The 4-step SEO framework that led to a 1000% increase in traffic
Let’s talk about blogging and SEO.
I see many folks start out blogging a bit here and there and they end up spending a fair amount of time (and money) and don’t really get anywhere.
This affects everyone ranging from solo-preneurs all the way up to enterprises.
It all boils down to one problem: they don’t have a clear strategy and plan.
SEO does work, if you have a plan from the start.
I’ve seen this firsthand and not in a gimmicky way. I’ve been doing SEO professionally for 4+ years and built an SEO strategy coaching and software company to help marketers and founders make better decisions when it comes to SEO.
Let’s talk about a key word there: decisions.
What is strategy?
Strategy is a set of intentional decisions you make to reach a goal.
That’s it.
Blogging or backlinks are great as tactics, but they are not a strategy in themselves.
I first learned about strategy as a product manager where I was tasked with building a roadmap and product that would make my company a leader in its space.
I realized that this tracked pretty well with SEO: your website is a product after all and by thinking strategically you too can win in your space. Intentionality and thinking about your website like a product are the key ingredients that will separate you from the rest of the pack on Google (or your search engine of choice).
I like to break strategy down into 4 key decisions. This is the same framework I use one:one and teach in groups and it’s led to 1000% increases in traffic from Google for my clients and I'm sharing it with you.
1: What is your goal?
If you ask most people what their goal is with SEO/blogging the usual answer is “more traffic” or “leads”.
That’s a pretty vague goal.
How much do you want to increase traffic by and in what timeframe? What do you want that traffic to do on your website? These are far more interesting questions, and a better foundation for your strategy.
In marketing we call these SMART goals, which means they are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Actionable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
It’s not just a handy acronym, it’s a helpful framework for thinking about SEO as it relates to your business. Good goals also help you stay accountable and keep you on track.
Sample goals could be:
- Increase organic traffic by 300% in the next 6 months
- Increase organic monthly leads by 200% this year
- Improve average rank for target keywords by 50%
Once you’ve got a clear goal, it’s time to get your hands dirty and reach it.
2: Who are you going after and what are they asking online?
Google search results are an intersection of 2 questions:
- Who is doing the searching?
- What are they searching for?
The better you can understand your ideal customer profile and the questions they ask online, the more targeted (and effective) your content will be.
I start with a buyer persona and list out the core responsibilities, goals, and challenges they face then use a mix of Quora, Reddit, and keyword research tools to understand how their questions change throughout the buyer’s journey.
I always start with Quora first to get a sense of the questions people are asking and how they phrase them.
Then I’ll start plugging those questions into a keyword research tool (like the one we built at Centori) to dig deeper into search volumes, difficulty, and find related keywords.
The key here is to also track how those questions change throughout the funnel.
This helps you ensure your content is appearing at different stages for your personas, and also makes it easier for you to lead your personas through your website to give you money for your product.
I’m getting ahead of myself a bit though because decision #3 is all about content.
3: What unique content resource are you going to create for your ideal customer profile?
Once you have all the questions mapped out you’ll likely spot trends and be able to identify content opportunities - blog posts, landing pages, articles, or other resources you can create that will serve your customer better than your competitors.
It doesn’t always have to be blogging though, I’ve seen dramatic increases in traffic from creating landing pages and articles.
I remember when my wife and I were in the market for our house. We were looking into fixer-uppers that would be a bit less competitive to buy and I was curious about what it would cost for various home repairs (new roof, hardwood floors, recessed lighting, you know the drill).
Time and time again Home Advisor was at the top of Google.
And it was because they had this massive resource of content that went in-depth into the costs for various home repairs such as:
- How much does it cost to remodel a bathroom?
- How much does it cost to install a window?
- How much does it cost to install countertops?
They didn’t write a series of blog posts on “the best color to paint your home in 2022”, instead they thought strategically and created content to answer a very specific (and wide) set of questions that their target persona (someone purchasing a home for the first time) might ask.
And it is brilliant.
They mapped out the most popular home improvement projects and had in-depth, authoritative content that answered them in detail.
Get creative and think about your website like a product, this will allow you to create content that serves your ideal customer better than your competitors.
4. How are you going to measure the effectiveness of this?
Google Analytics and Google Search Console give you 99% of what you need.
Together you can use them to track how your content appears in search results, how much traffic you are generating, and what that traffic is doing on your website to build your business.
There are 4 reports you absolutely must get in the habit of tracking:
- Organic traffic and top organic pages
- Top events driven by organic traffic (things like demo requests, subscribers, sign ups, etc)
- Pages not getting much, or any, traffic from Google
- Pages that are ranking highly, but not getting many clicks from search
The first three are easy enough to do in Google Analytics, just apply a filter for ‘organic traffic’ and start digging into content and events. The last report can be found by looking into Google Search Console and filtering for pages that rank on the first two pages of Google and ordering by click through rate (CTR).
And that’s it
4 key decision and you’re well on your way to an SEO and content strategy that is intentional and targeted.
By understanding your customers, creating content that addresses their questions, leads them down the funnel, and measuring your strategy along the way you are lightyears ahead of most companies still following best practices from 2005.
If you made it this far, what unique content resource are you creating on your website? How is it translating to traffic and your audience?
This is really helpful. I think taking vague goals and making them specific is the right approach.
Here's where I might tweak things: Your example goals (increased traffic, leads, page rank) are outcomes, which you don't have direct control over. It's like a sports team setting a goal: "Win the championship this year." That's great, but how are you going to do it?
So I'd rather think of goals in terms of habits--the things you have control over:
GOAL: Identify a keyword and write 2500 words on the topic each week.
GOAL: Review one previously written post each week to edit for improved SEO.
(I don't know what the actual steps would be, but I'd be looking for goals that I have more control over.)
Glad it was helpful!
Much of this framework comes from my background as a product manager building strategies and using OKRs.
OKRs force you to focus on outcomes first and use initiatives strategically to achieve those outcomes. I feel it makes the initiatives much more purpose-driven and forces you to make tough choices.
For example: personally, my goal is to scale my business it to a place where I can comfortably quit my full time job. In order to do that there are various things I am doing like:
These are all things I can control, but they are not goals in of themselves. The goal is to quit my day job, so I am performing a series of tactics/habits to get me there and measuring their effectiveness.
If your goal is just to blog once a week, the two issues there are:
The reason you are blogging once per week is to grow your organic traffic/subscribers/leads and that's a great goal because you can then measure how effective/impactful blogging once per week is at achieving those goals.
Good one, Why don't you focus on content marketing???
It's one finest way to get genuine traffic & you get quality leads also.
Thanks Joel!
This is a framework for how to approach content marketing more effectively. By setting goals and identifying your personas your content marketing campaigns will be MUCH more effective.
That's an excellent idea @tscionti
I use this same process and it’s so effective. It can also be used for any other marketing strategy, not just SEO. In fact, I’m currently building a marketing app around this process so I’m glad to see other with the same conviction in it.
That's awesome! I'd love to check it out :)
Nice content, I feel this holds good for everything that we sell.
Wow, thank you so much Tyler!
We are currently at the point of getting that user traction, and SEO definitely is part of that, along with other pieces of the puzzles we are uncovering as we're going along.
Thank you for the lesson of the day! I'll bookmark this article to get back to once we're ready to work on the strategy (hopefully in a few weeks).
Super glad to hear it!
Well put.
IMO the true challenge is producing quality content on a consistent basis esp as an indiehacker.
I am focusing more on community building as that is where the money is right now.
Building your own list is a great way to do that.
Thanks! Totally agree there, plus it can vary by niche.
Good on you for finding the channels that are generating results, SEO is only one piece of a growth strategy and for some it can be a small piece and they'll still be super effective.
hey @tscionti, thanks a lot for the write up. i appreciate seeing all the steps here, AND, i'd also love to see more specifics about how you did what you did.
like for the part where you talk about goals, you give 3 examples, but i'm curious about what your goal was and how you made sure that felt attainable. or who you were going after. Or, what was your "unique content resource". stuff like that.
for me that'd help this kind of info stick more. but either way, still very helpful.
Sure thing!
For goals, it depends on how you're using SEO to reach the goals of your business. I start here because SEO (or any marketing channel) is only valuable if it actually makes a difference and moves your business forward.
For 1000% traffic increase we just published a case study that goes into more detail on the specific goals of the client (https://www.centori.io/stories/how-narakeet-grew-traffic-1000-in-3-months-without-writing-a-single-blog-post-or-building-links). Their goals were to re-gain the organic traffic they had previously, and a target for monthly organic users.
As for the content resource, that depends on the type of customer you are looking to attract and the questions they are asking. In the example above we saw a clear opportunity for our client to be a leader in "text to speech" queries given the breadth of languages their software covered so creating pages for those was a natural choice.
For other clients we've pursed different directions (which will be shared pretty soon in future case studies :) )
yeah, okay that all makes sense. thanks for the link to the case study and for the time you took in answering! much appreciated. cheers!
How do you decide what type of content resource to use? I feel like articles are the go-to, but when should I try something different?
I hate to say "it depends" but it will depend on the customer profile you are going after and the questions they ask.
You can boil it down to:
In the Home Advisor example they systematically answered the question "How much does {{ home project }} cost?" and they were very effective at it.
For a client example, we wrote a case study recently (https://www.centori.io/stories/how-narakeet-grew-traffic-1000-in-3-months-without-writing-a-single-blog-post-or-building-links) for a text to speech video SaaS company.
With them we saw a clear opportunity for them to be a leader in "text to speech for {{ language }}" queries given the breadth of languages their software covered so creating landing pages for those was a natural choice.
Interesting, thank you!
Seems a lot more manageable when you break it down like that. Thanks 👍
That's the hope! SEO doesn't have to be hard, elements of it can be (like technical SEO and link building to an extent) but having a clear strategy can give you a big head start.
Indeed, in order to ensure the competitiveness of business in modern conditions, it is necessary to constantly monitor ongoing projects, as well as evaluate their effectiveness. To do this, you need to hire special people for this task, or use the services of Marketing Agency companies. In general, it is very convenient to cooperate with such companies because they can help you both create a project from the whole zero, as well as develop and improve it for a long time. In such a way you save your efforts and a lot of money.