This document discusses search engine optimization (SEO) project management. It recommends embedding SEO into marketing strategy by choosing target keywords and metrics. It also suggests planning SEO programs by scoping the work, setting goals and benchmarks. Finally, it discusses making SEO operational by training teams, centralizing keyword management, and using metrics and scorecards to monitor and improve performance. The overall message is that SEO requires an organized, cross-functional project management approach.

1. Mike Moran
SEO Project Management
INTRODUCTION
www.mikemoran.com © 2011 Mike Moran Group LLC
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2. Mike Moran
What is SEO Project Management?
 Embedding SEO into marketing strategy
 Planning your SEO program
 Making SEO operational
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SEO Project Management
Embedding SEO into Marketing Strategy
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Direct marketing underlies your strategy
Does direct
marketing have
lessons to teach
search marketers?
Direct mail Catalogs
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Direct marketers always think metrics at the start
 Target your first campaign
 Assess your current situation
 Calculate your opportunity
Define Constantly
Try different Get real
numeric look at
approaches feedback
objectives performance
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What are your conversions?
 Online sales  Download a
white paper
 Find a store
 Fill out a
 Find a dealer contact form
 Find a partner
 Phone call
 Affiliate link
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7. How do you use visitor and conversion metrics?
Visitors 1000
Conversion Rate 1%
Conversions 10
Base
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8. How do you use visitor and conversion metrics?
Increase your
conversion rate
Visitors 1000 1000
Conversion Rate 1% 2%
Conversions 10 20
Base
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9. How do you use visitor and conversion metrics?
Increase your
conversion rate Increase your
traffic
Visitors 1000 1000 2000
Conversion Rate 1% 2% 1%
Conversions 10 20 20
Base
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10. How do you use visitor and conversion metrics?
Increase your
conversion rate Increase your
traffic
Or both
Visitors 1000 1000 2000 2000
Conversion Rate 1% 2% 1% 2%
Conversions 10 20 20 40
Base
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You can apply mini-conversions to your Web site
 Learn–looking at and Learners
becoming familiar with your Learn
offerings
Shoppers
 Shop–placing items in the Shop
shopping cart
Buyers
 Buy–entering and Buy
completing the purchase or
checkout process Customers
11 © 2010 Mike Moran

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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?
Land
Online PC Consulting?
Land
Sales?
Learn
Learn
Use
Shop
Engage
Get Select
Buy
Some sites lead to offline activity

14. 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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15. Use SEO to drive conversions
 How many search visitors come to buy?
 The right search result puts the visitor in the ―Learn‖
Search stage to view a product page.
 How many customers that view a
Learn product page put items in their
carts?
Use
 And how many check out?
Shop
 Multiply by your average revenue
Get and you have the impact of search
on revenue.
Buy
Increasing the success rate at any stage
increases the overall conversion rate
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16. SEO Project Management
Planning your SEO Program
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Choose the scope of your overall SEO program
 A single product
line? Digital Cameras
 Business unit? Home Theatres
DVD Players
 Country market?
Televisions
 The entire
enterprise? Time
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What are the basic steps of each campaign?
Get Pages
Indexed
 Make sure your pages are in the
search indexes
Choose
Keywords
 Identify the words that searchers use
to find you
Optimize
Content
 Use those words in the right places on
your Web pages
Attract  Create content that others will link to
Links
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Decide what tasks you must centralize
Task Functional Product- Multinational Conglomerate
Oriented
Targeting Central Central Extended Central
search engines
Planning Central Extended Extended Central
keywords
Reporting Central Central Central Extended
metrics
Defining Central Central Central Extended
standards
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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SEO Project Management
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 and
best practices
 Opportunity for additional training
 Work through specific problems to
get to a resolution
31 © 2010 Mike Moran

32. Large companies need a search marketing council
Central Search Team
Product Lines
Geographies AP EMEA Americas
Campaign Content
Best practices
development optimization
Paid Search Organic Search
Program Management Content Management
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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 own
languages:
 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 can
use 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 with
existing processes
whenever 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 If you see
referrals and
 Organic vs. paid conversions out
of sync, it can be
worth examining
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Use scorecards to “motivate” teamwork
Score each business
unit every month and
Search Engine Brand Unit Scorecard Worksheet
Unit: XX URLs: URL1, URL2, URL3
publicize the results
Keyword
keyword 1
Google Rank
1,2
MSN Rank
58
Yahoo Rank AOL Rank
1 1,2
AlltheWeb
1,2
Ask Rank
100
internally
keyword 2 1,2,6 70 1,5 1,2,6 1,2,6 29
keyword 3 1,2 45 1 1,2 1,2 65
keyword 4 1,2 3 1 1,2 1,2,10 4
keyword 5 3,4 2 2 3,4 3,4 1
keyword 6 18 13 16 20 18 18
keyword 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 1,2,3
keyword 8 3,4 4,6 3 3,4 4,5 12
keyword 9 1,2,10 1,2,3 1,9 1,2,10, 1,2,10 2,4
keyword 10 1,9,10 100 1,7 1,9,10 2,3,4 50
keyword 11 2,3,4 0
Estim ated Searches 2,3
Current 2,3,4
Missed 0
Potential 0 Current
keyword 12 Keyw ord 1
Monthly 100
Annual 1
Visits 1
Visits 10% 1 25% 0 Google Rank
keyword 13 1,2 20 1 1,2 1,2 47
Keyword 1 59,130 709,560 591 58,539 5,913 14,783 25
keyword 14 10 100 9 10 27 100
Keyword 2 41,580 498,960 416 41,164 4,158 10,395 45
keyword 15 8 100 11 7 7 100
Keyword 3 40,050 480,600 401 39,650 4,005 10,013 22
Keywords with Top Keyword 4
10 Rankings 14 31,560 5 378,720 13 316 14 31,244 3,156
12 7,890
4 88
With KW List Size Keyword 5
Factor 0.93333333323,700 284,400
0.333333333 0.866666667 237 23,463
0.93333333 2,370 0.8 0.26666667
5,925 120
Keyword 6
With Browser Share Factor 0.46666666719,860 238,320
0.033333333 0.086666667 199 19,661
0.09333333 1,986 0.08 0.02666667
4,965 75
Number of Top 10 Rankings 7
Keyword 34 12,66012 151,920 20 127 34 12,533 1,266
31 3,165
7 46
Keyword 8 7,740 92,880 77 7,663 774 1,935 82
Keyword 9 6,210 74,520 62 6,148 621 1,553 38
Keyword 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
Increased Traffic Potential
Results Current 10% 25%
Visitors 2,437 24,372 60,930
# Leads @ 10% Conversion 244 2,437 6,093
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43. Mike Moran
Slowly change organizational behavior
 Change the rules
 Set benchmarks
 Review business unit scorecards
 Demand improvement
 Repeat
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44. Mike Moran
Summing up SEO Project Management
 Embed SEO into your marketing strategy
 Plan your SEO program
 Make SEO operational
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