Process Owner: Brooke Neuman
Last Updated: Feb 2024
Hi Team,
We’re excited to kick off the Organic Search strategy for [CLIENT]. In lieu of a separate Organic Search kickoff, we outlined below our “Keys to Organic Search Success” for the first 30 days. Collaboration and alignment on the items below will be key in making sure our Organic Search strategy is a success.
Appreciate the collaboration in advance!
Month #1 Keys to Success:
Competitive Keyword Gap Analysis: This Month #1 deliverable entails an in-depth sitewide analysis that analyzes current Organic Search performance against top competitors to identify net-new and quick win opportunities we can target to close the gap in market share & areas in which we can improve. We typically touch on items below (but not limited to):
Historical Organic Search Performance & Goal Setting
Current Keyword Landscape
Winning & Losing Product Verticals
Competitive Market Share
Brand Priorities
Biggest Areas of Opportunity
Stakeholders: Stakeholders that typically join include the following: Brand & Content teams, Digital Site/Product Merchandising, etc.
Competitors Provided:
[Client] Competitors:
[Competitor]
[Competitor]
[Competitor]
Meeting: Requires 1hr presentation
Action Item: Please let us know who from your team you’d like to be included in our Competitive Keyword Gap Analysis meeting.
Technical Audit: The purpose of the Technical SEO Audit is to ensure that the website has a strong technical foundation to maximize the Organic Search potential. The audit identifies issues that can adversely impact how easily search engines can crawl and index the website. Identified issues will be prioritized by impact and include recommended solutions. Based on the website CMS the strategy can include:
Full website crawl and analysis
XML sitemap review & optimizations
Robots.txt review & optimizations
Schema markup analysis
Stakeholders: Engineering and/or web development team members are required to join, as technical items are discussed in which PDM may need context.
Meeting: Requires 1hr presentation
Action Item: Please let us know who from your engineering and/or web development team you’d like to be included in our Technical Audit meeting.
Deliverable Approval: Prompt approval & feedback on Organic Search deliverables is important. Typically, feedback will be heavier in Months #1 & #2 as we’re still getting to know the brand & its positioning. We will be sending deliverables via email (or slack if preferable) on a monthly cadence for approval. No optimizations will be pushed live to the site without prior client approval.
Action Item: Please let us know who from your team will be approving SEO & Content deliverables.
Implementation: Prompt implementation of Organic Search recommendations is key, as optimizations can take anywhere between 3-6 months to see results. Client’s that allow us to implement on their behalf tend to see better results!
PDM has web development resources who can handle implementation for the majority of Organic Search recommendations (for example; metadata, on-page content optimizations, blogs, etc.) via [INSERT CMS].
A couple options that we typically offer clients;
PDM can upload changes to a staging site, which is then pushed live by your web development team
PDM can handle all implementation (within reason) with approval of proposed changes
Client can choose to handle all implementation & PDM can QA after it’s pushed live
Action Item: Please let us know what option you’d like to move forward with. If you’d like us to implement on your behalf, we'd need access to your [INSERT CMS] backend.
Content Production: We want to nail your voice! To ensure that our writers embody the brand’s voice, please share any Brand Guidelines, Copy Do’s & Don’ts, etc. that you think would be valuable for our team to reference when developing blogs and on-page copy.
Action Item: Please share Brand guidelines with PDM team