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Why to Embrace SEO During a Recession.pptx
- 1. #UtahDMC Why You Should Embrace SEO During a Recession
- 2. #UtahDMC Ryan Lingenfelser Independent SEO Consultant ◉ 10+ years of professional experience ◉ Various midsize clients (SaaS, e-commerce & multi-location) ◉ At least 10-20% organic traffic growth YoY Introduction
- 3. #UtahDMC Agenda & Table of Contents Key Takeaways 1. Drive organic growth from assets. 2. Find unique off-page SEO opportunities. 3. SEO needs to own organic search KPIs to combat the “silo mentality.” 4. Site redesigns fail without SEO. 5. SEO has clear value, as shown through ROI calculations. ◉ Why SEO Matters? ◉ How to Do SEO in a Recession ◉ Q&A
- 4. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC Does SEO Matter? ? 53.3% of site traffic & 45% of revenue comes from organic search (BrightEdge 2019).
- 5. #UtahDMC SEO Never Rests ◉ For better or worse, the competition is ongoing for keyword rankings (& sales from them). ◉ Digital marketing budgets may decline… ◉ But SEO isn’t dependent on big spend & mostly has fixed costs. ○ Labor (in-house & external) ○ SEO tools ○ Assets (pages, products, etc.)
- 6. #UtahDMC “ #UtahDMC “Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.” W A R R E N B U F F E T T
- 8. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC Existing assets 1 Without content associated with midsize & enterprise-level businesses, you won’t have enough for SEO to optimize.
- 9. #UtahDMC “ #UtahDMC “SEO can add to and even initiate, but not solely create, value.” R y a n L i n g i n f e l l s i r … f i t z e r ?
- 10. #UtahDMC Optimizing current resources ◉ Matthew effect: “Rich get richer.” ◉ Once your company reaches midsize ($50+ million in revenue), you WILL have overlooked SEO opportunities, given non-branded search intent for your industry. ◉ Let’s go through 2 examples…
- 12. #UtahDMC Updating On-Page SEO ● Perform keyword research, seeing what the page already ranks for (to get clues from Google). ● Reorient the title tag & possibly the H1 to a more specific keyword phrase. Consider psychology as well. ● Add related long-tailed keywords throughout the headers & copy, especially those in “striking distance.” ● Ensure internal linking, with ideal anchor text, to the optimized page from popular, relevant pages on your own site. ● Be accurate in describing the page to properly match search intent. “Tighten” keyword focus. ● Ensure readability, good UX/UI & other SEO best practices for the page itself (ex: breadcrumb trail).
- 14. #UtahDMC Targeting Keyword Categories ● For big results, avoid targeting specific keywords… why not rank for a whole category? ● This client has search intent for their service by location. Previously, they just listed each office on a single page. ● As a global company in 60+ countries, we created a separate page for each office using an existing design, linked from the Global Reach hub. ● No one can guarantee keyword positions. However, you have better odds to rank for less competitive ones in a category. ● These in turn boost your chances of ranking for similar keywords with more search volume, since your topical & domain authority improve. ● Can you find a way to address a whole set of keywords? If so, create pages at scale targeting them all.
- 15. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC Link Opportunities 2 Leveraging what you have already works here too.
- 16. #UtahDMC Pursuing Off-Page SEO ● Depending on your product or service, partnerships with different organizations become more likely (ex: government). ● Certain topics, even low-cost product lines, will trend upward during a recession. *Check Google Trends* ● SEO best targets high-funnel keywords, which can get someone to enter your sales funnel even if not ready to buy due to a recession. ● Other sites are more likely to accept partnerships through case studies or sponsored reviews at lower costs. ● Companies scale back internally so more likely to accept guest blogs. ● While many of these opportunities can be pursued without SEO jumpstarting anything, SEO best practices like internal linking with proper anchor text, and steps like getting follow links and directing them to relevant landing pages will otherwise be ignored.
- 18. #UtahDMC Partnerships Easier to get during tough times.
- 19. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC SEO KPI Ownership 3 For any campaign, SEOs care most about what drives organic success.
- 20. #UtahDMC “ #UtahDMC “What gets measured gets improved.” P E T E R D R U C K E R
- 21. #UtahDMC Combat the “Silo Mentality” ◉ Team members will focus on their own KPIs. ◉ Employees wear more hats during a recession, further cementing silo mentality. ◉ Product, engineering & digital marketing teams won’t care about lead indicators like keyword rankings & organic traffic to key pages, so won’t improve them best.
- 22. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC Website Redesigns 4 When business activity is reduced, migrations/redesigns are common.
- 23. #UtahDMC Redesigns During Slow Times Things can go very wrong due to poor redirect mapping, content shifts, lack of internal linking, etc. SEOs will recommend usability improvements like breadcrumbs & tables of contents that improve search results too. This includes site architecture, like increasing click depth due to nav menu changes. Content updates affect rankings! Many companies invest here when activity is reduced. Assurance that noindex tags, improper canonicals, and other technical issues don’t harm organic traffic. Defeats the purpose of the redesign, which should be more traffic, engagement & revenue. What do you need then? Redirects that map old to new URLs. This also means balancing speed with creative assets.
- 24. #UtahDMC Site Redesign Timeline DEC DEC DEC NOV NOV NOV OCT OCT OCT SEP SEP SEP Fix current site issues Plan redirect mapping Give SEO input & best practices in wireframes & content Crawl & store both dev & live sites LAUNCH! Crawl then analyze live site Prune content Ensure dev site can’t be indexed Benchmark SEO performance Create backups for both dev & live sites Implement redirect rules Compare initial SEO results & changes with benchmarking
- 25. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC SEO & Revenue? 5 Leaders struggle to initiate SEO campaigns when results are unclear.
- 26. #UtahDMC SEO Has a Real Impact ◉ SEOs rarely discuss revenue… ◉ Yet buy-in from executives often requires clear ROI. ◉ Nonetheless, organic search is often the largest marketing channel for midsize businesses. ◉ Can work backward from conversion rates to estimate & forecast revenue, though relying on assumptions while taking months to realize.
- 27. #UtahDMC 3 Methods to Calculate ROI Organic Conversions ◉ Work backward from conversion rates in your CRM, multiplying leads by average lifetime value (LTV). ◉ Attach a dollar value to each conversion in analytics. ◉ Leverage GA4’s data- driven attribution model, or assisted conversions in UA, versus non-direct last click. ◉ Estimate traffic boost from a similar project. SEO vs. PPC ◉ CPC * MSV * CTR ◉ Since PPC is easy to determine Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) from, we compare organic vs. paid search. ◉ Assumes paid search is viable for the business. Search Visibility ◉ Search visibility, as seen through SEO tools, is similar to share of voice. ◉ Market share correlated with share of voice. ◉ Requires more faith that SEO works for that channel.
- 28. #UtahDMC #UtahDMC SEO in a Recession Results are there (if looking) & opportunity grows during a recession.
- 29. #UtahDMC “ #UtahDMC “Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.” C H A R L I E M U N G E R
- 30. #UtahDMC Conclusion ◉ SEO drives revenue for the right businesses. ◉ Get more out of what you have with SEO. ○ Tweak on-page SEO. ○ Seek keyword categories. ○ Do unique outreach possible in a recession. ◉ Have SEOs own KPIs from organic search. ◉ Bring SEO into site redesigns or lose traffic. ◉ Forecast & estimate ROI from SEO to begin.
- 31. #UtahDMC Any questions? You can find me (and get free SEO insights) at: ◉ rdldigital.com ◉ LinkedIn ◉ Twitter Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Not officially in recession, labor still strong? Experiencing this with my clients, seeing digital marketing budgets getting slashed... painful to lose spend & especially team members. While it often gets lumped with paid media, yet SEO provides both efficient & high revenue toward reaching business goals for the right company. Opportunities only become cheaper here during a recession as well.
- Over 4 years as a full-time consultant. I don't outsource, working with no more than 5-10 clients. Work with clients a half or full day weekly, so you get a high level of expertise at a fair price versus in-house or agency options. A modern framework is that SEO is its own knowledge base that integrates with marketing teams & doesn’t rely on industry knowledge. The now-ancient concept of the SEO as a DIYer writing content, building links & hacking pages is no longer valid. Not about a team of SEOs so much as it’s a product team supported by an SEO. 10-20% just from applying best practices.. more is possible. However, if this doesn’t sound significant, your business may not be the right fit for SEO. More on this later…
- Why SEO Matters & namely is it the right fit for your business in the first place? - 5 min Additional details & examples for each takeaway. - about half an hour Q&A - 20 min or so
- Perhaps I'm biased, but the answer is yes! About half of both traffic & revenue come from organic search. SEO can even influence branded search via online reputation management, though this shouldn't be the focus toward manifesting unique growth.
- Today, Google often makes core updates to its algorithms during slow seasons & holidays. Everyone is being harmed by cuts but this presents opportunity, more on that soon... SEO is mostly fixed costs but you do need a marketing engine that produces something...
- SEO has many parallels with the stock market. “Buy low and sell high,” or "chose your investments on a punchcard and hold" though most people do the opposite when things get tough. Anything SEO-related will cost less during a recession, so now is the time! (And you can't stop a clock to save time.)
- So what's the catch? Being in business, we are all pragmatic & results-oriented. We know it’s not that simple and… "If it sounds too good to be true, it is."
- Let me briefly explain... As search engines have evolved, they pay more & more attention to user behavior. Google is a business that wants its users to have a great experience, explains algorithm updates like Core Web Vitals for page speed. Also explains zero clicks or answers to queries right at the top of search results. SEO competition has grown so much that entire teams must now back SEO efforts, involving specialists beyond SEO, to produce something truly worthwhile that earns clicks. SEO isn't about targeting keywords by just including anymore, it's about targeting the intent those keywords represent. SEO is most definitely NOT free! Small businesses won't offset the fee and SEOs will twiddle their thumbs.
- This guy has a strange last name and doesn't seem famous at all but I thought his quote was apt.
- “and the poor gets poorer.” Why? Google favors brands because users do! Companies with great assets grow quickly, earning topical & link-based authority, which then cycles into better resources for even more growth. However, by becoming a fairly large company, you WILL have opportunities to improve what exists. Let's go through a couple examples.
- This client named Castor produces eClinical data management software with hub pages detailing each solution. As you can see, top-10 keyword rankings improved over the year. Nothing extraordinary took place here but it did require specialized SEO knowledge.
- The gist here is that Google generally provides clues on visitor search intent and what they perceive your page is about. You often want to be more specific. Psychology means, for instance, provoking curiosity and not just keywords. Ensure subtopics are covered well. Internal linking from other popular pages is often overlooked. All about tightening the keyword focus while ensuring an expected & great user experience. Otherwise, user will bounce back to search results, clicking a competitor instead. Google, despite whatever they say, definitely track this as revealed by patents and other more hidden data. Both Apple & Bing admit this.
- This recommendation is where tremendous growth can happen but requires a team effort. Fortunately in this case to have an existing web design to fulfill a few intents all wrapped up within a single keyword. This client earned a huge number of keyword rankings related to Contract Research Organization or CRO across many locations. More details on next slide.
- Even SEOs tend to fixate on specific high-volume keywords that they may never rank in the top-3 positions. These opportunities share a common keyword with many variations, in this case, CRO-related. Forms a virtuous cycle for building topical relevance & authority, even if just internally to start. The big point here is applying a scaled content solution of many pages, not just piecemeal content! SEOs have the right knowledge to initiate these tremendous wins through keyword research.
- Larger companies already have assets through relationships that can manifested online, so understood by search engines, along with opportunities unique to their business in a recession.
- For example, loan options for small businesses may get coverage from government. SEO best targets top-of-funnel intent, other channels can that convert further down the funnel like email. Everyone else still has ambitious goals as well, yet fewer ways to achieve them within. You can help fulfill that with guest blogs or more affordable sponsored reviews. Even if SEO doesn't initiate these ideas, they’ll extract the most value by applying best practices.
- Returning to Castor, they allowed free access to their platform for COVID-related studies. However, despite many backlinks naturally from relevant, authoritative government websites, the SEO value was trapped within an island that didn't reference other pages to spread link equity. Proper internal linking helped to improve the keyword rankings I had mentioned earlier as well.
- Though more anecdotal, I got nearly all my guest blogs & mentions during COVID. Much harder now. However, a quick win here is to reach out to partners relevant to your business and offer a case study, testimonial or content in exchange for a backlink.
- As seen with the last example, organic search won't improve nearly as much without SEOs involved. But why is this so?
- SEOs care about keyword rankings & organic traffic, leading indicators for revenue when conversions are tracked properly.
- When someone is worried about getting let go or fired, they'll be insular, focusing on their ownvgoals. This fear only worsens during a recession. Other teams measure success very differently and won't care about organic success. SEOs will not just grow a business organically, they'll ensure what does grow it is tracked comprehensively within analytics platforms & SEO tools.
- While not exclusive to a recession, my experience is that these projects tend to pick up during slow times. Buy you may ask, why involve SEO though if it's mostly about reskinning a site, at least as many digital marketers imagine the process?
- Defeats the purpose or a redesign to lose organic traffic! Preserves link equity. Assure technical SEO works so that Google finds all your good content. Context may change, harming keyword rankings already earned. UX/UI gets indirectly measured by clickbacks to search engine results. SEO will seek balance between visual appeal & performance.
- We don't need to analyze all these steps, but it should be clear that SEO should be involved from start and not just after the site goes live. The big ones here are redirect mapping & crawling the sites multiple times for a baseline, any errors & keyword ranking changes.
- We'll go into more detail on the next slide, but you'll need to translate organic metrics into KPIs that ultimately matter to the business like revenue to sustain SEO. As Ben Franklin said, "Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason."
- SEOs love to talk in terms of keyword rankings & organic traffic. These do matter but don't always translate readily to revenue, especially when involving branded keywords or traffic to low-converting pages. SEO, when done poorly, is a lackluster channel likely to experience budget cuts, and deservedly so. When dealing with low absolute numbers, a high ROI really doesn't matter. Getting executive approval will often require hard business numbers and not just a leap of faith. However, with proper forecasting & estimates, SEO can wildly succeed, and prove its potential, if heeding the principles throughout this presentation. These involve assumptions & fuzzy math but estimations & forecasting are possible.
- 1. The 1st method is simplest for e-commerce and trickier for leads but plays well with Google Analytics. Work backwards from the numbers but weight SEO properly within conversions, otherwise you'll favor tagged campaigns. Traffic boost estimated using CTR & position data from Google Search Console for similar keywords or pages and maybe a similar competitor product. 2. Cost Per Click * Monthly Search Volume * Clickthrough Rate Compare organic clicks versus the same paid budget, then borrow their success metrics. Works best if you invest in PPC robustly. 3. Final method here but not only is to use search visibility, which is like share of voice in PR. Estimates market share within organic search results compared to main competitors. This works best when SEO already has known value for the business, and significant search intent is non-branded.
- Chinese proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The 2nd best time is now.” 1.5 if during a recession!
- Don't get the same results as everyone else... SEO is at a premium! Coupons at the store analogy.
- 1. At least midsize, non-branded search intent, and team to integrate with SEO. 2. Get more value from everything you do for that 10-20% growth, go further by essentially creating a product for even more. 3. SEOs are about leading indicators. 4. Make sure your costly redesign doesn't harm you. 5. Take the time to run the math, even if fuzzy, to earn support from your leadership.
- 1. What is the ideal team structure for SEO? Executive champion (VP, director or head of marketing) Design, Product/User Experience, Content Manager w/ team, Engineers/Developers, Business Intelligence/Data Science Analyst This is to create something valuable! 2. Should I have SEO in-house or external? In-house perhaps only for huge enterprise companies. Otherwise, consider a responsive agency with real experts working directly on your account or a consultant. However, SEO is now a knowledge base versus implementor. Doesn't rely on lots of hours. Someone to trust that integrates with the larger marketing team. 3. Why does SEO require a 3-6 month runway for results? Google may not recognize big changes until a core update. It takes time to earn keyword rankings and track user behavior. Therefore, always factor in time for ROI calculations, preferably over a full year and not just 3-6 months.