Post by sumiseo558899 on Nov 7, 2024 2:25:03 GMT -5
SEO has a number of properties that significantly complicate the quality control of its implementation. Firstly, search engine optimization for the customer often resembles magic and a black box. Cause-and-effect relationships between the actions performed and how this will affect the visibility of the site are not always clear not only to the site owner, but also to the SEO specialist. Since there is no single unambiguous recipe for "what to do to be in the TOP". Secondly, and this follows from the first, in the process of search engine promotion there is always a third party - this is the search engine. The absence of a single, well-known ranking formula in itself makes it impossible to "100% correct order of actions". And also no one is insured against PS errors, changes in ranking algorithms, etc.
Add to these reasons such as content writing service
dozens and hundreds of actively developing competitors, resistance of the site owner to changes - and you get the perfect lottery. You can definitely win, but the result is not guaranteed, and it is not clear how to increase your chances of winning.
Memes as a reflection of people's ideas about SEO
In this article, we will tell you how we controlled SEO contractors in these conditions of uncertainty, what cases we came across and why we need it at all.
Control methods
There are several possible ways to control the contractor's performance of his duties.
Work plan. A monthly strategy of what will be done in terms of SEO in the coming month.
Report on completed work. Fits perfectly with the work plan. Tasks were planned, tasks were completed. It is already known that the contractor did something for the SEO of the site.
SEO audit. You can do a lot of work every month, but what's the point if these are not the important tasks that will increase the visibility of the site? An audit is needed to identify all the missed growth points of the site.
Dynamics of changes. Work is carried out monthly, and shortcomings in the SEO audit are parried with the phrase "we plan to do this later". In this case, the method of control can be an assessment of the dynamics of changes on the site, that is, a comparison of what was on the site at the beginning of the reporting period and at the end of it. The number of new pages on the site, the number of changed tags and headings, new texts, the dynamics of the link mass and other variable parameters - if none of this has changed, then what changes on the site will lead to growth?
KPI. The number of leads, search traffic and positions are the ideal and closest methods for business to control SEO efficiency, which, however, are not without drawbacks. The number of orders could decrease due to the withdrawal of unique products from the range, traffic can stagnate due to seasonality, positions for a limited sample of queries are not an indicator of efficiency for the entire site, especially in the conditions of the "Multi-armed bandit". Of course, KPI is the goal that a business wants to get from SEO, and if there are no changes on the way to these goals, then this is definitely a reason to think about whether everything is being done correctly. However, it is worth evaluating the result of work on KPI very carefully and over periods of at least several months. This is due both to the delayed effect of SEO work and to the need to avoid incorrect conclusions in the assessment based on several days / weeks, which can be "noisy".
How we started doing this
The process of selling SEO services is often based on some of the above points. An audit showing the presence of many critical errors and shortcomings. Lack of dynamics in KPI. All this can incline the customer to change the SEO contractor.
However, not everything is always so bad. Contractors or in-house specialists who plan and execute their plans, who move in the right direction and increase KPI - also exist. And since we do not engage in deception, we speak honestly about this. Additional indication in such reports on the work of third-party contractors of possible growth points on the site leads to the fact that such an audit no longer acts as an argument for persuasion to change the contractor, but as a document-hint for current specialists.
All this led us at Original Work s to the idea of evaluating the effectiveness of contractors and monitoring them, without the desire to get this client for SEO. To formalize this as a separate monitoring service. In the pilot version, we did this for free for everyone who wanted it. About the cases encountered - below.
Case #1 - good
Subject: regional online shoe store.
The project has its own in-house specialist, and we were approached with a banal question: "What are we paying him for?" The audit showed:
The specialist makes a monthly report on the implemented changes. And they are actually implemented. But since the cause-and-effect relationship between the implemented changes and the orders on the site is not clear to the site owners, there is a misunderstanding and a feeling of useless work.
The conducted audit showed that there are no critical errors on the site and many, even non-obvious growth points, are involved. This indicates a high level of competence of the specialist. It is worth noting that in such an audit there will always be something that can be improved. Firstly, because site optimization is an endless process of searching and improving, and secondly, because there are different solutions for many points. As an example in this case: rel=canonical was set up for pagination with an indication of the first page, which is one of the solutions for setting up pagination. However, our standard is to make pagination unique, and this method is preferable since Yandex began adding non-canonical pages to the index. These are methods of different effectiveness, but they are not critical errors or indicators of the specialist's "laziness".
The project traffic is not growing, but most queries, including high-frequency ones, are in the TOP-10. A detailed analysis of the situation led us to the conclusion that the progressive monopolization of search results by search engines and the presence of federal giants in the results contribute to a decrease in traffic to the site, and an improvement in the position - an increase in traffic. The combined effect of these reasons gives constant traffic from search.
news
It's a sad picture, but the reasons also need to be looked into
Results:
the specialist was given strategic recommendations to improve the visibility of the resource;
the specialist was given recommendations to communicate in more detail to his employer the reasons for the processes occurring with the site;
The site owners were advised to continue working with a specialist, since without him, search traffic to the site would only fall.
Case #2 - regular
Subject: online store of dental instruments
In fact, this type of case is typical for most of the analyzed sites. The check showed:
The plan and report are provided only at the customer's urgent request. Some work is done, but it is not enough. Most reports are artificially "inflated", for example, by including screenshots of the code of modified meta tags.
The conducted audit contains many possible ways to improve the resource ranking. Only basic errors were corrected, such as eliminating duplicates and removing "garbage" pages from the index. At the same time, most of the semantics are not involved, and working with them comes down to rewriting meta tags on the same pages from month to month.
Traffic, as well as positions, as expected, do not change throughout the year.
Results:
increased control or a change of contractor is required, since the actions currently being carried out are not sufficient for successful progress.
Case #3 - bad
Subject: building materials
The owner of the site approached us with a non-trivial question: "We want to enter a new region and are creating a second site for this. Our in-house specialist requested a 2-fold increase in salary for promoting both resources . Is this justified?"
The very formulation of the question intrigued us
Considering that the assortment and structure of the site in the new region are planned to be identical, the optimal solution would be to create a regional subdomain or regional subfolder. And promoting a subdomain or subfolder on the same template as the main site is clearly not twice as much work. But the check revealed much more interesting nuances:
Add to these reasons such as content writing service
dozens and hundreds of actively developing competitors, resistance of the site owner to changes - and you get the perfect lottery. You can definitely win, but the result is not guaranteed, and it is not clear how to increase your chances of winning.
Memes as a reflection of people's ideas about SEO
In this article, we will tell you how we controlled SEO contractors in these conditions of uncertainty, what cases we came across and why we need it at all.
Control methods
There are several possible ways to control the contractor's performance of his duties.
Work plan. A monthly strategy of what will be done in terms of SEO in the coming month.
Report on completed work. Fits perfectly with the work plan. Tasks were planned, tasks were completed. It is already known that the contractor did something for the SEO of the site.
SEO audit. You can do a lot of work every month, but what's the point if these are not the important tasks that will increase the visibility of the site? An audit is needed to identify all the missed growth points of the site.
Dynamics of changes. Work is carried out monthly, and shortcomings in the SEO audit are parried with the phrase "we plan to do this later". In this case, the method of control can be an assessment of the dynamics of changes on the site, that is, a comparison of what was on the site at the beginning of the reporting period and at the end of it. The number of new pages on the site, the number of changed tags and headings, new texts, the dynamics of the link mass and other variable parameters - if none of this has changed, then what changes on the site will lead to growth?
KPI. The number of leads, search traffic and positions are the ideal and closest methods for business to control SEO efficiency, which, however, are not without drawbacks. The number of orders could decrease due to the withdrawal of unique products from the range, traffic can stagnate due to seasonality, positions for a limited sample of queries are not an indicator of efficiency for the entire site, especially in the conditions of the "Multi-armed bandit". Of course, KPI is the goal that a business wants to get from SEO, and if there are no changes on the way to these goals, then this is definitely a reason to think about whether everything is being done correctly. However, it is worth evaluating the result of work on KPI very carefully and over periods of at least several months. This is due both to the delayed effect of SEO work and to the need to avoid incorrect conclusions in the assessment based on several days / weeks, which can be "noisy".
How we started doing this
The process of selling SEO services is often based on some of the above points. An audit showing the presence of many critical errors and shortcomings. Lack of dynamics in KPI. All this can incline the customer to change the SEO contractor.
However, not everything is always so bad. Contractors or in-house specialists who plan and execute their plans, who move in the right direction and increase KPI - also exist. And since we do not engage in deception, we speak honestly about this. Additional indication in such reports on the work of third-party contractors of possible growth points on the site leads to the fact that such an audit no longer acts as an argument for persuasion to change the contractor, but as a document-hint for current specialists.
All this led us at Original Work s to the idea of evaluating the effectiveness of contractors and monitoring them, without the desire to get this client for SEO. To formalize this as a separate monitoring service. In the pilot version, we did this for free for everyone who wanted it. About the cases encountered - below.
Case #1 - good
Subject: regional online shoe store.
The project has its own in-house specialist, and we were approached with a banal question: "What are we paying him for?" The audit showed:
The specialist makes a monthly report on the implemented changes. And they are actually implemented. But since the cause-and-effect relationship between the implemented changes and the orders on the site is not clear to the site owners, there is a misunderstanding and a feeling of useless work.
The conducted audit showed that there are no critical errors on the site and many, even non-obvious growth points, are involved. This indicates a high level of competence of the specialist. It is worth noting that in such an audit there will always be something that can be improved. Firstly, because site optimization is an endless process of searching and improving, and secondly, because there are different solutions for many points. As an example in this case: rel=canonical was set up for pagination with an indication of the first page, which is one of the solutions for setting up pagination. However, our standard is to make pagination unique, and this method is preferable since Yandex began adding non-canonical pages to the index. These are methods of different effectiveness, but they are not critical errors or indicators of the specialist's "laziness".
The project traffic is not growing, but most queries, including high-frequency ones, are in the TOP-10. A detailed analysis of the situation led us to the conclusion that the progressive monopolization of search results by search engines and the presence of federal giants in the results contribute to a decrease in traffic to the site, and an improvement in the position - an increase in traffic. The combined effect of these reasons gives constant traffic from search.
news
It's a sad picture, but the reasons also need to be looked into
Results:
the specialist was given strategic recommendations to improve the visibility of the resource;
the specialist was given recommendations to communicate in more detail to his employer the reasons for the processes occurring with the site;
The site owners were advised to continue working with a specialist, since without him, search traffic to the site would only fall.
Case #2 - regular
Subject: online store of dental instruments
In fact, this type of case is typical for most of the analyzed sites. The check showed:
The plan and report are provided only at the customer's urgent request. Some work is done, but it is not enough. Most reports are artificially "inflated", for example, by including screenshots of the code of modified meta tags.
The conducted audit contains many possible ways to improve the resource ranking. Only basic errors were corrected, such as eliminating duplicates and removing "garbage" pages from the index. At the same time, most of the semantics are not involved, and working with them comes down to rewriting meta tags on the same pages from month to month.
Traffic, as well as positions, as expected, do not change throughout the year.
Results:
increased control or a change of contractor is required, since the actions currently being carried out are not sufficient for successful progress.
Case #3 - bad
Subject: building materials
The owner of the site approached us with a non-trivial question: "We want to enter a new region and are creating a second site for this. Our in-house specialist requested a 2-fold increase in salary for promoting both resources . Is this justified?"
The very formulation of the question intrigued us
Considering that the assortment and structure of the site in the new region are planned to be identical, the optimal solution would be to create a regional subdomain or regional subfolder. And promoting a subdomain or subfolder on the same template as the main site is clearly not twice as much work. But the check revealed much more interesting nuances: