyword level ● It’s MORE important not to obsess over competitors While this is an important exercise, this isn’t an apples to apples comparison. You don’t know what that website’s resources and budget look like. This is an exercise for strategy, not for comparison. Understand how to manage clients who obsess over competitors.
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- 31. LEARNING COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS PR sites (media)and small bloggers dominated SERPs (Leafly). HUGE opportunities with content No direct competitors at the product level, but big competition at usage level (Magic Butter) Lots of influencers in the space (IG, bloggers), initial contact showed low price point Need additional keyword research to understand TAM
- 32. PROPERLY MANAGING Your campaign. ● There’stoo much to do, you’ll need help. Even if you have $0 budget, hire help. Contractors, agencies, freelancers or employees...you need them. A project plan is ground 0 to make sure $hit gets done. ● Build a project plan. Always overlooked because of how many things are going on, but it’s critical to make sure you stay on top of things getting done. ● With so many moving pieces that go into an advanced SEO campaign, you will fail without a system to manage everything. Make sure you’re load balancing resources and prioritizing tasks based on importance.
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- 34. LEARNING PROJECT PLANNING ANALYSIS Direct sales opportunitiesneeded to plug dropping sales + buy me time (buys, email, influencers) Cleanup site structure & build out proper hub + spoke layout Get paid traffic running, scaled and profitable Scale to a larger audience, everyday “stoner” with better targeted content + promotion Replatform + rebrand top priority, but also a long process
- 35. LEARNING PROJECT PLANNING ANALYSIS Fix analytics trackingissues Need organic search to reach growth expectations, was the only channel with no ceiling Improve tech stack Play on previous PR success around CEO for links to targeted pages
- 36. Initiative Mar AprMay Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Website Design Website Development Data / reporting overhaul Content creation (video) Content creation (website) Facebook ad campaign Instagram influencer campaign YouTube influencer campaign Sponsored / native ad campaign Affiliate campaign Sponsored email blast Press outreach Organic social restructure Organic search optimizations Email marketing campaign
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- 39. Back to the“5 Phases”... PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down the evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 40. The fastest turnaround in traffic comes from making improvements to the existing website IMPROVING We can focus our attention on improving site layout, technical structure, on page elements, etc... PHASE 2
- 41. Campaign IMPROVING Process WEBSITE QUALITY AUDIT TECHNICAL SEOAUDIT KEYWORD RESEARCH This is what we’re going to cover in this phase: TARGET PAGES “ON PAGE” / UX CORRECTIONS
- 42. WEBSITE QUALITY AUDIT What isit? Why does it matter? Search engines send traffic to websites they deem as “high quality”. Websites with a strong link profile, good content, proper technical setup, fast, a good UX, etc. We can measure quality by looking at a number of data inputs. Links, traffic, conversions, on page engagement, crawl depth and more. This feeds decisions about how to handle every page on a website. Improving, updating, building links, additional keyword research, on page updates, 301 or delete entirely.
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- 44. What came outof it…? URL cleanups Capital letters https/http / vs non / 1
- 45. What came outof it…? 2 Page consolidation / segmentation 3 pages for reviews, testimonials, sentiment FAQ, warranty, about pages, wholesaling, affiliates A definitive structure to tackle “decarboxylation” Redirecting link equity to the right place on the site
- 46. What came outof it…? A new sitemap / IA We decided to migrate to WordPress / WooCommerce (for a lot of reasons), I had to rebuild the site architecture to match WP’s structuring. Also, to build out a sitemap for future releases of new products / SKUs. 3
- 47. What came outof it…? A list page pages to improve Outputs of the WQA are directly actionable (i.e. 301), but also push into the next steps of the campaign fluidly. It gives us sa complete list of URLs on the site and what we need to do with them. 4
- 48. TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT Use whennecessary, not more Full technical audits are better served for enterprise websites. We developed the WQA to serve in place of a technical audit. When run properly, it should catch technical issues that are important for smaller websites. I’m NOT saying technical SEO isn’t important... In fact, the opposite - for certain websites (i.e. target.com) technical SEO is everything! You just need to be smart about when to execute. For this case study, it was not necessary. I like to draw the line around 500 pages. Anything less does not need a deep technical audit, it would be redundant after the WQA.
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- 50. KEYWORD RESEARCH For existing pages only... “Best”keywords means both high traffic and high intent. We not only want to identify the RIGHT keywords, but we want to understand the status of the SERPS as well We do KW research in 2 parts... 1. For existing pages - Using the URL Actions from the WQA, we can identify “low hanging fruit” where improved KW targeting may increase organic traffic, quickly. Since these pages are already on the site, they have equity and conversion value. A quick turn around in traffic goes a long way with client relations. 2. For new pages - We do a KW gap analysis to find which KWs are NOT on a website and a content strategy to determine how to best get them added.
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- 52. Review existing pageson your website to identify the “Main KW” of every page. 1
- 53. Review existing pageson your website to identify the “Secondary KWs” of every page. 2
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- 55. Review the SERPsto understand the intent behind your main keywords. 3
- 56. Review top 3SERP results to understand link count and velocity. 4
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- 60. TARGET PAGES To hyperfocusefforts of site segments Most websites are too big to track every page, most are irrelevant to SEO. We build a list of “target pages” that allows us to segment websites and hyper focus on improving key sections of websites. If we’ve followed all the steps laid out before this, target pages should be “low hanging fruit” pages that we can get a quick turn around on. This file is simple, but it’s a means to track key pages. This is a simple process that rolls up the data collected to this point from our Website Quality Audit and keyword analysis (of existing pages). We use it to prioritize the most important pages on a website based on opportunity.
- 61. What’s the point? Priority- we calculate this based on the opportunity of a page. Generally speaking, we like to focus on “low hanging” fruit pages, ones that are already ranking for the “main KW” between positions 6 and 20. We also look at the number of links the top 3 pages have to understand the level of effort required. Section - depending on the scope / budget of a client, we can’t optimize all pages at once. We segment pages into sections depending on the length and scope of a campaign. Baselining - benchmarking where target keywords are at the beginning of the campaign and giving us a definitive list of keywords to track. Link planning - using the data we can determine how many links we’ll need to acquire for each target page in the campaign..
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- 63. Current status oftarget page + keyword
- 64. Competitive landscape forthat keyword + prioritization
- 65. Link allocation planover the campaign
- 66. ON PAGE IMPROVEMENTS Fixing oldschool SEO elements So important, often overlooked. I find a lot of SEOS glaze over the “on page” process because it’s not overly sexy and honestly, it’s a lot of work. These factors still matter, more now than ever. The scope of what falls under “on page” has grown rapidly as SEO has progressed. It’s not enough to just change page titles and metas, we have to analyze the overall context and targeting of a page. It’s our job to make sure every page delivers the proper experience for a given keyword search. This pushes outside the scope of SEO (slightly) into technical and UX to make sure a page is optimized perfectly. We have a system to do this which we will be covering in detail in this module.
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- 68. The standard SEOkeyword mapping + intent funnel I use... 5. Attention High level, topically related, but not purchase intent related. 5. Attention Consideration 4. Awareness 3. Discover 2. Consider 1. Customer 4. Awareness In the market for a solution, but have no idea who you are or what you sell. 3. Discover Coming across your product or service offerings for the first time. 2. Consider Already aware of the options and looking to convert. 1. Customer Keywords that your current customer based is looking for - this is generally support based or usage queries (i.e. how to use “product” or service).
- 69. This was different- a long, slow and challenging conversion process... 5. Attention Everyday cannabis users, both recreational and medicinal. Looking for things like recipes, dosage information, etc. 5. Attention Influencers, PR, blog posts Consideration 4. Awareness search 3. Discover Search, affiliates, email 2. Consider Search, rmktg 1. Customer Social, email 4. Awareness Coming across “decarb” concept for the 1st time. 3. Discover Coming across “Nova decarboxylator” for the 1st time 2. Consider Aware of product, hesitant to buy based on pricing 1. Customer Nova customers looking to maximize usage through recipes, dosage info - cross sells to new products
- 70. How do wetake action? Take this information and rebuild accordingly at the page level.
- 71. Can then reviewtraffic source at the page level...
- 72. For organic heavypages, we can consult GSC to understand search intent (product page) - heavy branded, knows decarb and nova, ready to buy
- 73. Rebuilt to showbenefits...
- 74. Rebuilt to showsocial proof...
- 75. Rebuilt to answercommon questions...
- 76. (blog post) -know what “decarb” is, but likely not that we sell a product
- 77. (blog post) -use single CTA widget to push to product page
- 78. Legacy version ofhome page was unclear and unfocused
- 79. Wanted to pushoverall product understanding, benefits and trust
- 83. Understand a page’spurpose. Where traffic will come from and WHY!
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- 85. The “5 Phases”of an SEO Campaign PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down our evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 86. BUILDING We can nowbegin to build new pages on the website to capture more keyword rankings and traffic. PHASE 3 The process of creating new assets on a website, both content (i.e. blog posts, resource guides, etc), landing pages (i.e. sales based content) or even multi media / social content.
- 87. Campaign BUILDING Process CONTENT AUDIT KWGAP ANALYSIS CONTENT STRATEGY This is what we’re going to cover in this phase: NEW TOPIC IDEATION CONTENT MANAGEMENT
- 88. CONTENT AUDIT Improve performanceof value pieces. Taking inventory of all the content on a website. Using the pages tagged as “Content Audit” from the Website Quality Audit, we want to review the existing content on the site (blog posts, resources guides, etc). We’re looking to “prune” low quality content, to pick up performance of others. Sites with a lot of low quality pages don’t get the same level of visibility from search. Cleaning up crap picks up site performance and clears path for new asset creation. Development of “pillar” and “cluster” model for client approval. A system to organize content and provide a framework for scalable content creation campaigns that stay within the lane.
- 89. Found major issueswith “cannibalization” This was causing issues with being able to rank for any of the keywords. We decided to redirect a ton of the low quality, non performers into the big pages with the most rankings. A number of posts targeting the same keyword Decarboxylation is a big, deep topic that they were trying to cover in almost every post on their site. Then the plan was to rethink and rewrite these pages to be more focused. What is decarb, benefits of decarb, how to decarb at home 1 2 3
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- 91. KEYWORD GAP ANALYSIS Discover keywordsto build around. Previous phase of KW research focused on existing pages. Now we want to focus on NEW pages. We start this process by finding “keyword gaps” on your site (in relation to your competitors and the market). We do so with a “keyword gap analysis” that scrapes your competition to find new opportunities for growth. We built a template that pulls keyword data from SEMrush or Ahrefs and finds “gaps” for you that present new keyword opportunities
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- 93. CONTENT STRATEGY & generalcontent strategy. Using the audit and gap analysis, it’s time to generate new topic ideas. These don’t have to be ONLY blog posts, depending on the search intent it could be video, social content or even new landing pages We also want to formalize our strategy with a deck. That goes into research, personas, topics, expected results and more.
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- 95. The content marketingprocess... Migrate low hanging fruit from content audit. We’ll start by migrating content tagged as “rewrite”, “refresh” and “merge” into our content tracking file. Develop audience personas. It’s critically important to know who we’re speaking to, how to speak to them and the medium / content type to reach them. Create “topics” for content creation, using a number of tactics. 1. Rewrite, refresh and merge pages 2. “Niche up” from bottom of funnel keywords 3. Using keyword gap analysis 1 2 3
- 96. The content marketingprocess... Build out context for article. Using similar tactics as before, we want to flush out the topics with supporting keywords. We also want to identify pilar / cluster, cite references and content tactic / type. Determine competition to rank + traffic potential, prioritize. Some topics we have to create, no matter how competitive the space, but the others we want to prioritize for creation based ease-to-visibility. 4 5 Build content strategy deck, send topics to stakeholder for approval. The deck summarizes the end to end content strategy, from audience to topics. We need the stakeholders approval to move to content creation. 6
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- 98. Differentiation...how can youstand out? Massive inaccuracies plague the industry Not only with what brands are claiming, but what the information published on the web. No clear business leader around accurate info Industry sites like Leafly crushed it (and provided solid info), but there was no business publishing sound information 1 2 Wanted to push data driven research case studies Dosing, health related info, etc. 3
- 99. Hub Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic Spoke Topic ● Pillar(Hub) - the topics that are core to the business operations. These topics must easily map back to your product’s functionality. ● Cluster (Spoke) - the topics that support the hub and explore all possible options for traffic and engagement.
- 100. 100 Usage 6 Reasons to DecarbYour Herb Before Using 8 Ways to Use Weed Oil 24 Ways to Consume Marijuana - Smoking, Edibles, Lotions, & More 12 Ways to Use Cannabis Topicals and Lotions
- 101. Pillar Cluster Usage ●5 Cannabutter Alternatives ● How to use decarbed bud ● Cannabis extraction methods Research ● Cannabis dosing / ratios ● What are cannabinoids ● Cannabis oil vs CBD Recipes ● How to make weed brownies ● How to make weed cookies ● How to make Cannabis Milk
- 103. CONTENT MANAGEMENT & scaling creation. Withtopics created, we need to get them written, uploaded and published. Don’t kid yourself, managing content production is a full time job (it’s a business in itself). Personally, I like to outsource writing. There’s plenty of companies and freelancers who can do it for a reasonable cost, with solid quality. There’s some AMAZING writers out there, you just have to look for them.
- 104. The content managementprocess... Build outlines for articles, promotional recommendations. An outline ensures freelance writers (or in house, partners, etc) know how to write the content perfectly. We have a ton of templates to get you started on this. Move to content calendar for creation. Assuming you’re using our project management system, it’s really just a matter of copy and pasting. 1 2 Ongoing content management. We’ll run through our system to manage large scale content campaigns across dozens of clients. 3
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- 108. The “5 Phases”of an SEO Campaign PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down our evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 109. It’s not enoughto just do “on page” corrections and create quality content. To get explosive traffic gains, you need to promote your website by acquiring links and mentions on relevant industry websites. PROMOTING PHASE 4 Keep it simple! Do the legwork to find scalable tactics within your niche.
- 110. Campaign PROMOTING Process STRATEGY& ANALYSIS PROSPECTING OUTREACH This is what we’re going to cover in this phase: LINK MANAGEMENT
- 111. Strategy and analysis Spend30 minutes browsing the web. Look through Google and social media to find influencers, bloggers, media sites and content submission (guest post / ads) opportunities. Attack the places with the most attention. When we can control it, links should aim to provide PR value as well as link equity. High traffic sites should always be the priority. 1 2 I found 3 scalable tactics... Unlinked mentions, media buys and influencers.3
- 112. Unlinked mentions... If youget good media coverage naturally, you’ll get plenty of mentions. Most media sites don’t link out (unless poked). Mention is a great tool to monitor unlinked mentions. Simply enter the brand name and get notified when there’s an opportunity. 1 2 Send a simple pitch to recapture link. Or wire up Pitchbox...3
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- 114. Media buys /advertisements... Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. We can get a ton of link value, but also PR value and traffic to our site by advertising on the right sites. Prospect for media / blogger sites ranking for your target keywords. I was looking for websites ranking for the HUGE keyword “decarboxylation”. 1 2 Send a pitch asking if they accept “native ads”. The goal is to get a text link (and ideally call to action / banner) that will drive traffic over time. 3
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- 116. Influencer outreach... Influencers havegotten overpriced...not in the cannabis space. There were thousands of untapped influencers with HUGE engagement and no apparent commercial ties. Prioritize the ones with blogs who can provide links. Most influencers only have a YouTube / Instagram page, few have blogs. We need a blog to directly impact SEO. However, it’s a good business decision to execute others as well. 1 2 Send a simple pitch to recapture link. Or wire up Pitchbox...3
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- 119. Throughout a campaigncampaign, we go through an evaluation process to benchmark progress of the campaign. Even if you aren’t working with clients, it’s an important step to take to track the progress of your website over a certain period of time. EVALUATING PHASE 5 After a run through this process we need to make sure we’re driving growth - understanding data, analytics and visualizations are key to scaling your campaign.
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- 121. The “5 Phases”of an SEO Campaign PHASE 1 LEARNING Breaking down our evergreen approach PHASE 2 IMPROVING PHASE 3 BUILDING PHASE 4 PROMOTING PHASE 5 EVALUATING
- 122. Campaign EVALUATION Process DATA AGGREGATION REPORTING TESTING Thisis what we’re going to cover in this phase: SCALING
- 123. SEO testing andCRO SEO is an iterative, ongoing process We want to be continuously looking for new opportunities to improve, outside of ongoing content creation and link building. There’s a number of tests you can setup to do so... If you are in a brutally competitive space, it’s worth your time to setup test (i.e. titles, metas, on page elements) to gauge their impact in the SERPs. 1 2 Now it also the time to setup CRO testing of key landing pages Using Google Optimize to test on page elements to see which drives conversions and rankings. 3 https://ftf.agency/seo-split-testing/
- 124. Building an SEOreport GA and GSC give you what you need We can get more surgical and advanced with CRM and paid data, but for standard SEO reporting (assuming everything is setup properly) GA and GSC get it done. You can pay for a tool, but Data Studio is the $h!t I’m going to walk you through the report we built, then give you special access to it if you stick around to the end of this webinar. 1 2
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