SEO
How to Start an E-commerce Business (9 Steps to Success)
All-in-one platforms (think Shopify) have made it all too easy for anyone and their grandmother to set up shop quickly.
Hear me out. There is a big difference between setting up an online store and launching a successful e-commerce business.
To be successful, you’ll need to research and develop a competitive product and create a professional website with fast shipping and helpful customer service—all while building a memorable brand.
I don’t want to discourage you with an extensive task list; that’s not what this is about.
We’re here to help you succeed. In this article, you’ll find nine steps to start your e-commerce business on the right foot.
Before you start building anything, you’ll want to research the viability of your vision.
Do search query trends support that this product or store is something people want? What will your market position be, and can it be profitable?
Search query trends: Is this something people want?
You can get an idea of the level of interest using Google Trends and a good keyword research tool.
Google Trends is an online search tool that maps the popularity of broad queries in Google Search across various regions and languages over time.
For example, say I’m interested in starting a children’s gift shop. Google Trends shows that searches for kids’ board games have declined for a few years—especially around the holiday season.
However, searches for wooden toys seem consistent.
Based on this, wooden toys may be a better product niche than board games.
A keyword research tool is also helpful in the research phase. Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, for example, lets you see more details like related search queries and competitive metrics.
Continuing with the wooden toy shop example, Keywords Explorer tells me that a related search query, “wooden stacking toys,” has, on average, 500 monthly searches. And the trend line is increasing.
I would also likely need very few to no backlinks to rank in the top 10 based on the low Keyword Difficulty (KD) score.
We can confirm that in the SERP overview where we see that smaller niche e-commerce sites are ranking in the top 10, along with the giants like Target and Amazon:
Based on this, it seems wooden stacking toys are an emerging trend that is not too competitive yet.
Customer research: What will your market position be?
In addition to what people are interested in, you need to learn why they buy and what they want to see improved.
To understand why people buy, join industry forums, read reviews on similar products, and collect feedback directly from potential buyers with surveys and polls.
Collecting feedback from your audience will help inform and build your brand’s market position.
Continue listening as your product rolls out. Staying in touch with your customer base is essential to successful brands.
Pricing research: How much are they willing to pay?
Pricing touches everything from your business finances to your product’s positioning in the market.
All pricing strategies have an underlying formula involving costs (the amount you spend), profit margin (money left after costs), and markup (what you add to the cost of production).
Try the cost-plus pricing method if you need a relatively quick and straightforward way to set a starting price.
This is easy. To set your first price, add up all the costs involved in bringing your product to market and then add your profit margin on top of those costs.
Compare this selling price to what competitors are charging and explore historical price patterns. Or, to put it simply, get to know what your customer base is willing to spend.
Once you’ve figured out what products you want to sell, the next step is to find who will make them.
You may create handmade products, work with a manufacturer, or resell existing products.
Below is a brief overview of the pros and cons of different sourcing options.
Creating handmade products
Handmade products are perceived as high quality, so this option allows sellers to charge a premium price.
You will have the most control over design and quality because you create the product in small batches.
The trouble with making everything by hand is that it’s hard to scale. There are only so many widgets one person can make in a day.
Working with a manufacturer to build products
Working with a manufacturer will solve the growth problem, but it’s time intensive and expensive.
You will look for a manufacturer, then work with them to build prototypes to your specifications and, finally, place your first order—in bulk.
Wix has a good guide on how to find a manufacturer that includes a few U.S. directories and overseas directories.
Just be careful not to jump at the first manufacturing opportunity that matches your budget. Take your time to get to know their service quality (and legitimacy). Ask if you can review their license, whether there’s a minimum order quantity, and the average turnaround time.
Reselling existing products through a supplier
Many people choose to enter the e-commerce space by reselling existing products because it is easy to scale and does not require high upfront costs.
The process is fairly simple. You find vendors through online directories, order products, and ship them to your storage location or directly to customers (aka dropshipping).
Get started by browsing online directories, asking for wholesale referrals from within your network, or partnering with well-known sites like AliExpress or Faire.
While reselling has the least startup hurdles, keep in mind that you will not have a unique product or control over quality and may run into supply chain issues.
Once you have a strong plan for your e-commerce business, it’s time to choose a name and fill out all the legal forms to make it legit.
When choosing a name for your company, you’ll want something that speaks to the product you sell and your target market. After all, you want your brand to be memorable so customers can easily find you when they’re ready to purchase.
Once you have a name in mind, check that another business hasn’t already taken it or the domain name. If the domain is registered, try a few variations before hitting the proverbial drawing board again.
Here is what the business name lookup in my state looks like:
Then on a national level, this is what the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) looks like.
And finally, you can do a quick check for domain availability through your hosting provider of choice.
Last but certainly not least is ensuring you comply with local laws and regulations. This includes choosing your business’s legal structure and filing for necessary patents and trademarks.
Trying to decipher all the legal stuff can feel daunting. Thankfully, there are multiple online legal service providers to help make the legal process as easy as possible.
Now that you’ve legally started your e-commerce business, it’s time to create your website.
The actual building of your site will take place on an e-commerce platform, and there are many to choose from.
Changing platforms down the road gets really complicated, so it is in your best interest to choose a platform that is easy for you to manage and accommodates most SEO requirements.
Organic traffic from search engines could potentially be your biggest traffic source, so you shouldn’t neglect this aspect.
To stay as neutral as possible, we’ve listed the most popular e-commerce platforms, according to market share:
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform, with a market share of 36.68% worldwide.
It is free to download (which likely has something to do with its widespread use), open-source, and has many useful plugins that give you complete control over your SEO settings.
If you already have a WordPress site and have the technical chops to use the advanced features, WooCommerce is the best option.
Squarespace
Squarespace online stores ranked second, with a market share of 14.49% in 2022.
Years ago, trying to optimize a Squarespace site for search was really frustrating. I felt like my hands were tied. Yet, I was still able to hit that $1M in sales benchmark despite the minimal SEO capabilities.
A lot has changed since then, and I would recommend Squarespace to the non-techy crowd because of the drag-and-drop web builder and easy-to-use on-page SEO tab.
Shopify
Shopify was the third-largest e-commerce platform in 2022, with 10%.
The hosting, website builder, payment gateway, order tracking, and marketing tools are all included, with no complex installation process or wait time.
If you don’t already have a strong preference, go with Shopify. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the best out-of-the-box solution for most people in terms of its features and management.
Wix
Wix was the fourth-largest e-commerce platform in 2022, at 6.44%.
Like Squarespace, Wix offers a user-friendly interface and templates to create a professional website with little tech experience.
While Wix has been adding a ton of SEO functionality, some important cons remain, like weird link structure and code bloat. That’s not ideal because speed matters in SEO and conversion rate optimization. Unfortunately, Wix’s server response time could be better.
Your e-commerce website isn’t complete until you’ve set up a payment gateway so customers can pay for the products they want to purchase.
Payment gateways refer to the technology that helps sellers receive customer payments.
When choosing a payment processor for your online store, think about the volume and value of your transactions.
For example, suppose you have a lot of high-value transactions. In that case, using a payment processor that charges a set monthly fee and a low transaction fee makes sense.
Below, we have listed the most common payment processors by market share:
PayPal
PayPal is the most popular payment gateway, holding 42.83% of the market. It supports Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Citibank, and more.
Data suggests that PayPal-enabled checkouts convert at 88.7%, and 52% of mobile customers will likely make additional online purchases if they see PayPal as a payment option.
Stripe
If you’re looking for a payment gateway that supports multiple currencies and integrates well with WooCommerce, Stripe is a great option. It’s available in more than 25 countries and has a market share of 18.65%.
Shopify Pay Installments
Shopify Pay Installments is the third-largest payment processor. It is unique because it allows customers to pay for orders in four interest-free installments. It’s available in 22 countries at the time of publication.
Multiple payment options effectively increase sales because you extend your reach to every potential customer.
Amazon
Amazon Pay is the fourth-largest payment processor, at 5.04%.
Amazon Pay allows customers to use their Amazon account information to make online purchases on your e-commerce store.
The benefit of using Amazon Pay is that it increases customer trust, confidence, and conversion rates.
Just as you need a payment processor to accept payments, you also need a shipping system to send products to your customers.
Will you maintain inventory, pack and ship orders “in-house,” or outsource shipping to a third-party provider?
Amazon has changed customer expectations regarding shipping. Because of this, offering fast, affordable (even free) shipping options can help reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase conversions.
Free shipping may sound like it only benefits the customer, but it can be a win-win solution for both parties.
For example, you could offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount. By doing so, you are meeting the customers’ expectations of free shipping and increasing the average order total.
And remember to consider free return shipping. Returns play a significant role in gaining new customers. Over 70% of surveyed consumers agree that the returns experience plays an important role in customer loyalty.
Launching your website is only the beginning. Once your online store is live, you’ll need excellent customer service to help your customers with questions and to ensure they are happy with their purchases.
In the beginning, have a key staff member, such as yourself or a marketing director, act as lead for all customer inquiries.
This direct contact with your audiences provides valuable insights into areas of growth and product design.
Once it becomes too much for one person, this work can be delegated to a part-time or full-time customer service rep.
How to best serve your customer base is going to vary; below are a few customer service touchpoints to consider:
Live chat
Customers crave instant gratification. If they have a question, they want an answer ASAP.
If you can’t help them immediately, you risk losing them to a competitor that’s only one click away.
Since 83% of online shoppers need assistance completing an order, live chat (with real people, not bots) is a must-have.
Social media
A study by Bain & Company found companies that responded to customer service requests on social media gained 20% to 40% more sales from those customers.
You can set up alerts to let you know when your business is being discussed, answer user questions, give updates on new products, and resolve any issues they may have.
When an issue or question arises, the majority of people (62%) prefer to contact a company for customer service via email over any other channel, according to research.
That’s right. Email beats out live chat (23%) and social messaging sites (21%) regarding customer service preferences.
The lesson here is not to “deprioritize” email in favor of new technology, but to keep multiple communication channels in a unified system so customer inquiries can be quickly resolved.
Passion, a unique product, and a beautiful website aren’t enough to get customers to notice you (unfortunately).
You’ll need to invest time and money into a combination of SEO, ads, social, video marketing, and more.
We spoke to the consultant of an eight-figure e-commerce business (ButcherBox) who shared six proven e-commerce marketing strategies just for you.
Below is a quick summary of ways to market your online shop:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO helps you rank higher in the search results for relevant search queries. It generally involves keyword research, content creation, link building, and technical improvements.
E-commerce SEO ups the ante, though. There are a lot of specifics you’ll have to deal with, but we have your back with our beginner’s guide to e-commerce SEO.
Online advertising
Online advertising is any time you place an ad on Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc., whether it’s pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, or something else.
Ads are effective because brands can target the ad’s message to specific users, including how close the person is to buying the product.
Take Vuori (performance apparel brand), for example; the DTC brand grew to an unprecedented $4 billion valuation in just six years.
Founder Joe Kudla credits online advertising as the reason the brand made it from its humble beginnings.
And quite honestly, if we hadn’t leaned into that (direct marketing) so heavily, we probably wouldn’t have made it.
Vuori used a combination of Google Merchant Center and Facebook dynamic ads, Facebook-sponsored posts, and lookalike audiences built off its mailing list. It paid close attention to cost per acquisition to evaluate what was working.
Social media marketing
With a new business, you’ll be juggling a lot—so choose one social media platform to focus on. Ideally, one that balances where your audience hangs out with a medium you feel comfortable working with.
For example, if you love creating flat lays or product photography, Instagram or Pinterest will serve you well.
If you are extroverted and love to be in front of the camera, you’ll shine on TikTok or YouTube.
The key is consistency. Refrain from spreading yourself too thin by trying to grow all your social media profiles. Focus on complementing your natural talents, so you’ll keep it up.
Learn more: Find Influencers: 6 Easy Steps to Choose the Right Ones
Video marketing
Video marketing works well for e-commerce because it shows how your products are used and how they can benefit the customer.
Many video marketing platforms let you sell directly through the app, like YouTube, Facebook Live, and Instagram Stories.
While resource-intensive, video is not a channel to sleep on. A recent study found that 73% of respondents preferred watching a short video to learn about a product or service.
And Google knows it.
During an episode of the “Search Off the Record” podcast, Google Product Manager Danielle Marshak said, “We think this kind of content (video) could be useful for a lot of different types of search queries, and we’ve been experimenting with how to show it to users more often.”
Videos are already rising in prominence on Google, appearing in the main search results page, video search results, Google Images, and Discover.
Taking the Vuori example from above. Over 1,200 of the keywords it ranks for in Google also trigger video results in the SERP:
Considering Ahrefs’ YouTube channel has over 360,000 subscribers and 14 million views, it’s safe to say we know a thing or two about video marketing. Read our beginner’s guide to video marketing to get started.
Email marketing
Promotional emails—love or hate them, they are a great way to grow your retail business.
This is because traffic from your email list isn’t the fleeting kind you often get from social media posts or paid ads. It brings people who have engaged with you already back to your site.
It’s like the flyer in your mailbox at home vs. the billboard on the highway.
Get the inside scoop from a marketer that has grown multiple email lists in the tens of thousands in this guide to growing an email list.
As you receive orders, track which marketing tactics are working and which aren’t.
As time progresses, you’ll be able to adjust and change your marketing strategy to find what works best for your business.
A few metrics I keep an eye on for optimizing e-commerce marketing strategies are:
- Buy-to-detail rates (purchases divided by the number of product views).
- Average order value.
- Customer lifetime value.
- The number of returns or refunds (by marketing campaign).
Regularly analyzing your results can identify areas that need improvement, so you can make changes to grow your business.
Learn how to measure customer lifetime value and other essential marketing KPIs in our list of marketing KPIs worth tracking.
Final thoughts
There you have it—a nine-step guide to starting an e-commerce business.
Don’t let the amount of work overwhelm or discourage you. The number #1 most important step is to get started.
Got any questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
GA4 Update Brings Alignment With Google Ads Targeting
Google announced an update to the advertising section within Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
The enhancement aims to clarify and align user counts eligible for remarketing and ad personalization.
Under the change, advertisers can now quickly view the size of their “Advertising Segments” within GA4’s interface.
These segments represent the pool of users whose data can be leveraged for remarketing campaigns and personalized ad targeting through products like Google Ads.
Improved Synchronization For Unified Insights
Previously, there could be discrepancies between the user counts shown as eligible for advertising use cases in GA4 and the Google Ads Audience Manager.
With this update, Google says the numbers will be fully aligned, allowing marketers to confidently make data-driven advertising decisions.
📢We’ve enhanced the Advertising section of Google Analytics 4! Now you can quickly see the size of your Advertising Segments – these are the users eligible for remarketing and ads personalization in Google Ads.
🔍How will this update help you? These numbers are now aligned with…
— Google Analytics (@googleanalytics) June 24, 2024
Expanding Advertising Segment Visibility
Along with the alignment fix, the update expands visibility into advertising segment sizes within the GA4 interface.
A new “Advertising segments” panel under the “Advertising” section reports the number of users GA4 collects and sends to ad products for personalization.
An “advertising segment” is a list of GA4 users synchronized with Google advertising products for remarketing and personalized ad targeting purposes.
Segment sizes can vary based on targeting requirements for different ad networks.
Why SEJ Cares
This update from Google addresses a key pain point for advertisers utilizing GA4 and Google Ads.
Full alignment between advertising audience sizes across products eliminates confusion and enables more data-driven strategies.
The added transparency into advertising segment sizes directly in GA4 is also a welcomed upgrade.
How This Can Help You
With aligned user counts, advertisers can plan and forecast remarketing campaigns with greater precision using GA4 data.
This unified view means you can make media investment decisions based on accurate reach projections.
Additionally, the new advertising segments panel provides extra context about the scope of your audiences for ad personalization.
This visibility allows for more informed strategies tailored to your specific segment sizes.
Featured Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock
SEO
OpenAI’s Rockset Acquisition And How It May Impact Digital Marketing
OpenAI acquired a technology from Rockset that will enable the creation of new products, real-time data analysis, and recommendation systems, possibly signaling a new phase for OpenAI that could change the face of search marketing in the near future.
What Is Rockset And Why It’s Important
Rockset describes its technology as a Hybrid Search, a type of multi-faceted approach to search (integrating vector search, text search and metadata filtering) to retrieve documents that can augment the generation process in RAG systems. RAG is a technique that combines search with generative AI that is intended to create more factually accurate and contextually relevant results. It’s a technology that plays a role in BING’s AI search and Google’s AI Overviews.
Rockset’s research paper about the Rockset Hybrid Search Architecture notes:
“All vector search is becoming hybrid search as it drives the most relevant, real-time application experiences. Hybrid search involves incorporating vector search and text
search as well as metadata filtering, all in a single query. Hybrid search is used in search, recommendations and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) applications.…Rockset is designed and optimized to ingest data in real time, index different data types and run retrieval and ranking algorithms.”
What makes Rockset’s hybrid search important is that it allows the indexing and use of multiple data types (vectors, text, geospatial data about objects & events), including real-time data use. That powerful flexibility allows the technology to interact with different kinds of data that can be used for in-house and consumer-facing applications related to contextually relevant product recommendations, customer segmentation and analysis for targeted marketing campaigns, personalization, personalized content aggregation, location-based recommendations (restaurants, services, etc.) and in applications that increase user engagement (Rockset lists numerous case studies of how their technology is used).
OpenAI’s announcement explained:
“AI has the opportunity to transform how people and organizations leverage their own data. That’s why we’ve acquired Rockset, a leading real-time analytics database that provides world-class data indexing and querying capabilities.
Rockset enables users, developers, and enterprises to better leverage their own data and access real-time information as they use AI products and build more intelligent applications.
…Rockset’s infrastructure empowers companies to transform their data into actionable intelligence. We’re excited to bring these benefits to our customers…”
OpenAI’s announcement also explains that they intend to integrate Rockset’s technology into their own retrieval infrastructure.
At this point we know the transformative quality of hybrid search and the possibilities but OpenAI is at this point only offering general ideas of how this will translate into APIs and products that companies and individuals can create and use.
The official announcement of the acquisition from Rockset, penned by one of the cofounders, offered these clues:
“We are thrilled to join the OpenAI team and bring our technology and expertise to building safe and beneficial AGI.
…Advanced retrieval infrastructure like Rockset will make AI apps more powerful and useful. With this acquisition, what we’ve developed over the years will help make AI accessible to all in a safe and beneficial way.
Rockset will become part of OpenAI and power the retrieval infrastructure backing OpenAI’s product suite. We’ll be helping OpenAI solve the hard database problems that AI apps face at massive scale.”
What Exactly Does The Acquisition Mean?
Duane Forrester, formerly of Bing Search and Yext (LinkedIn profile), shared his thoughts:
“Sam Altman has stated openly a couple times that they’re not chasing Google. I get the impression he’s not really keen on being seen as a search engine. More like they want to redefine the meaning of the phrase “search engine”. Reinvent the category and outpace Google that way. And Rockset could be a useful piece in that approach.
Add in Apple is about to make “ChatGPT” a mainstream thing with consumers when they launch the updated Siri this Fall, and we could very easily see query starts migrate away from traditional search engine boxes. Started with TikTok/social, now moving to ai-assistants.”
Another approach, which could impact SEO, is that OpenAI could create a product based on an API that can be used by companies to power in-house and consumer facing applications. With that approach, OpenAI provides the infrastructure (like they currently do with ChatGPT and foundation models) and let the world innovate all over the place with OpenAI at the center (as it currently does) as the infrastructure.
I asked Duane about that scenario and he agreed but also remained open to an even wider range of possibilities:
“Absolutely, a definite possibility. As I’ve been approaching this topic, I’ve had to go up a level. Or conceptually switch my thinking. Search is, at its heart, information retrieval. So if I go down the IR path, how could one reinvent “search” with today’s systems and structures that redefine how information retrieval happens?
This is also – it should be noted- a description for the next-gen advanced site search. They could literally take over site search across a wide range of mid-to-enterprise level companies. It’s easily as advanced as the currently most advanced site-search systems. Likely more advanced if they launch it. So ultimately, this could herald a change to consumer search (IR) and site-search-based systems.
Expanding from that, apps, as they allude to. So I can see their direction here.”
Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures (Poshmark, Roku, Uber) speculated on Twitter about how this acquisition may transform OpenAI:
“This is speculation but I imagine Rockset will power all their enterprise search offerings to compete with Glean and / or a consumer search offering to compete with Perplexity / Google. Permissioning capabilities of Rockset make me think more the former than latter”
Others on Twitter offered their take on how this will affect the future of AI:
“I doubt OpenAI will jump into the enterprise search fray. It’s just far too challenging and something that Microsoft and Google are best positioned to go after.
This is a play to accelerate agentic behaviors and make deep experts within the enterprise. You might argue it’s the same thing an enterprise search but taking an agent first approach is much more inline with the OpenAI mission.”
A Consequential Development For OpenAI And Beyond
The acquisition of Rockset may prove to be the foundation of one of the most consequential changes to how businesses use and deploy AI, which in turn, like many other technological developments, could also have an effect on the business of digital marketing.
Read how Rockset customers power recommendation systems, real-time personalization, real-time analytics, and other applications:
Read the official Rockset announcement:
Read the official OpenAI announcement:
OpenAI acquires Rockset
Enhancing our retrieval infrastructure to make AI more helpful
Read the original Rockset research paper:
Rockset Hybrid Search Architecture (PDF)
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Iconic Bestiary
SEO
Results-Driven SEO Project Management: From Chaos to Cash
Making a profit in SEO relies on good project management. That means doing things that get results rather than just drowning yourself in endless tasks.
Below, I’ll walk you through a 7-step process to do exactly that.
Having clear goals keeps your team unified toward a specific direction. For example, if your boss allocates $5,000/month for the SEO project, you need to translate this into meaningful results and milestones you can report on.
A goal you can easily set is to increase the website’s organic traffic value. This is a metric unique to Ahrefs that estimates a dollar value of SEO traffic.
If you invest $5,000/month in SEO for six months, you could aim to increase your website’s organic traffic value by $30,000 ($5,000 ✕ 6 months).
This isn’t the most accurate method because traffic value doesn’t necessarily correlate with real-world revenues, but it works as an easy starting point for setting targets.
A better solution is to use conversion data and average order or deal value to set goals around delivering a return on investment. You can find these metrics in your analytics tool, like Google Analytics, if conversion tracking is set up:
Sidenote.
If you don’t have access to conversion metrics like this, to be conservative, use 1% as a ballpark conversion rate and the cheapest product or service price for the average order value.
Using these metrics, you can calculate the number of sales needed to break even on the SEO campaign.
# of monthly sales to break even = monthly SEO cost average order value
Since this project’s monthly SEO cost is $5,000, we’ll need to grow sales from organic traffic by 32.25 for each month of the project’s duration.
Here’s the formula to discover roughly how much traffic or projected organic sessions you’ll need:
projected organic sessions = transactions needed to break even conversion rate
So in this example, we divide 32.25 transactions by the conversion rate of 0.86% to learn that we need at least 3,750 organic monthly sessions to break even. Of course, not all traffic is created equal, so keep that in mind going forward.
So far, so good! (Save this number, we’ll need it in a moment).
In many cases, the timeline will be decided for you by your boss or client. For instance, if you take on a client with a six-month contract, that’s the timeframe in which you generally have to deliver results.
The question at this stage is whether it’s possible to reach your performance goal in that time.
Truthfully, there’s no way to know for sure, but you can look to your competitors for an idea.
Sure, you have no idea what their SEO budgets are (they could be spending 10x what you are), but if you see multiple competitors of a similar caliber getting similar results over a similar timeframe, that’s a good sign.
For instance, in its first six months of SEO, Webflow reached just shy of 24,000 organic monthly traffic, with a traffic value of $76,510 (according to Ahrefs).
By comparison, Duda’s first-year performance is also fairly close to Webflow’s.
So, if these are your competitors and your target is to reach a traffic value of $30,000 in six months or to increase monthly traffic by 3,750 sessions, it certainly seems achievable.
If you don’t see competitors hitting your target in your timeframe like this, you’ll need to rethink your goals and communicate them to key stakeholders. Communication is critical for setting the right expectations with your boss or clients.
Now that you’ve set an achievable goal for the project timeline, the next step is to plan what tasks actually need to be done to get you there.
You’ll need to spend some time on strategic tasks to help you determine the correct implementations for the project.
Don’t be tempted to skip this part!!
If you don’t spend enough time on strategic tasks like competitor analysis, keyword research, and auditing the current website, no matter how much action you take, it’ll be useless if you’re heading in the wrong direction.
But don’t overdo it, either. You need to balance strategy with implementation to get results.
For example, there’s generally a notable difference in performance between a project that spends one month on strategy and publishes content ASAP compared to a project that front-loads strategic tasks and implements content a few months later.
I recommend spending ⅙ of the project timeline on strategy and ⅚ on implementation for the best balance.
As for what specific tasks you can plan, there are many things you could focus on here. The right things for your website will vary depending on your available skills and resources, plus what’s working best in your industry… but here’s where I’d start, given that the target is to increase traffic.
a) Fill content gaps
Start by finding pages that deliver traffic to competitors that your website doesn’t have.
Using Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool, make sure you select the “keywords” tab and then enter your website along with a handful of your top competitors, like so:
Then check out the results to find topics your competitors have written about that you haven’t. Make sure you qualify the topics according to what has business value for you.
For instance, let’s look at design-related keywords that Wix or Squarespace rank for but Webflow doesn’t.
Many of these keywords hold very little business value for a company like Webflow, like any related to logo makers and generators. However, keywords related to design trends and principles might be topics Webflow can consider for its blog since designers are a staple part of its audience demographic.
For topics that have business value, create new content targeting these keywords.
There can be a lot of data to sift through here, so I recommend my content gap analysis template for a faster and smoother process 😉
b) Boost authority of top pages
This task is about identifying which of your content is already performing well and sending more internal links and backlinks to those pages.
You can find the best pages to promote by using the Top Pages report in Site Explorer. Here you’ll see which pages on your site get the most traffic:
Then, navigate to the Internal Link Opportunities report in Site Audit. You can set an advanced filter to narrow down the opportunities to the pages you care most about. Check out the suggested anchor text and keyword contexts and implement all the internal links that make sense in your content.
You should also build backlinks to these pages. You can use the Competitive Analysis report again, but this time, set it to referring domains or pages.
Sidenote.
Setting it to referring domains will give you a list of websites you can add to an outreach list. Setting it to referring pages will give you the exact URLs where the links to your competitors are. These links can be included in outreach messages to make them more customized.
Also, instead of using the homepage, add the exact page you want to link to and compare it to your competitors’ pages on the same topic. Make sure you set all pages to “exact URL” to get the page-level (instead of website-level) backlink data.
There are many different backlinking techniques you can consider implementing. Check out our video on how to get your first 100 links if you’re unsure where to start:
c) Update content with low-hanging fruit opportunities
For an established website with a decent amount of existing content, you can also look for opportunities to quickly update existing content and boost performance with little effort.
In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, check out your pages that are already ranking in positions 4-15 by using Opportunities > Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords:
Find pages with many keywords in this range and try to close topic gaps on those pages. For example, let’s take our post on affiliate marketing and look at its low-hanging fruit opportunities.
We could isolate similar keywords that don’t already have a dedicated section in our article, like the following about becoming an affiliate.
These are already hovering around the middle of page one on Google. With a small, dedicated section about this topic, we can likely improve rankings for these keywords with minimal effort.
Most tasks aren’t a one-time thing. For example, you’ll probably create or update multiple pieces of content during an SEO project.
So, the next step is to create a library of repeatable task templates that you can duplicate in your project.
If you don’t do this and just assume your team knows what to do, it can cause chaos, and there’s a high chance your project won’t succeed.
Here’s what you should add to each task template:
- Who → assignees, reviewers, watchers, key stakeholders
- What → what’s the goal of the task + what exactly needs to be done
- When → dates to start and finish a task, estimated hours to complete
- Where → what tools should be used, where should deliverables be added, where can templates/relevant info be found
- Why → connect the task to a strategic objective
- How → SOP or process outlined in a clear and detailed brief
Obviously, the exact details for some of these will need to be filled in on a task-by-task basis as you duplicate them into your project. For example, instead of assigning the template tasks to a specific person, indicate the role that is responsible for the task until you’re ready to assign it to someone.
Likewise, with the due dates. In the template, instead of adding exact due dates, indicate an estimated length of time each task should take and a general rule for when the task is due after it’s been assigned.
Not every project will need every task, so the idea is to pull in what’s required as needed and have the bulk of the info pre-filled to reduce the time it takes to brief the task.
With your tasks set and templates created, it’s now time to start doing.
This is where things can often fall apart unless you distribute responsibility and ownership of tasks and processes throughout your team.
SEO project management doesn’t fail because there aren’t SOPs and processes in place. It fails because the people executing the processes aren’t given ownership of them.
Here are 3 reasons why this can happen:
- Without clear ownership, all team members rely on you for approvals before they can complete a task or start another. It slows everything down, and very little gets done efficiently.
- A “not my job” mentality can take root in your team. Unless team members take ownership of their tasks, you will be responsible for micromanaging everything to ensure your team is doing what it’s supposed to be.
- The people best placed to decide upon and update processes aren’t the ones doing so. They’re just doing whatever “management” tells them to do even if they see a better way.
You can solve the first two problems by clearly identifying who is responsible for specific tasks and processes and allowing them to get on with those tasks without having to run every tiny thing through you.
You can solve the third problem by letting the people on the ground decide how their tasks are done and giving them responsibility for updating SOPs and relevant task templates. This again frees up your time and attention to focus on strategy, not micromanaging.
PRO TIP
It also helps to break up bigger tasks into sub-components when multiple people are involved, like:
- Briefing → SEO Strategist or Account Manager
- Implementation → often, a non-SEO professional like a writer, developer, or designer
- Review → Senior SEO
- Final approval → Client
For the love of all things good, please don’t manage SEO projects via email. It’s horrible.
Invest in setting up a proper project management tool to scale with you. Consider your needs before you start planning all your tasks and projects.
There’s no tool that’s best for everyone, but I recommend you check out Asana, ClickUp, or Monday to get you started.
In any of these tools, you can easily set up separate projects and task templates. For example, here’s a basic setup of the first month’s tasks you can consider in Clickup:
Within each task, you can pre-fill certain fields and add a description, like so:
This is where you can add your brief, relevant links, and the essential details needed to turn the task into a template. Of course, there are nuances of how this works between different project management tools, but the basic idea remains the same.
It’s worth spending time setting up your tasks and templates correctly so you can save time down the track as your project or team grows.
The last piece of this framework is tracking resources spent and results achieved.
Tracking resources
The easiest way to track resources is to create custom fields in your project management tool that measure specific resources allocated for each task. Some tools also let you build out reports to see how your resource allocation is going across different time frames, teams, or projects.
The types of resources you might consider tracking include:
- Cost of the task
- Planned time allocated
- Actual time spent
- Cost of tools required to do the task
- Credits the task is worth (if you use a credit system)
- Sprint points (if you work in sprints)
For more in-depth insights on where your resources are going, consider tagging tasks according to whether they’re strategic, implementation, or administrative. This way, you can quickly and easily spot imbalances like investing too much in tasks that don’t contribute to results.
Tracking results
Measuring your results requires going beyond your project management tool and using a combination of your analytics software and an SEO tool like Ahrefs.
When you start working on a new campaign, make sure you record a benchmark of the existing performance of the website. Then, keep regular tabs on the metrics that matter for the project and performance milestones you’ve achieved along the way.
For example, you can use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to monitor performance across your entire portfolio for free.
The dashboard allows you to quickly see how performance is trending for key SEO metrics across all projects you’ve added:
Key Takeaways
Results-driven SEO project management starts with the end in mind and works backward. It doesn’t assume you’ll see performance improvements just because you’re doing lots of stuff.
Instead, it is very intentional about figuring out exactly what needs to be done and linking those actions to realistic and achievable outcomes.
In the words of Mads Singers:
The starting point is figuring out how to deliver a return on investment. This is the most important thing. Then it’s about giving your team ownership and control over the tasks related to their roles.
Once these foundations are in place, only then is it about documenting processes. But it shouldn’t be a business owner or manager who does the documentation. Processes should be owned by the people doing the work and who can keep SOPs current.
The process shared above allows you to do all of this and more. If you have any questions about your SEO project management goals or processes, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn anytime.
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