Learning from the people who are well known in your industry is always worth it. So we have decided to reach 10 well-known SEO personalities and ask them about their day to day activities and the strategies to follow for the newly launched SEO agencies.
Here are the questions we asked:
- What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
- Suggested: What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
Let’s dive into the answers.
1) Cyrus Shepard
Website: https://zyppy.com/
Twitter: @cyrusshepard
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
Sounds simple, but I can’t believe the number of SEOs who don’t check traffic/rankings on a daily basis, or at least set up alerts. When something happens, I want to know NOW, not when I hear about it on Twitter, or when a client asks me about it and I’m unprepared. Obsessing over traffic has taught me to diagnose the tiniest details. Critics—those who are opposed to checking traffic daily—often question if obsessive behavior is worth it if it doesn’t drive action. To a degree, the critics are right in that when traffic is stable, 90% of the time checking doesn’t lead to action. But the 10% of the time that it does… whoa Nelly! Being able to see and act fast is a competitive advantage. Ask any Wall Street trader.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
Most success for new, small, and medium sized agencies come from word-of-mouth recommendations. There’s no other way around it. Word-of-mouth is what Rand Fishkin calls “flywheel” marketing. It’s difficult to get going at first, but once you get it started it becomes easier to maintain. For new agencies, this truth holds up. Your first clients are going to be your least profitable, yet you will need to work your hardest for them. Blood, sweat, and tears. But there’s another aspect that’s often overlooked. In addition to going above-and-beyond for your clients in order to gain word-of-mouth referrals, you also need to service enough clients in your portfolio to create a “network effect” - in order to get the flywheel going. Getting comfortable with one or two clients may feel good if it’s paying the bills, but your reputation may not be spreading enough to attract future clients. My last piece of advice: share your successes with the industry. Publish case studies, new insights, and client success stories. Associate yourself with success and people will believe it.
2) John Doherty
Website: https://www.getcredo.com/
Twitter: @dohertyjf
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
There aren’t SEO activities that I do every day, but I do look at data daily to see if I need to dig deeper and get distracted from the larger strategies I’m working on. I have a daily report from Google Analytics (for the previous two weeks) and I get a daily traffic report from SanityCheck.io. I also get a weekly site error and crawl report from SEMrush where I look for major things gone wrong.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
New agencies need to focus. I see entirely too many agencies trying to sell “digital marketing services” when really what they need to be selling is something much more specific like “SEO for ecommerce”. Companies die from indigestion not starvation, and if they can focus then they’ll attract more of those clients and spend less time with people for whom they won’t get good results.
3) Dan Sharp
Website: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/
Twitter: @screamingfrog
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
We have a variety of best practices and processes in place for different SEO activities we perform for clients. But I’d always recommend testing, rather than relying purely on best practice from elsewhere or a tool etc. Best practice isn’t always best, and real world testing, trial and error and research can really help improve your understanding and refine your skill sets.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
I’d recommend specialising and differentiating from the crowd to stand out and be the best at something. Don’t fall into the trap of doing everything, do just one or two things remarkably well. Very rarely are agencies known for being brilliant at everything, it’s generally a specific service line for a specific audience with an approach that is different to the rest of the market.
4) Andrew Dennis
Website: https://www.pageonepower.com/
Twitter: @AndrewDennis33
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
My best practices for day-to-day are to check Analytics and Google Search Console for any new(er) pages or projects to see how they are performing in regards to organic search. Google Search Console, in particular, can provide data on which way rankings, impressions, and clicks are trending for your pages. I also like to monitor Twitter to see if there have been any updates or major shifts in rankings, I follow a number of SEO-focused publications and personalities to keep my finger on the pulse.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
My recommendations for a new agency would be to focus on building out your reporting process/dashboards so you can clearly illustrate how you’re making an impact. SEO is a channel that is difficult to measure and you will need to be able to prove, and continuously re-prove efficacy if you want to keep clients and grow as an agency. Try to tie your SEO work (traffic growth, keyword improvements, link acquisition, etc.) as closely to conversions/revenue as possible to make the most compelling case for your services.
5) Julie Joyce
Website: https://www.linkfishmedia.com/
Twitter: @JulieJoyce
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
As someone who focuses almost solely on link building, I am most concerned with analyzing sites to see if they are a good fit for my client. When I come across a site or a specific article where I’d like a link I try to make sure that the content is well optimized. If something seems to be missing, I use that as a way to get “in” with the webmaster by pointing it out and offering some advice. Much of the time people don’t even realize that they have a broken image or link, for example. I also run through a list of all my clients each day to make sure their sites are up as things happen, and asking someone to link to a site that’s down is pretty poor. While I do check rankings occasionally, it’s not something I pay much attention to because almost all of my clients have a team already doing that, but I do take a look here and there.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
I have always valued employee feedback and think that the key to a successful experience is to make sure that employees know they can talk to the boss and ask questions or raise concerns. No one is right all the time and it’s important that employees feel comfortable stating an alternate position if they feel strongly about it. When we had more staff I used Survey Monkey on a monthly basis to get an anonymous picture of what my employees thought about how we worked and it was extremely valuable. It’s also really important to test. I like to test everything…is it more effective for me to do x for one hour then switch to y, or should I spend every Mon and Thur doing x and the other days doing y? With link building it can become very tedious so we’ve always tried to switch things up.
6) Aleks Shklyar
Website: https://ipullrank.com/
Twitter: @AleksAtWork
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
If you want to ensure that your site is performing well Organically, it is critical to monitor all the analytics tools as much as possible. A daily check of your traffic and revenue within tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics can help you get ahead of big changes. Oftentimes an algorithm update will be announced only days after it begins rolling out. If you have rank monitoring tools at your disposal, they are also great for signaling changes (whether positive or negative). Use this knowledge to identify issues you can fix immediately like a spike in 404 errors and general shifts that might require a long term strategic change.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
Do everything within your power to establish yourself as a trusted brand. Whether it’s speaking at conferences or hosting your own, many marketers who could be potential clients will explore the services you offer by attending such events. As you focus on marketing, though, continue to provide spectacular service to existing customers as their opinion of you will also determine your company standing in the industry. Whenever possible, turn this great work into marketable resources like white papers and case studies that you can later leverage for industry award submissions.
7) Kevin Indig
Website: https://www.g2.com/
Twitter: @Kevin_Indig
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
My day-to-day best practices include monitoring the right metrics and taking the appropriate action. I use output metrics like traffic to understand the quality of the input like content or links. But I focus primarily on input metrics and every day, I look at how input is going.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
Agencies that just launched should speak to customers. Their product is a service and like every company, they need to make sure to provide something the market needs and is willing to pay for. When you find something, offer it for a price and see if people are willing to pay for. If not, offer it for half the price. If they do, offer it for double the price to the next time. This way, you find your optimal pricing and offering.
8) Larry Kim
Website: https://mobilemonkey.com/
Twitter: @larrykim
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
I set up Google alerts of my brand and name mentions, then reach out to the author of the post to ask if they’d consider linking to my author page.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
Automate using smart and powerful tools. For example, agencies can use MobileMonkey chatbots (http://mobilemonkey.com) to automate lead notifications, lead routing, and lead alerts via email, mobile app, and webchat! Automating a lot of time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks can help you manage your time more effectively.
9) Oliver Sissons
Website: https://www.rebootonline.com/
Twitter: @sissons_oliver
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
A massive best practice that we are big on and see missed all too often is regularly checking the search intent behind the keywords that you or your clients are targeting. Many website owners are surprised to find out that for some keywords, the intent can appear to change over time. If you don’t adapt and adjust your content accordingly, you will quickly see top positions start dropping.
Another vital best practice that I use is to try and make sure that I am spending as much time on the search results pages and our clients website(s) as I am on third-party tools. Tools are great and can help you optimise your site more effectively, but the big breakthroughs will often come from noticing something your top competitors are doing that you aren’t which third-party tools won’t always pick up on.
Keeping the above in mind, having a good process to follow when onboarding a new client helps us identify key SEO issues early and deal with them quickly. Whilst your overall SEO strategy shouldn’t rely on any set and forget checklist, having a concrete list of things to check on a new website can allow you to move on to the bigger picture stuff a lot faster. Your process should take all the basics of both on-site and off-site SEO into account.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
I think one of the best strategies that newly launched agencies can implement is to encourage all of their staff to regularly spend time thinking about and analysing the bigger picture ideas within their area of expertise. A lot of agency strategies focus on establishing new standard operating procedures (SOPs) or improving existing ones when actually, clients will often benefit most dramatically from a smaller number of key insights that only a specialist agency can provide.
New agencies should also make sure that they are implementing strategies to foster creativity within their company. Creativity has always been essential for the best SEO campaigns and this is only becoming more true. At Reboot, our MDs Naomi and Shai Aharony make sure that we have processes in place to encourage creative thinking and problem solving.
Finally, new agencies should make sure that they put strategies in place early on that will allow them to scale their campaigns given the opportunity to do so. Strategies like tracking how much time is spent on repetitive tasks and the results generated by certain techniques compared to the amount of time and resources invested in them will help you greatly when dealing with new enquiries.
10) Ann Smarty
Website: http://annsmarty.com/
Twitter: @seosmarty
=> What are the best practices that you integrate into your day to day SEO activities?
The best tip I can give here is to invest into useful content creation that is backed by serious keyword research. And by that I don’t mean centering your content strategy around those keywords. Instead use those keywords as content ideas but optimize for search intent and the search context instead.
So the best practices are:
- Always search for a target query. Google gives lots of clues as to what they think searchers want to find. Look for video carousels, “People Also Ask” results, images, etc. Think how those elements can help you create better content. For example, answer questions from “People Also Ask” boxes within your copy, create a video version of your article and create useful images to use in your content.
- Use Text Optimizer to create content that matches the search intent. The tool users semantic analysis to identify underlying concepts and entities and lets you use them inside your copy. This way the tool encourages you to write better and more in-depth content.
=> What strategies should newly launched agencies implement to succeed?
- Make sure your different teams talk to each other and collaborate effectively. To create an effective SEO process, your technical department, content creation and outreach teams should be cross-integrated because they are inter-connected. For example, in most cases, link building teams rely on linkable content being created by someone else. And no content marketing campaign can exist without a working site.
- Foster self-education. Moz offers a variety of SEO courses that provide lots of new ideas on how SEO works and how to take your marketing services to the next level. The nicest thing is it is completely free.
- Master good analytical skills. Create custom reports in Google Analytics to estimate the true ROI of your SEO, track your website visitors’ conversions from the moment they first visit, all the way through the final sale and get detailed campaign analytics.
In a nutshell, SEO:
- Takes a lot of planning, so master better project management skills
- Includes diverse tasks so include more team members
- Always changes, so it encourages you to keep your team always up-to-date
- Never really ends… This is the best one. Your clients will stay with you forever because SEO is not really easy to quit.
What are your SEO activities & strategies in the year ahead? Share your thoughts in the comments!
