The Key to Making Impactful Changes in SEO

This month's Searchlite intro written by SEO Analyst & Copywriter, Skye Sonnega.

Greetings!

I have to open this edition of Searchlite as a true Minnesotan and talk about the weather. Because, seriously, where is our warm and green spring?!

Even though the weather has been less than optimal, the Uproer team had plenty of fun in April. One of the highlights included a team trip to Top Golf. This outing revealed the true golf experts and the amateurs (I was the latter).

Shout out to the Ben B.'s for giving us coaching tips, and to John for crushing everyone. John claims he hasn't played since he was 14, but this is obviously a cover up…

In other news, I had the opportunity to interview Uproer's good friend, Nick LeRoy, for a series on the Uproer blog. You can learn more about Nick's career and advice to fellow search marketers here.

We have a solid line up of articles for you to dig into this month. Learn about Bing's ethical shopping hub, how to scale content, our favorite tweets, and more below.

Navigating Through Departments: The Key to Making Impactful Changes in SEO

by Wesley Flippo, for Moz

Key Takeaways: 

• SEO is unique in that it cannot operate in a silo
• Getting buy-in and facilitating interdepartmental cooperation is one of the biggest challenges in executing an SEO campaign
• It is the responsibility of marketers and SEOs to meet other departments where they’re at and communicate SEO initiatives in a way that speaks to their motivations

Why it Matters:
We wholeheartedly agree with Wesley that the most challenging part of SEO is not developing initiatives but rather the implementation process. The people involved in executing SEO often belong to a number of different departments, each of which has its own priorities. As SEOs and marketing professionals, it’s our job to advocate for SEO across departments and throughout the organizations we serve.

Bing's Ethical Shopping Hub Expands to U.S., Canada

by Danny Goodwin, for SEL

Key Takeaways: 

• Fashion brands with environmentally friendly products will now be able to showcase those features on Bing in the US and Canada.
• A “hub” of products that meets specific requirements like eco-friendly, fairtrade, recycled, organic,vegan leather, etc. based on three areas: people, animals and planet.
• A “hub” in shopping, and now integrated into search queries where relevant.

Why it Matters:
This feature allows for an awesome increase in visibility into areas of increasing importance to customers. What’s even better? We (the marketers) don’t have to use our ad text characters to do it! Sustainability and its importance for customers is only growing, creating the demand for brands to meet those expectations (and advertise it). This “hub” from Bing has allowed fashion brands to put those features right in front of customers and [hopefully] be rewarded for it [in sales].

How to Write a Strong SEO Hypothesis

by Emily Potter, for Search Pilot

• SEO is all about three key levers; Improving existing rankings, Ranking for more keywords, Improving organic click-through-rates (CTRs) independent of improving rankings
• Being able to test these levers through experimentation, we’re able to see the path forward with strategy without putting all our eggs in one basket. To do that, we’ll need strong SEO hypotheses.
• Building a strong SEO hypothesis starts with identifying which key lever you’re pulling and works down to identifying tactics that will move those. In this way, we can be sure we’ll have an impact that is easily rolled out site wide.

Scaling Content: Expanding From Bottom of Funnel to Top of Funnel [Geekbot Case Study]

by Daniel Levi, for Grow and Convert

Key Takeaways: 

• We love Grow & Convert’s approach to SEO because they’re always emphasizing bottom-funnel performance (e.g., conversions) over top-funnel fluff
• In this case study, their SaaS client’s bottom-funnel content drove 3x the conversions than their top-funnel content on 7x less traffic!
• G&C still advocates for publishing top-funnel content, but recommends prioritizing it appropriately against bottom-funnel opportunities

Why it Matters:
So many SEO strategies get hung up on top-funnel performance. Traffic, rankings and impression growth look great in reports and top-funnel content can make those metrics move quickly. Despite the value that top-funnel content can drive, it can be harder to measure and attribute than bottom-funnel content that is directly producing conversions. While bottom-funnel content won’t make your traffic stats explode, it’s a much better bet for customer acquisition.

The Difference Between Cross-Channel & One-Channel Search Marketing

by John Smith & Jaron Balgaard, for Uproer​

Key Takeaways: 

• Paid Search and SEO are often siloed into two separate channels. They’re not. They’re inextricably linked. In this post, we argue that undertaking a single search strategy opens the door to more impactful strategies on search.
• Paid search performance should only be evaluated based on the incremental lift it provides compared to organic search alone. And you should frame organic search performance against the total potential impression share with paid results included.
• The benefits of thinking about holistic search include keyword optimized pages, combined CRO efforts, and centralized reporting that focuses on the bottom line impact of search.

Why it Matters:
It’s clear combining SEO and SEM strategies can help performance across both tactics. The rising tide lifts all boats, and all. But we at Uproer are pushing for a deeper shift in thinking. We’ve come to think of search as a single channel. There’s one search bar. SEM and SEO are tactics in a broader search strategy, and we should care about how each of these tactics helps us improve performance from search overall. Don’t believe us? This article gets into our thinking and outlines some of the benefits of this perspective change.

Other Interesting Stories:

• Report from Ukraine: 8 Stories of Hope From the SEO Community

• How Calm Business is Using Content & SEO to Win B2B

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Free Tool of the Month:

• SEO Flowcharts for SEO Decision Making

Use Aleyda Solis' flowcharts to guide your own decision making in SEO projects, or use them to present your reasoning to clients and other stakeholders.

Found on Twitter:

• Lessons from 100K to 1MM Sessions

Learn how Michaela Mendes scaled a company's website traffic to 1+ million sessions per year while maintaining conversion rates along the way.

• Gender Gaps in SEO Publishing

Lidia Infante presents her findings from a study on the gender gap in SEO publishing. Find gender gap insights from some of your favorite SEO publications like SEMrush, Moz, and more.

• A Clever Way to Describe SEO to Non-SEO's

Read Debbie Chew's favorite analogy about SEO, and how she uses it to break down her work to family and friends.