PowerPoint Presentation

High Growth SEOMaximising your impact when youre short on time or money1HouseTrip

VC backed Hyper Growth Travel Start-up

+200 Staff, +250,000 holiday properties to rent

+4 Million nights sleep booked to date

One of Europes fastest growing Travel Tech companiesA little about meContact: sdance@housetrip.com

Im not active on Twitter (@simondance), Google+ or Facebook (more on this later), but you can find me on Linkedin

Were going to move FAST. So come and have a chat if you have any additional questions.

SEO is turf war

In many verticals, including holiday rentals, its head to head.Its In-house vs. bigger in-house team vs. bigger spending player vs. mega agency pumping out paid links and guest posts.This deck centres on high growth tactics, even if youre the underdog.

Youre in an SEO space raceWe want high visibility, traffic and revenueAcross all of our categories/ destinations /productsAcross all our major marketsBetter than anyone elseFaster than anyone elseWith a small teamWith less budgetFuture proof*5

You can either accept mediocrityOr you can get in the ring

30 high-growth slides, you can move on NOW:

Understand the pillars of SEO growth (content, technical, links)The make up of search demand Conversion, Traffic, AOV and the output of revenueClusters keywords together Understand WHERE the volume isFocus on WHERE the revenue isCreate a framework around StatesFocus8Understand Demand & RevenueUnderstand HOW demand is made upThink categories not keywordsChoose WHERE youre going to competeUse PPC data to model revenue value of keywords and categories.Build an opportunity index Build a pivot table. The output is REVENUE focused, not keyword obsessed.

Layer in as much data as you can.

Then GO.

Take markets not just keywords

Understand Demand & RevenueClusters keywords together (by landing page)

50% of revenue = 25 landing pages30% of revenue = 180 landing pages20% of revenue = 2500 landing pages

Balance big revenue chasing with taking low hanging fruit.

Dont be penny wise, dollar stupid.

Mine. Mine. Mine.Mine SEM data. Obvious but rarely actionedSystematically take SEM keywords with conversion Bubble these into the SEO workflow11

Build a framework of focusRevenue not rankingsA, B, C category landing pagesTop 10, Top 50, Top 250 keywordsRed, Orange, Green states$ Opportunity vs. $ ActualKeywords in striking distance

Build a framework of focusUnderstand the opportunity indexLook at your A, B or C categoriesUnderstand what revenue youve achievedUnderstand whats left on the tableContinue to validate your data modelUse visibility scores to understand if youve capped out

Create a compounded weekly growth %Commit to itSuggest 1-2%Compounded growth = +52% YoYEvery week challenge yourselfCreate a weekly task list centred on the %Ask yourself every morning:

Is what I'm doing going to grow the percentage

Ruthlessly focus on SEO

Drive

ImpactWe have TheWorking Time DirectiveWe know about work life balance Or the work/wife balance (as my wife says!)

Parkinsons law states Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

I hear excessive working time is cited as a major cause of stress, depression and illness

I say: Success takes TIMEI needed to make time for success, and work twice as fast as my competitors.This involved. Leave the house at 8amSEO reading during the commute. Work by 8.45amStands up10-20 minute lunch breaksMeetings must have agendasDashboards focus on driving insightBatching emails (usually on my phone)Maximising my effective time.Focused on the growth %Success takes timeMaximise your effective time (and your impact)How do my competitors spend their time?

How much effective time do they REALLY have every day? 2 hours? 3 fragmented hours?Output = 6 effective hours per day.

Im 3 times more impactful than my competitors

If you can save 30 minutes per day, think where you could invest this time to grow the SEO percentage.

Dont forget. A burnt out SEO is good to nobody.

Focus on the growth % every day. And leave on time.

Relax. Then return to the race the following morning.

You can also take this further through automation, delegation and education.

Empower others to maximise their own effectiveness.

Output = 6.5 effective hours per day.

Im 3 times more impactful than my competitors.

If you can save 30 minutes per day, think where you could invest this time to grow the SEO %.

Dont forget. A burnt out SEO is good to noone.

Focus on the growth % every day. And leave on time!

You can also take this further through automation, delegation and education.

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Always look to accelerate velocitySpeed to market is vitalKeep accelerating velocityHire smart graduates or students.Hire a sidekick not an intern4-8 week placementsFocused on growthNo busy work. No tea makingSupplement low salary for HIGH motivation

Challenge your link velocity. Are you at your ceiling? Or are you playing it safe? 5 links per month? 30 links? 100! How many landing pages can you handle?

Understand cause and effectfastTraffic is up:Which page?Which page type?Visibility improved?Which keywords improved?New landing page or old one?New feature release?Google Update?Link powered growth?Content powered growth?

What caused the uplift?

Cause & Effect:Winners & LosersTraffic by page typeVisibility scores (%s)Daily ranking reportsLog of new pages driving trafficChange Log (Internal & External)MozCastLink Master Sheet (links added by date)Link monitoring (removed/ added)Google Analytics AnnotationsServer log analysis

This makes it easy to look back at deployments, initiatives and activities particularly when you're running at full speed..

Also investigate: Robotto.org, Buzzstream, ahrefs & GA Intelligence Events Mine server logsUnderstand crawl patterns from GooglebotPivot chart server response codes by pages crawledIdentify crawl issues, and errors.Monitor crawl by page types (Products or Categories)

Mine your logs for linksGo and do this tomorrow. Easy linksExtract referring URLs pointing to non 200/301 status codes

Five columns: DateReferring domainReferring URL (full referring URL)Page/ URL/ file requestedServer response code

Output = Links to repoint, pages to recreate or old URLs to 301This file will potentially be large, so please filter the server response code to non 200 response codes and non 301. I'm interested in 404's, 500's and 302's ONLY.

20Dont build links. Build a followingWho is the most authoritative person / publication / site that youd like to target?What do they already share? like? read? What would THEY (not you) find incredible?What would they share?Whats in it for them?

Challenge yourself. Ive pitched 125 slide decks.Output = incredible. AIM HIGHYou get: Links with referral traffic and conversion

Dont BUY links. Buy access to audiencesAsk yourself. What is more potent?

A paid for (anonymous) guest post or links?

Or a high value (branded) piece of marketing, as a result of a collaboration you did with a blogger?

Paying for links fuels a terrible economy. So instead of buying links, invest your time and money in creating stories, assets, pieces of marketing which will resonate with their audience, and then leverage bloggers to amplify those stories.

Buy access to their audience.

Bloggers win. You win. Plus, you build your brand/influence (not just links).

Make growth part of the productThink bigger than technical, content and links.Think less like an SEO, more like a marketer Build a Product youre proud ofBuild features your users will love

Make growth part of the productInvest in assets which will get pick up by target publications that resonate with your audience

Share data you uniquely ownTell a story only you can tell

Inspiration:adzuna.co.ukMomondoMixlr.comTransferWiseMonocle Magazine

24Centre the business on SEO growthAlignment between Product + Marketing is like Semtex for GrowthInfluence the Product roadmap Attend weekly Product meetingsBe a stakeholder in EVERY releaseExploit synergies between departments (biz dev, customer service)

Open up SEO metricsShare internal success storiesChallenge the PR team to deliver incredible linksTake a DEV/PM to a conferenceInfluence hiring

Demonstrate SEO profitabilityChampion its importance to the business

You are NOT an SEO.. You are a marketer that happens to work online. (Youre also a salesmen).

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Start a movement

Alignment about things we ALL care about:

Our customersGrowthMetrics that matterProjects we collectively want to deliverThe company WE want to build.I started the Inbound Academy: Monthly session with Product, PR, Business Development, Business Intelligence and the Development teamGo further. Train staff and start an SEO bookshelf26

Cake, beer and respectOne of the single biggest wins is to centralise the Marketing, Product and Development team.I've bought bottles of wine, national flags, lunch, biscuits and coffee.Build a culture which races toward milestonesA culture where everyone can see their part in building something meaningful.Use (non SEO) brain power to solve SEO issues.

Panda. Thin Content. Nightmare.Solve challenges with creativityYou want content on your category pages.You want to nurture/qualify your customersYou want to maintain (and ideally improve) conversionYou want to hoover up longtail trafficYou want this content to attack the headYou want a solution which has scalability baked inYou want to distance yourself from spun content (which is getting clamped down on)You want to put it on auto pilotWith a little creativity, you can solve a lot of these challengesIncentivised reviews. Discount codes.Gamification tactics to encourage actionLeverage reviews from deleted/noindexed productsComments on category pagesCategory Q&AUser curated lists / Expert guides

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But dont forget: Scalability can lead to standardisationPeople dont share ordinary

Bake Technical SEO into the ProductWrite redirection rules to solve errors at scale Read Ian Luries post on Levenshtein DistanceSet rules governing when pages are created, indexable, linked to, added to XML sitemaps.Set rules for page states (email me when a page is upgraded/downgraded.. Dont LOSE out of stock product opportunities (cross selling, conversion, SEO)Explore data driven approaches to your internal navigation (BAKE scale in) plus push extra links to pages in anticipation of seasonal peaks.

Bake SEO growth in (UGC = comments, reviews, articles, Q&A, user guides)

Leverage site search dataSet up a GA advanced segment for questions: Keywords Who|what|why|where|how are their content opportunities?

Build a process.

The land is shifting

Paid linksGuest postsPress ReleasesArticle marketingTargets as well as Tactics being exhaustedSite consolidation, mergers, acquisition Top 1000 sites dominating SERPsGoogle pushing into verticalsIncreasing pressure on Organic resultsDecline of desktop, growth of MobileWhat happened to the SERP?

How do you cut through?How future proof are your rankings?How can you become entrenched?Take the market.Ranking for keywords isnt enough. To win, youve got to take the market.

Critically review the match between the keyword category your targeting and your landing pages/site

You not only want to create the BEST match for the query, but you want to align yourself as the BEST site on the internet Influence up. Champion NPS, Branding and the BIG push on INBOUND (not interruption)

Short term:

Craft the best page, which qualifies prospects (comprehensively covering the keyword set) and has the potential to earn links (and coverage from publications respected by your audience)

Post hummingbird, explore bolstering existing or creating new landing pages

Think BIG

Long term:Dont just be driven by data. Be driven by vision

Dont let anything get in the way of the company you want you build.

Google Authorship and the push on verified links (as opposed to anonymous citations) hints at the future. So centre yourself now.

Ask: How do we pour petrol on the idea?

Challenge ideas. Move from good to great.Then move from great to incredible.You want to build SEO, links and content that youre proud of.You should want to build competitive defence. A moat.

Get a second set of eyesHire consultants (one off)Hire the best people in the worldCall them on Clarity (call me clarity.fm/simondance)Buy them a coffeeSolve their challengesAttend conferencesNetwork

Validate and accelerate your vision

More important than all of this:More important:Than all of your knowledge, your experience and your ideas, is your ability to EXECUTE.Thank you for your timeSimon DanceSEO Director, HouseTripEmail: sdance@housetrip.comTel: +44 (0)7724042350Skype: s.e.dance