SearchLite - How a Branded Content Tactic Increased Blog Traffic by 97% Y/Y

This month’s Searchlite intro was written by Sr. SEO Analyst, Skye Sonnega

Hello, hello!

 What a month for the team at Uproer! Spirits were high as we had the full team (almost) in town for the MN Search Summit at the beginning of the month. It was a great day full of networking with new and old search friends. Plus, Uproer was a sponsor this year!

Summer is off to a great start, and as usual, there are quite a few things to chat about in the world of search. This month we have an “Uproer-exclusive” newsletter, filled with articles written by Uproerians over the past quarter. Get useful tactics that you can try in your search strategies today, or read up on some exciting new changes we’ve been implementing internally. Let’s dive in! 

Tactics

What Saas Companies Get Wrong About SEO

By Dave Sewich, Sr. Manager, SEO & Operations

Key Takeaways

• Many of the tactics found in the conventional SEO playbook are poorly-suited to SaaS companies. Unfortunately, myths, misconceptions, and out-dated information about SEO abound in the SaaS space.
• These include approaches such as:
  • Prioritizing keywords based on volume rather than conversion intent
  • Forming a strategy around “SEO buckets” (technical, on-page, etc.) rather than business outcomes
  • “Optimizing” your way to ranking for ultra-competitive short-tail keywords
• It’s not all bad news, however, because there’s a robust playbook of strategic, repeatable tasks that do get results. Among them:
  • Outcome-driven search strategies
  • Addressing customer pain points
  • Targeting use case/jobs-to-be-done keywords
  • Attacking the bottom of the funnel with conversion-focused content

How a Branded Content Tactic Increased Blog Traffic by 97% Y/Y

By Skye Sonnega, Sr. Analyst, SEO

Key Takeaways

• Brand Indent Boosting (BiB) is the practice of leveraging blog content to increase your site's organic surface area, CTR, and traffic with indented brand search results.
• By planning “branded” articles around new product publish dates, we were able to enhance our client’s product search listings while also boosting blog traffic. 
• Having a partnership with your brand team, along with thinking outside of the box when it comes to search volume and Google features like indented results is the recipe for success. 

Creating Content With Purpose: A Holistic Approach to Search

By Brenna Miles, Content Specialist

Key Takeaways

• Content is often approached as if it’s just another box to check. Unfortunately, this transactional approach to content development is detrimental to your search marketing efforts.
• For the best results, you must create content with purpose, strategically, by taking a holistic approach.
• Taking a holistic approach means stopping “random acts of content,” eliminating the “beef” between SEO and SEM teams, and using all forms of organic and paid content to build a cohesive search strategy. Trust us: it gets results!

Actionable Insights: The Best Way to Report Performance

By Brenna Miles, Content Specialist

Key Takeaways

• When it comes to reporting, you should strive to never hear your clients say, “so what?” when presenting your data. A client that doesn’t understand the data is a client that may not see the value you provide.
• The solution? Delivering actionable insights over slides of numbers and figures. An insight has three elements: a truth, an observation, and a discovery (you’ll have to click in to find out more 😉).
• There are several steps to creating an “insightful” report (we share them all inside). However, if there’s one key to showcasing your value, it’s this: speak your client’s language. Align on and report on the KPIs that matter most to them and deliver those insights in a way they understand.

How We Work at Uproer

Measuring Career Growth in Search Agencies

By Jess Girardi, Sr. Manager, SEO & Talent

Key Takeaways

• Career growth is so important to team growth and satisfaction. Uproer has always prioritized team happiness and growth over scaling unsustainably, and we wanted to be sure that we were absolutely clear and transparent about that. So we built our skills matrix.
• Before we built our skills matrix, we had a graded solution (think middle school math grading), and our progression wasn’t mapped to compensation or title - something that is super important to being a transparent company.
• Most importantly, our new matrix leaves room for the "magic middle" - meaning while there’s guardrails in place, folks can build their own career and make it their own. Because who likes being micromanaged about their long term career? 
• Read this post if: you’re looking to grow your career, you’re a manager or leader, or you’re looking for a way to improve your soft skills in search marketing.

How Hiring Content Specialists Transformed Our Search Agency

By Skye Sonnega, Sr. Analyst, SEO & Jess Girardi, Sr. Manager, SEO & Talent

Key Takeaways

• Content plays an important role in our strategies at Uproer, but without a content team, we found ourselves hitting a production and quality ceiling. 
• After finding that content management was one of the biggest pain points for our analysts, we decided to build a team of Content Specialists at Uproer. 
• Today, our content specialists improved our client engagement structure, time and brain power was given back to analysts, and we are able to scale content production for clients. 

Reducing Meeting Fatigue – Could This Be an Email?

By Sofie Walz, Analyst, SEO

Key Takeaways

• Too many meetings have become a major source of fatigue and frustration for employees, whether they are working in the office, remotely or anywhere in-between, and this is causing feelings of decreased productivity and burnout.
• We use an intentional communication framework that encourages a well-written email or Slack message in lieu of a meeting that otherwise would take up more time than it would to craft a written message that serves the same purpose.
• We found that setting up recurring meetings and having a rolling agenda doc for these meetings has been critical to ensuring that we are using our time (and our clients’ time) effectively.