Predicting SEO Growth in an Environment of Extreme UncertaintyCosmin Negrescu CEO SEOmonitor.com

@ncosmin @seomonitor

SEO reaches a new level of difficulty.

Similar to the startup world.

What is characteristic to startups is that they are

built in an environment of extreme uncertainty

An entrepreneur:• has a vision • sets a mission/goal • he believes in it • he does not stop until he

reached his objective

A startup’s growth can’t be predicted.The business is not based on a validated model that has historical data which can be extrapolated.

An entrepreneur knows when he starts but doesn’t know how the journey will go.

On the sea, you know when you are leaving but never know when you’ll be back, or if so. nautical saying

SEO is just the same.

You see the potential, you know where you want to go, but you don’t know how you will get there.

You see the potential, you know where you want to go, but you don’t know how you will get there.

As there are no rules that apply to all successful startups, there are no rules that apply to all SEO campaigns

What worked yesterday, is not necessarily working today.

And then you never know what Google will change.

“Not even Google can predict how exactly a new algo change will affect rankings.

Kelvin NewmanNo 1 most influential person in the Search Industry, 2014,UK econsultancy.com

Chaos Theory

People perceive SEO as being intangible, unpredictable.

More challenges for SEOs • convince budget owners to invest

in the SEO campaign • convince developers to implement

recommendations • work along with the marketing and

PR departments

The same thing happens in the world of startups.

Investors. Employees.No one will follow you if you don’t convince them that you can implement your vision and make it tangible.

They need to know:• the market size • the competition• the advantages• how you will build the

product • how you will monetize

The same principles can be applied to SEO.

Who I am and what I want to share with you today

Bunt Studio

Hosting

SEO

Web designAdwords

Web developmentSocial Media

The most important lessons I learned?

Lesson 1: Blue Ocean Strategy

Lesson 2: Focus

SEO • most of the profits • opportunity of the Blue

Ocean strategy.

What happened next?

• fired all my clients ~500.000 euro/year

• started to remodel my agency • loaned money from an investment

fund • started to sell SEO.

I had no idea about what challenges I will encounter but once I started that journey I couldn’t stop, I had to succeed.

One more thing.

In 1 year we became the leading SEO agency in our market.

After 3 years We are now delivering more than 100 campaigns / year and for over 90% of them we are over the promised results.

TodaySEOs and agencies that are using our product SEOmonitor.com and are adopting our approach.

What I’m going to share with you today? • how we communicate SEO • how we sell • and achieve the goals

• Freelancers • Digital Marketers • SEO specialists • Agencies

These SEO principles will work for you.

An SEO campaign is like a Startup

Just like a startup, an SEO campaign needs a pitch

When entrepreneurs are building a startup company they need to prepare a good pitch.

• put their idea and plan on paper • convince investors to put their

money at stakes • motivate their team to follow

An SEO has to do the same:

• convince the budget owners to invest in their project

• and the team to help them implement the recommendations.

A successful pitch should emphasise the following:

• market size • competition • differentiator • plan • team

Failing to pitch is the reason most ideas are not being implemented.

And failing to pitch SEO campaigns is the reason most clients or budget owners are saying “No” to SEOs.

We consider that it is our job to make SEO tangible and easy to understand for our clients.

And here is how we do it.

The Market Size and Competitors

to quantify the market opportunity

thorough keyword research

identify most relevant keywords

complete keywords list

ranks search volume + +

Visibility Score

Visibility Score• tells us for how much of that total search volume we are

visible vs. our competitors

• it took us hours or even days of work with spreadsheets before automating this process in SEOmonitor.com.

The weaknesses, the keyword opportunities and the plan

identify the weak spots

analysing our client’s websites against competitors

opportunities to improve it.

Website Analysis

estimated visits that a keyword can generate

opportunity the difficulty to get to the top

Keyword Opportunities

We don’t know at this point what will be the impact, but we know it will definitely improve the website’s visibility.

And we make a plan

The next step of our pitch would be to present the team that will make this project successful.

• all the team members from our side • the client side

The team.

The Secret Ingredient

The Forecast

Yes, even in this challenging environment • with extreme uncertainty • without any reliable historical data to

extrapolate

we still need to do our best to create a realistic forecast.

It’s not that we are sure we can stick with it, it’s that we are sure we can find the way to achieve it.

And with this forecast we are now speaking our clients’ language.

They need to see the numbers and compare them with their investments in other online channels like Adwords and Social Media.

• put their idea and plan on paper • convince investors to put their

money at stakes • motivate their team to follow This turns your pitch into an “offer they can’t refuse”

Here is how we do it

1. Use Google Webmaster Tools extract the keywords that generate clicks

2. We divide the keywords in two groups, branded and non-branded

3. We focus on the non-branded keywords (as they are directly influenced by SEO) and we extract the seasonality of the keywords that already generate traffic, using Google Adwords data.

4. After that we forecast the traffic for 12 months as if there will be no change in the website visibility -> this will generate the non-brand organic traffic forecast without SEO improvements

5. Next step is to forecast the non-brand organic traffic if we successfully implement our SEO campaign

6. Then we use Google Adwords data in order to estimate how much the client would pay in 12 months to buy the same number of visits from Google Adwords on the keywords we selected to optimise.

In order to be a good proposal, the SEO budget should be less expensive than Adwords.

7. By using a machine (in our case SEOmonitor.com) you can merge the keyword data from Google Webmaster Tools with the traffic data from Google Analytics in order to get back the traffic and conversions on keywords with a good accuracy.

With this data the forecast can include visits/sessions, conversions and revenue, but remember the main role of Search Engines in the Inbound Marketing funnel.

The Inbound Marketing funnel

Think of it. When you research for products, you don’t take the decision immediately after you find the first one.

Next, I will talk about the process and mindset that we need in order

to achieve our SMART goals.

“Hope is not a strategy”!

Just like a startup, an SEO campaign needs management.

A new kind of management.

There is a new trend

He challenges the old management theories saying that

those cannot work in the context of a startup.

It’s too much uncertainty in order to stick to a 3-year plan.

A startup needs to experiment, to learn and to adapt.

He maintains that even so, a startup is an institution, not just a product, and it requires a new kind of management

specifically geared to its context.

Validated Learning A startup finds its path to success

empirically, using validated learning by running experiments that allow us to

test each element of our vision.

Validated Learning.

A startup finds its path to success empirically, using validated learning by running experiments that allow us

to test each element of our vision.

The same way an SEO will be able to reach his goals by continuously

experimenting and validating what works and what not.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.

And this is the basic problem that we need to solve in order to

successfully run an SEO campaign.

Innovation Accounting

To improve entrepreneurial outcomes, and to hold entrepreneurs accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: • how to measure progress• how to set up milestones• how to prioritise work.

This requires a new kind of accounting, specific to startups. The same applies to SEO campaigns.

The most important indicator here: Visibility Score.

This helps us understand when we improved our visibility and where in a fast and easy way.

So we can validate our actions and continue to experiment and improve.

It’s how many tests we run and validate that matters before starting to get traction and reach our milestones.

The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere.

All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop.

And all successful SEO campaigns should follow the same feedback loop.

An SEO campaign as a startup needs a specific mindset.

“I’m sure I can get there, I just have to find a path”

It’s not easy to be either an entrepreneur or SEO.

And only the mindset will determine if you will succeed in achieving the milestones and goals you set up.

In the end it is the energy and the determination of the entrepreneur that

make him succeed despite all the challenges that he is facing, and that is what motivates the team and the investors to continue to follow him

when it’s hard.

And talking about hardship

One last thing

The SEO is not a one-man job anymore.

Who works in SEO should have the mindset and the abilities of an entrepreneur, not just the SEO

technical skills.

Otherwise, it is hard to cope in this challenging environment.

Let’s sum it up

• SEOs should have the mindset of an entrepreneur

• You need to deliver a great pitch to convince budget owners to invest in your SEO campaign.

• Don’t forget about the secret ingredient: a realistic data-driven forecast

• You can’t manage what you can’t measure • Manage SEO “The Lean Startup” way • SEO is not a one-man-show anymore

Questions?Cosmin Negrescu

@ncosmin @seomonitor

www.seomonitor.com