So you’re starting a new blog, website or your assigned to a site that is new to you. What is the very first thing you do? Look at the on-page? check the keywords? Check the pages indexed? Backlinks? What’s really the very first thing you need to do before you even think about SEO?
I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best and one of them was my former boss, friend and mentor at Fox Interactive, Bill Maciatis. I could talk all day about Bill and the countless lessons I learned from him ( I’ll push you a link to his public LinkedIn profile at the end) but for now I’ll just say that Bill was all about ‘RESULTS”. He taught us that it’s all about the numbers and he would often say, I don’t care if you work from home or you want come to work in your bath robe and slippers, as long as you keep your numbers up, I’m happy.
I remember a story he told us that stands out in my mind till this day – this was back in ‘07 btw… He was talking about the Bears (Bill’s a big sports fan from Chicago) and how no matter how great the coach is, at the end of the season if the team doesn’t perform, make the playoffs and make it to the Superbowl (Which is coming up in just a few weeks actually) someone’s going to have to pay. There going to find a new coach.
With that said, the first thing that he, back then, and I today advocate, before you even think of SEOing a site, is to know how you will measure RESULTS. i.e.
- Is there an analytics platform in place?
- What metric will you use (and be evaluated by) to determine results?
- Do you have access to it ( login / someone to send it to you on a weekly stats)?
- Have you created a baseline?
Creating a baseline is your starting point. If you have a brand new property, your baseline is ‘0′. The good news is the biggest opportunities for growth lie with new properties. Regardless where you are at in terms of SEO maturity for your site, the things to remember are; don’t start SEO until you see where’s your starting point, document it (take a snapshot in excell or a screenshot) and make sure everyone is aware of it and agrees fully that that will be the number or metric that your efforts (your results, don’t forget) will be judged by.
Then, you can track what’s working on a MOM (% month over month) and YOY (% year over year basis). And this comes from the understanding that ideally, nothing in SEO or any type of online marketing is left to chance. You must test what’s working at all times and evaluate your level of effort against your results to see if what you’re doing is working and how well.
So in summary, to get RESULTS (as Bill Says…) you must know where you’re at to start with. And to know that, the first thing you do, is find the data that shows where the site’s at now, look at the traffic from search, and draw a line that says,
“SEO started here!”
Then share it with those you work for so everyone’s on the same page! (Thanks Bill! http://www.linkedin.com/in/bmacaitis )
…hope this helps! :)
Lawrence Touitou brings you the best SEO tools, tips and advice on his SEO blog: SEOWithoutBorders.org - a collection of some of the best, SEO best practices from the most prominent SEOs in the industry.
